RadioReview: If you are what you eat, then most people who tuck into a couple of intensively produced Irish lamb chops on a regular basis are a heady cocktail of genetically modified animal feed with a shot of sheep dip thrown in for good measure. Or are they?
That's the thing about media coverage of food-related topics. Particularly on radio there tends to be so much information packed into an item, so many facts and figures, that it's difficult to hold on to anything more concrete than a queasy idea that all food is, in some not quite definable way, not very good for you.
There was certainly a lot of information to digest in Consumed (RTÉ R1, Monday), the first in a new six-part series where presenter Tommy Standún looks at everyday food products and traces them back to their source. We're saturated with food coverage and it's difficult to find an ear-catching angle, but Standún chose a good, solid one by looking at exactly what goes into Irish lamb. He went to America, from where much of the genetically modified grain-based animal feed is imported, and also touched on the number of inoculations and dips that the average plate-bound sheep experiences in a lifetime. Stomach churning as that was, it was still difficult to extrapolate exactly how bad all that is for consumers or if, in fact, it is particularly bad for us at all.
There's was no scope for misinterpretation in Cutting Loose (BBC World Service, Wednesday), a programme where Vera Frankl examined how divorce operates in Pakistan. It's the first in the four-part series, and the other places where she has chosen to explore the consequence of marital breakdown include California, Egypt and Ireland. The mix of countries chosen is interesting in itself, with Ireland placed between extremes. Four years ago, 29-year-old Samia Sarwar, a middle class law student from Lahore who wanted to divorce her abusive husband, was shot dead on her parents' orders because she had shamed them by seeking a divorce. No action has been taken against her parents and when news of her death emerged there was little public outcry. Indeed, since her death, dozens of similar cases have come to light.
Death soon after marriage in Ireland was in the headlines this week with the sentencing of Michael Whelan for the calculated murder of his wife of six months. Her mother spoke movingly to Maria Finucane (RTÉ R1, Wednesday). She told of how Whelan turned up at the first anniversary mass for Mary, her only daughter, even though he had already been charged with murder and no, she told Finucane, she didn't hate him - because she didn't want to carry that burden of hate around with her. She had listened to his apology in court but it meant little as she felt it had been written for him, and while she would have appreciated an apology straight to her face, it's not something she's going to put her life on hold waiting for. The contrast between the simple wisdom of his mother-in-law and the complex stupidity of an Irish man who thought the best place to hide was behind a bar in Spain was stark. Finucane called her "an extraordinary woman".
Paul Jackson in Politically Incorrect and Out on a Limb? (BBC R4, Tuesday) looked at how US comics reacted to the attacks on the World Trade Center and how they judged when the time was right to go back out on stage and make jokes. According to Gary Trudeau there was a lot of talk at the time that 9/11 would mean the death of irony on American TV, but then Letterman came back a couple of days later and it was business as usual. Every comic wanted to be first one to tell a 9/11 joke but the risks of coming in too soon with one were too great - Woody Allen's line that comedy equals tragedy plus time was severely tested.
Chris Rock broke the ice early on with a big thank you to the bombers because he as a black man was no longer the first person hauled out of the line at airport security - now it was the turn of the "Middle Eastern-looking guys". In the Comedy Store in LA, Arab comedians had a particularly tough time until one decided to go for it. His jokes about the difference between a Mormon youth and an Arab one being asked by their elders to go on a mission broke the ice.
Irish comics are presumably working on gags beginning with the one about the rich European country where the situation in public hospitals became so dire that a radio chat show (Liveline, RTÉ R1, all week) had pleaded for businesspeople to donate beds, Portakabins, stacking chairs for waiting rooms, beds and a great big box of sticking plasters to hold the health service together. Though, on second thoughts, not enough time has elapsed for that to seem even remotely funny.
