Radio: Cause for cheer captures appalling futility of Troubles

Many years ago Mad magazine, that fount of adolescent wisdom, carried an article that imagined the worst pieces of good news one might receive: "Don't kill him, just beat him up good"; that kind of thing. But even a humourist of the darkest hue would struggle to come up with the pivotal moment in Documentary on One: Walking the Line (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday).

Sean Megraw, whose brother Brendan was “disappeared” by the IRA in 1978 and who had endured many fruitless attempts to locate the missing body, recalls a phone call he received early last month from the man leading the latest search. “He told me he had some good news,” Sean says. “He said we’ve found your brother.”

For the discovery of your murdered brother’s corpse to be a cause for cheer encapsulates the appalling futility of the Troubles. It would be funny were it not so tragic.

Unsurprisingly, there is little in the way of light relief in Ciaran Cassidy’s documentary about Geoff Knupfer, the man charged with recovering the bodies of those abducted, killed and ignominiously dumped by the IRA. Indeed, taking its cues from the quietly controlled narration of Sean Megraw, the programme shuns much in the way of overt emotion or even tension, despite its charged subject.

This low-key approach jars initially, but it is in keeping with the demeanour of the programme’s central character. A senior investigator for the independent commission in charge of recovering the bodies of the disappeared, Knupfer exudes an unruffled pragmatism that speaks of his former career as a detective in the Greater Manchester Police. He made his name there as a forensic archeologist who helped recover the body of Pauline Reade, a child victim of the Moors murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. One of the documentary’s most evocative moments comes as Knupfer revisits the windswept burial spot, remembering how he had to help an unfit Hindley negotiate the rugged terrain 20 years after her dreadful crime. He also notes how Reade’s mother, who suffered a breakdown after her daughter’s disappearance, “improved enormously” when the body was recovered.

Listening to the families of the IRA’s missing victims, the cruelty of being denied the right to bury a loved one becomes clear. “It’s like a living death,” is one typical comment. But, even then, voices are calmly modulated. The documentary maintains its coolly objective eye right down to the murder of Brendan Megraw, the backstory of which is only briefly alluded to. Meanwhile, Sean and his brother Kieran only fleetingly voice their unanswerable fears about how their doomed sibling must have felt as he faced death.

This nonjudgmental tack echoes Knupfer’s studious neutrality as he seeks information about burial sites. “It’s important to say we never ask the people involved in this what role they played,” he says.

But forensic evidence yields the most damning testimony. The lack of heart-tugging tricks only amplifies the effect of the few references to the awful uncertainty, past and present, that the affected families suffer. Having heard the Megraws’ pain at their brother’s absence, it’s easier to grasp why, after Brendan’s body is discovered in a Co Meath bog, their reaction is “joy and relief”. Overall, it’s an indictment of a crime whose terrible legacy lingers on, all the more powerful for being so understated.

Another memorable event from the Troubles era, although thankfully a less lethal one, is recalled on The John Murray Show (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), on the 21st anniversary of the tense World Cup qualifier between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Murray talks to the former Republic players Paul McGrath and Alan McLoughlin about the 1-1 draw, which ensured they went to the USA 1994 tournament, providing a reminder of how perniciously all-pervasive was the fallout from the carnage of the era.

In retrospect the two Irish teams couldn’t have met at a worse time: as Murray reminds listeners, the previous weeks had seen atrocities including the IRA’s Shankill Road bombing, which killed 10 people, and the Greysteel massacre by UDA gunmen, which left eight people dead. (Not 21 people, as Murray states; the lower figure doesn’t lessen the horror, but it’s important to get these things right.)

The deceptive nonchalance with which Murray’s guests recall the atmosphere at Windsor Park only underscores the venom on show that night. McLoughlin, who scored the Republic’s crucial equaliser, recalls his relief at being brought on as a substitute, as “the pitch was the safest place”. McGrath speaks with the trademark unassuming modesty that belies not only his occasional personal troubles – “I’ve had one or two spots where I’m not feeling too well,” he remarks – but, more pertinently, his immense talent.

Asked by Murray – who sounds more engaged than he sometimes does – whether there were racist chants, McGrath responds disarmingly, “Ah, there would have been, but I wasn’t one who got bothered by things like that.”

Being professional sportsmen, neither of the guests dwells much on the circumstances that led to the abuse they endured. In the end, it was only a game, its stresses forgotten as both players looked to bigger challenges. Not everyone can move on so easily. Moment of the week: Obituary goes wrong Tara Loughrey-Grant, the RTÉ showbiz correspondent, informs Ryan Tubridy (2FM, weekdays) about the sad death of the American rapper Big Bang Hank, from the pioneering hip-hop act the Sugarhill Gang. She also notes the tributes paid by fellow band members Wonder Mike and Master Gee. All unremarkable, except that Loughrey-Grant mangles her pronunciation of the latter's name, replacing the soft "G" with a harder consonant sound, thus uttering a euphemism beloved of Irish schoolboys and Roddy Doyle novels alike. Gee whizz, indeed.

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