Radio: Silence is golden for Pat Kenny – but still painful for Terence Flanagan

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt, the old saying goes, and it’s sound advice. Unless you’re being interviewed on the radio, of course, in which case the opposite holds true.

The excruciatingly awkward appearance by the Renua Ireland TD Terence Flanagan on Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) last week provides a spectacular if obvious recent example. By the following morning, as the deputy's halting interview with Mary Wilson is aired again on Playback (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday), his "brain freeze" has already attained such notoriety that Playback's presenter, Marian Richardson, plays only a brief clip.

In the end Wilson carries out the radio-interview equivalent of a mercy killing. “Terence, I think we’ll leave it there for now,” she says, in the pitying tone of a teacher excusing a tearful six-year-old from a tricky long-division exercise.

But while dead air can mortally damage a politician's public image it also has an electrifying effect on otherwise lacklustre items. The introduction of "lifetime community rating" on new health-insurance policies is an important issue but does not make for riveting listening, as underlined by most of Don Gallagher's interview on The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, weekdays). For most of the encounter Kenny and his guest, who is chief executive of the Health Insurance Authority, discuss the technicalities of the Government's decision to levy an incremental fee on anyone over 34 taking out health insurance for the first time.

It’s all very civil, if rather dry. Then Kenny asks a listener’s question, whether people who had been previously covered by a family member’s policy can get relief from the charges. “In a word, no,” says Gallagher breezily. Noting that his own policy covers his family, Kenny becomes increasingly agitated as he works out the full implications of this news. “That’s crazy. That’s not fair. That’s not right. That’s not just,” he says.

When Gallagher replies that such instances don’t normally occur, Kenny is incensed. By way of a hypothetical case, the sexagenarian presenter imagines a 64-year-old man “who drops dead of a heart attack tomorrow”, leaving his 62-year-old wife facing vastly increased fees. “That’s insane. That has to change,” he says.

Gallagher seems bewildered by Kenny’s Hulk-like transformation. “I’m happy to respond to you in writing about that one if you wish,” he replies weakly. “No, no, not in writing. This is for the public,” Kenny says, still haranguing his guest. When he stops, five interminably long seconds of stunned silence follows. “I’m happy to take it forward from here, Pat,” Gallagher finally says. “Please do,” comes the curt response.

Kenny later remarks that he is “alarmed” by the ramifications of the community-rating scheme. But he also sounds elated by the exchange. Always a thorough interviewer, Kenny becomes really engaged with many items only when his sense of fiscal fairness is offended, and he dons the mantle of outraged advocate for the proverbial squeezed middle. (His interview with the Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty about the party’s financial policies has similar flashes of annoyance, although without the same personal indignation.)

Kenny’s recent tendency to give rein to his own convictions may not always make for scrupulously balanced broadcasting, but it makes listening more interesting.

A more harmonious mood prevails on Down to Business (Newstalk, Saturday), as Bobby Kerr, the programme's presenter, visits Wexford to discover how local entrepreneurs are "winning back the high street". It's part of a typically positive campaign from the businessman and sometime star of Dragons' Den, who appears to view his role on the programme as a booster for Irish enterprise rather than as a party-pooping interrogator.

Given the world-weary air that prevails on many talk shows, Kerr’s cheery disposition is refreshing, particularly as it is backed by an easily worn life experience. (He mentions in passing that he spent two years working on North Sea oil rigs.) But his preference for good-news stories doesn’t yield exciting radio.

In a way the show is a glimpse into an alternative universe, one where Kerr’s erstwhile television colleague Seán Gallagher has been elected president and keeps his promise to promote “entrepreneurship” with numbing effect. Kerr’s panel discussion with representatives from the local county council and chamber of commerce is worthy but dull.

Potentially fruitful encounters with offbeat characters concentrate on business careers rather than more personal details, as with the car dealer Vinnie Doyle, formerly of the 1980s rock hopefuls Cry Before Dawn. Although there is talk about Wexford’s cultural heritage, Kerr is especially delighted when he learns that another musician, Michael D’Arcy of the local band Corner Boy, took a business degree.

All of which is fair and right for a business show. But the uncritical way Kerr celebrates every venture grows as tiring as a shock jock’s scaremongering. His show could do with some dead air to breathe life into it.

Moment of the Week: McKean's dirty work
Just in case anyone feels too patriotic after St Patrick's Day, Henry McKean reports for Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays) on the following day's tidy-up operation in Dublin. He hears of the horrors encountered by city-council cleaners: "We come across everything you can think of, between vomit, glasses, wee, faeces, blood, needles," says one worker, displaying Blitz spirit in the face of the devastation. Indefatigable as ever, McKean gets down and dirty himself, as he inspects some solid waste deposits on a wall. "I'm pretty sure it's human from the height of it and length of it," he deadpans. The muck of the Irish, so to speak.

radioreview@irishtimes.com