The tendency of radio presenters to talk about television has always vaguely smacked of a turkey giving Christmas first preference on the ballot paper. So when Joe Duffy earnestly discusses satellite TV systems for three straight days on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), it might seem akin to a seasonal fowl plucking and basting itself into the bargain.
But far from kowtowing to the primacy of the small screen, Duffy’s story about a pensioner brought to court over a misplaced satellite dish shows off his command of radio, as well as its occasional perils.
On Monday he hears from Ann, whose 90-year-old mother, Peig, is being prosecuted the next day by Dublin City Council for failing to remove a dish from her Terenure home after being told that it broke planning regulations. “Some kind person in the area reported her,” Ann says archly, adding that the stress has brought on an infection in her mother. The council’s pursuit of Peig for this minor violation seems odd, given the preponderance of similar aerials throughout the city.
It seems like classic Liveline, a heart-tugging human drama of callous bureaucracy pettily harassing the vulnerable. This impression is reinforced on Tuesday, when Duffy talks to Peig after she was to pay the council €1,500 in costs. Never one to knowingly underplay the melodrama of a situation, Duffy asks, "Did you get out of your sick bed to come in?" He also lays out the cost of the council's action, telling Peig that "they've taken eight weeks' pension off you".
Peig's case prompts a sympathetic response on Liveline and beyond (the Taoiseach even chips in during a Dáil debate the following day), but the unvarnished radio contributions also highlight some ambivalent aspects to the tale. Peig tells Duffy that she's particularly annoyed that her plight is down to someone's "squealing". This echoes her daughter, who says that her family have sought the name of the complainant under the Freedom of Information Act: "We want to know who would have the malice to report her, and Dublin City Council more foolishly to pursue it."
The family’s irritation is understandable, but when another caller says that the trouble is “all down to a nosy neighbour” Duffy’s own well-tuned antennae twitch. “No, it’s not. It’s down to the council,” he says, striving to nip any potential community strife in the bud.
But it emerges that the council’s policy is not to remove illegally positioned dishes unless there is a complaint. Duffy is aware that such tensions are bound to arise, calling the practice “a crank’s charter”. It’s enough to make you stick to the radio.
Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays) also makes a good case for favouring the wireless over the tube when Sean Moncrieff speaks to the Norwegian author Lars Mytting, whose book on chopping and storing firewood has become a bestseller in his homeland. Mytting tells how his book inspired Norwegian TV not only to produce a four-part series but also to air National Firewood Night, a live six-hour broadcast of a fire.
The whole item is so bizarre that even Moncrieff’s reliably dry irony fails him. Mytting intensely describes his obsession with firewood, from the science of combustion to its more spiritual aspects: “It’s the silent man’s way of taking care of the family.”
As Moncrieff responds with a series of “hmmms” and “rights”, his guest points to firewood’s lighter side. “One of the most comical discussions in Norway is whether the wood should be stacked with the bark up or down,” he says, proving how easily humour can get lost in translation.
Still, what starts out as an apparent exercise in near-parodic national stereotyping ends up an unlikely success, much like Mytting’s book. His unflappable monotone and pedantic detail have the same quietly absorbing effect as a crackling fire.
Hot topics loom on The Right Hook (Newstalk, weekdays) when George Hook talks to Declan Ganley, the sometime Eurosceptic firebrand, about the refugee crisis. But despite its promisingly incendiary ingredients the discussion ends up exuding the warm glow of compassion rather than the white heat of outrage.
Initially, Ganley’s line seems predictable, as he decries the indecision of European leaders and the failure of the EU’s immigration apparatus. But he then takes a sharp turn from the expected script, saying that this “in no way excuses us of our moral duty to give asylum” to the millions fleeing the Syrian cataclysm.
Decrying Angela Merkel’s offer of asylum as a “siren song” that has prompted needlessly lethal journeys, Ganley says, “If we were serious about it we would be issuing visas in the refugee camps.”
Hook sounds positive, which is itself unexpected. One suspects that if such a radical suggestion were made by some well-meaning liberal it would be greeted with derision, but the host seems happy to go along with it when framed in Ganley’s tough-sounding language about the EU’s “tyranny of mediocrity”.
Meanwhile, the host’s touchstones are as topical as ever. As Ganley suggests airlifting refugees from Syria, Hook invokes the Berlin airlift of 1948 (which brought food in rather than take people out); when the question of financial aid comes up he refers to the Marshall Plan. There’s a thin line between being crustily experienced and merely out of touch, and Hook regularly crosses it.
Then again, thought-provoking interventions such as Ganley’s always come at a price.
