As Irish Olympians excel themselves in the pool, Ciara Kelly is going for gold at making awkward conversation with the relatives of medal winners. With the triumphant swimmers sequestered in training or otherwise unavailable, the cohost of Newstalk Breakfast (weekdays) has to make do with talking to their nearest and dearest. Given the circumstances, this could be a coup – the whole country wants a piece of the winners, after all – but in her interviews Kelly doesn’t so much make a splash as flounder.
Tuesday morning has the host chatting to the mother of the bronze medallist Mona McSharry, who is understandably euphoric about the result but short on concrete information. Asked whether her daughter is “wrecked or still on a high”, Viola McSharry is admirably honest. “I don’t know. We haven’t actually talked to Mona,” she replies, explaining that Mona is preparing for her next race. Amid a hum of background noise on her guest’s line – “I know you’re on the Metro this morning,” Kelly explains – the host sounds increasingly adrift, firing off slightly desperate questions about the McSharry clan’s appearance on the TV show Ireland’s Fittest Family: “Are you all very sporty?”
But if Kelly has that sinking feeling, she doesn’t betray it: she’s back on duty the next day, speaking to Nathan Wiffen, twin brother of the gold medal winner Daniel Wiffen. At least in this case, Kelly’s guest has been in contact with the victorious swimmer, after a fashion anyway. “I lost my voice halfway through the race screaming for him,” says Nathan, chuckling. But after this strong opening, the encounter loses momentum, with Kelly’s questions descending into the stilted and generic: “Does it feel it’s all worthwhile?” Predictably enough, Nathan thinks it does.
This might be a bit harsh on Kelly, not least because her cohost, Shane Coleman, sidesteps helming his share of these conversations: talking to people about famous family members can be bitty at the best of times, though a professional broadcaster should be able to conduct a short interview without appearing to struggle towards the finish line. And, with good news at a premium, Kelly’s unequivocally upbeat tone about the Olympics is heartening.
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Admittedly, the Newstalk Breakfast team are trumped by Áine Kerr, guest host of RTÉ Radio 1′s Today with Claire Byrne (weekdays), who talks to Daniel Wiffen himself: “I’m not going to lie. I had my eyes closed,” he says of the race, sounding unsurprisingly cheerful at the memory. But these things happen in the media: win some, lose some.
A bigger issue is Newstalk Breakfast’s overall direction, which skews towards the attention-grabbing margins. True, there’s intrinsic value to the discussion between the People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith and Ireland’s former Washington ambassador Dan Mulhall about US Congress members meeting in the Dáil, to which the deputy objects because of American arms supplies to Israel. Ultimately, however, the item says more about the participants’ beliefs than it does about the issues at stake. And there is little merit other than an opportunity for gratuitous squabbling to the debate between the activist Elaine Crory, who compares imprisoned Just Stop Oil protesters to suffragettes, and the newspaper columnist Ian O’Doherty, who is reliably sour on anything that smacks of “virtue signalling”. It’s all rather unedifying, though Kelly says she would like to return to the issue.
Of course, during the doldrums of summer, there will always be filler material. Kelly and Coleman continue to ping off each other as they guide proceedings, looking at topics that might otherwise get overlooked, such as government inaction on liability-insurance premiums or back-to-school costs in a supposedly free education system. But with all that’s going on at home and abroad, there should surely be scope for the presenters to cover the news in more comprehensive manner that still retains their chemistry. Paddling in the shallow end can be fun, but it’s better to take the plunge into deeper waters.
As an interviewer, Brendan O’Connor (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday and Sunday) is comfortable with the profound, but his puckish on-air manner means the atmosphere rarely gets too earnest or reverential. He’s an attentive host as Olga Barry, the head of Kilkenny Arts Festival, recounts her near-fatal illnesses, while their lively rapport makes for unexpectedly jaunty listening.
Similarly, an unexpectedly joyful air prevails when O’Connor hears the musician and broadcaster Fiachna Ó Braonáin, on the show to talk about his favourite music, instead recall the recent death of his father. “The overriding emotion has been gratitude,” says Ó Braonáin, remembering how they squeezed hands at the end: “What a parting gift.” The host, rarely one for easy sentiment, muses on the virtues of a “good death” before sharing his own experience of paternal loss. “My old man sang Johnny Cash about three hours before he died,” he says, in a determinedly unmaudlin manner. “It’s the way to go, isn’t it?”
As it happens, Ó Braonáin announces a departure of his own, albeit a professional one: he’s leaving his long-time role as one of the presenters of Late Date (RTÉ Radio 1, nightly). “It’s got to the point where I’m spinning too many plates,” he says, pointing to his increased live-performance commitments. “So the listeners are a victim of your success,” replies O’Connor, mischievous as ever.
He’s right, though. Ó Braonáin’s final shift on the long-running nocturnal show highlights why he has been one of the finest music presenters on Irish radio for the past 14 years. The Hothouse Flowers guitarist exudes infectious enthusiasm and deep knowledge – just listen to him talk about the cult American singer Merry Clayton – all in a voice ideally suited to late-night listening. “Once more with feeling, before I hand the keys of this wonderful music room back – or onwards,” says Ó Braonáin, before signing off to his hardy nighthawks in quietly affecting style: “Let’s not be strangers.” Let’s not.
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