Radio Review Bernice HarrisonTalking about the weather. It's such a handy shorthand for the banal, for empty conversations that go nowhere, and it's probably true for just about all of us with our "nights drawing in" and "chilly for this time of year" chat.
But those who heard meteorologist Brendan McWilliams talk about the weather every week on Today with Pat Kenny (RTÉ Radio 1) know just how fascinating a subject it can be. It was the ease with which he carried his tremendous knowledge, slipping references from every corner - including mythology, philosophy and literature - into his explanations about how our world works. In his five-minute interviews on the Kenny show, he did what is widely acknowledged to be an almost impossible task - he made science accessible. And what a great voice for radio. On Tuesday, marking McWilliams's untimely passing this week, Kenny read out some listeners' comments, including one from a woman who summed it up: "We will miss the light touch of his knowledge."
TERRY WOGAN IS famous for his light touch but he sounded far more subdued than usual on A Good Read (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday). Presenter Sue MacGregor comes across as such a schoolmarm that her guests tend to sound like nervous pupils on their best behaviour, desperate to please teacher. Though, for those of us sniggering down the back, her authoritative persona was shaken by her dire pronunciation of Radio Telefís Éireann, though I suppose Wogan could have put her out of her misery and told her it was OK to just call it RTÉ. Anyway, Wogan, who said he usually has two books on the go at any one time - "though, of late, I'm putting down more books than I'm picking up" - chose Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship as a favourite. He could, he said, identify with the dialogue, landscape and relationships in the Ireland of the early 1990s as portrayed in the novel. Though when McGregor started to make positive noises about the scene where there's a bit of a sing-song in the kitchen, Wogan was quick to say, in a withering tone usually reserved for the Finnish entry into the Eurovision Song Contest, that because of his urban background, "people sitting around reverentially while someone squeezes an uileann pipes is not my idea of an evening".
HAVING PREVIOUSLY CRITICISED the predictability of the guest list on Conversations with Eamon Dunphy (RTÉ Radio 1), I ate my words along with my breakfast last Saturday as I listened to his interview with knitwear queen Lainey Keogh. Although she's one of our most high-profile and visionary designers, I have never heard her interviewed before and she admitted she's media shy, preferring her work to do the talking. She's a bit more forthcoming at the moment because she's marking her 50th birthday with a new collection, and Dunphy teased out her career with a gentleness that fitted in perfectly with her whimsical dreaminess. She gave credit to her team of home knitters, recruited when she was starting off through an ad on Radio Nova, and really, she has single-handedly changed the image of Irish knitwear. Who else could take the knitted dress (two words that usually strike terror into any normal person) and do a version of it with enough of a wow factor for Naomi Campbell to show its cobwebby brilliance as she sashayed down a London runway in 1997? That fashion show, said Keogh, was the springboard for the international career she's had since. What was refreshing about the interview was how forthcoming, honest and spontaneous she sounded. There wasn't the sense that she was simply dishing out the same well-worn answers to questions she's answered a hundred times before.
ALTHOUGH KEOGH WASN'T asked if she'd be interested in managing the Irish football team, it felt as though she was one of the few people interviewed on radio this week who wasn't. Even superchef and famous potty-mouth Gordon Ramsay, who was on with Ray D'Arcy (Today FM, Wednesday) to talk about his new restaurant in Wicklow, was asked would he give it a go. In fairness he does have some football form as a player. Amazingly, it was one of the few questions he answered that could be transcribed without wearing out the asterisk button on the keyboard, though I don't think he was too serious when he said he wouldn't mind.