Radio Review:Who needs podcasting when your station's on an infinite loop?
Flick the dial over to RTÉ Radio 1 at this time of the year and you're likely to be regaled with "a selection of highlights" from one show's offering last year, or "some favourite interviews" culled from another. There's nothing wrong with a bit of retrospection and compilation at the close of the year, but now the season of repeats seems to go on as long as the school holidays (a coincidence, surely?). And that's without taking into account the fact that RTÉ dishes up Second Helpingson medium wave on weekend afternoons, not to mention the Through the Nightprogramming after midnight, which is entirely composed of reruns of the previous day's schedule.
Last August, for example, I wrote about the station's documentary on cyclist "Iron Man" Mick Murphy and so pleased must RTÉ have been with the review that it has repeated the programme half a dozen times. Singer Al Stewart was in Vicar Street only last November yet at times I felt I spent much of Christmas being pursued by the strains of Year of the Catfrom my kitchen radio.
One of the more satisfying highlights programmes was Farm Year(RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday), a compendium of interviews from Damien O'Reilly's Farm Weekslot. To these urban ears, RTÉ's farm journalism hasn't been the same since the mesmeric Michael Dillon chimed out the heifer prices on Mart & Market, and one of the main problems with the old Five Seven Liveprogramme was the mind-numbingly dull farm news slot. However, Farm Week, with a bit more time and a more reflective mien, has rewarded early weekend risers with a consistently engaging series of insights into changing rural life.
This week's selection caught some of the drift of these developments, what with the farmer who had converted his holding into a successful golf course and another who discussed the problems deer hunters posed for his cattle.
There's a distinct air of pathos about many of the contributions, which portray a decaying, if not dying, way of life in many parts of the country. As one contributor asked: why do tough work with uncertain prospects seven days a week when you could be earning much more for working less on the building sites? In recognition of the changing circumstances, Farm Weekhas branched out into new (well, newish) territory, with recent programmes paying more attention to food issues from the point of view of the consumer. And its quirky take on matters rural was typified in last Saturday's repeat interview with Eddie Moroney, a Tipperary farmer who achieved his 15 minutes of fame with a notoriously one-sided and expletive-laden commentary on a local GAA match in the early 1990s. In between shouting at the referee - "he must have no wipers on his glasses" - and telling listeners his false teeth were falling out, Moroney uttered more curses than RTÉ has heard in a month of Saturday mornings.
If Dave Fanning has false teeth, they will surely pop out one day during one of his astonishingly long and rapidly-delivered radio monologues ( Drivetime with Dave, RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday). Even when Fanning is conducting an interview, as he was this week with Rod Stewart and David Bowie (phew!), his questions are usually framed as breathless statements punctuated by a brief "isn't that right?". It's hard for an interviewee to get a word in edgeways which, in Stewart's case, was no bad thing. This being a celebrity rock star interview, it was probably recorded in the singer's vast mansion or hotel suite, but without studio control and proper acoustics it sounded like it was put together in a toilet bowl. "I'm glad you hit the nail on the head," exclaimed the sexagenarian rock star at one point, as Fanning rounded off another chapter of his personal encyclopaedia of Rod Stewart. Mind you, he prefaced the interview by describing the Scot as "such a chancer, really", which is as good a description as you can get of a man who has sold 250 million records but is living proof that if you wait around long enough the fashion merry-go-round will come around again and pick you up on its next tour.
And what of Fanning's contribution to the arts, three months after he took up the baton from Rattlebagin such controversial circumstances? Mostly it's great fun, a high-speed spin through the popular end of popular culture. Films, pop music, novelty items (this week it was reality TV and conspiracy theories), and not a ballet dancer in sight. I've always loved Fanning's choice in music - Joni Mitchell follows The Smiths follows Gruppo Sportivo - but I could have got that when he was still on 2FM. Rattlebagcovered the books I probably wouldn't read, the plays I'd never get to and the exhibitions that probably wouldn't want my presence. It gave a breadth of coverage of the arts that has disappeared now ( The Eleventh Houris a long way from being a satisfactory replacement, in either content or time-slot), and I for one am the poorer for it.
But at least I know all about Rod Stewart, his five children with five different mothers, and his desire to do a country album. Please Rod, no!
• Bernice Harrison is on leave
