Pat Kenny motors along at Newstalk as RTÉ’s big stars stall

A decade since he sensationally abandoned his 40-year RTÉ career and jumped to Newstalk, Pat Kenny is showing no sign of slowing down. This is no idle metaphor. Judging by his discussion on lowering speed limits on Wednesday’s Pat Kenny Show (weekdays), the veteran presenter seems unlikely to take his foot off the pedal in either the studio or the car.

For sure, Kenny sounds unenthusiastic about Government proposals to cut most limits by 20km/h in response to recent tragedies on our roads, calling it a “fairly blanket proposal”. This dubious attitude is underlined by the tenor of the ensuing debate, if that’s the correct word, with the host joined by the Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae, who opposes the plans, and the transport consultant Conor Faughnan, who’s slightly less against them.

Healy-Rae decries the measures as a “knee jerk reaction”, an ironic description given his apparently hair-trigger hostility to any legislation that might remotely inconvenience his constituents. “Before it was all about drink and now it’s all about speed,” he says, as though neither had anything to do with car crashes. Amid all this, the deputy has a few more practical ideas, from cutting roadside hedges to teaching the rules of the road in the classroom, though his desire to make the driving test part of the Leaving Cert cycle seems a tad ambitious.

Faughnan is more considered but still doubtful, suggesting enforcement of existing laws is more important than introducing new curbs. “If you just throw up lower numbers on the poles and don’t do anything else,” Faughnan says, “you might think you’re making roads safer, but you’re just devaluing the reputation of speed limits.”

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Kenny thinks the universal speed reduction is being mooted “so the Government can be seen to be doing something”. He has a point. The host, long a motoring buff, also bemoans the lack of “forensic analysis” of crashes due to an absence of data from the Road Safety Authority. But he doesn’t press his guests on their positions with the same degree of scepticism. Far from applying the brakes on the conversation, some pushback might bring more poke to proceedings.

But the item, as well as playing to Newstalk’s petrolhead demographic, emphasises that Kenny remains very much himself: finicky and detail-focused while unabashedly cleaving to his own instincts and biases. During a discussion with the restaurateur JP McMahon about the impact of wage rises on the cost of running a business, he sympathises with his guest’s worries about having to pay increased sick leave in chucklingly conspiratorial fashion: “It’s evident in the Civil Service, we’re told: ‘Have you taken your sick days?’ That kind of thing, where people aren’t that sick yet.” If in doubt, bash the public sector. Any tabloid editor would be proud.

Kenny is too pernickety, not to mention curious, to be a proper rabble-rouser, however. He comes across as genuinely engaged during his regular environmental slot with Dr Ruth Freeman, getting theatrically exasperated when a listener’s text later wilfully misconstrues one of the matters discussed: “Pay attention!” And his interview with the outgoing Fine Gael TD Richard Bruton is thoughtful in its overview of how politics has changed but doesn’t get too cosy, especially regarding Government shortcomings in the accommodation crisis. “There has to be a better approach to housing, that doesn’t just depend on the private sector,” the host remarks.

Clearly, Kenny prefers to look forward than wallow in the past. Still, in retrospect, his 2013 defection to Newstalk was a canny piece of business by both parties. Coming at a time when most broadcasters would have been entering the autumns of their careers, Kenny’s move extended and revitalised his, while adding stellar wattage to RTÉ’s fully commercial rival. As if to emphasise this, he remains Newstalk’s most popular presenter: as he hits his mid-70s, he clearly has plenty left in the tank.

Elsewhere, Miriam O’Callaghan has an interview with topical resonance as she speaks to a celebrity guest who was “on top of his game” before his high-profile radio show “came to an abrupt end” amid public scandal. And no, it’s not him. Instead, Sunday With Miriam (RTÉ Radio 1) features the comedian and former broadcaster Al Porter, who in 2017 exited his Today FM show after allegations of sexual misconduct but is now relaunching his comedy career with an Irish tour.

Looking back on the period when he was accused of inappropriately touching several men, Porter describes himself as arrogant, inconsiderate and ignorant: “You can’t blame youth or fame or money or drink or anything else.” Rather, his “massive, self-centred ego” was the problem. “I blame myself,” he says. As Porter candidly recounts letting down people, his host hardly gets a word in, nor even an empathetic sigh. The effect of her guest’s headlong testimony at times is less a chat than a therapy session, or maybe a confessional.

[ Al Porter on the allegations that stalled his career. ‘I’m disappointed by my younger self’ ]

If the interview concentrates on the factors behind Porter’s misbehaviour and the subsequent fallout rather than the incidents themselves, he doesn’t dodge responsibility. “There’s no cause for self-pity,” he says, adding that he has apologised to many of his accusers. (Subsequent Garda and public investigations found no evidence of sexual assault.) But it’s not entirely comfortable listening for a Sunday morning, even if gripping in a slightly voyeuristic way.

Yet it’s the kind of headline-grabbing item that O’Callaghan needs more of to arrest her show’s steeply declining figures, having shed 50,000 listeners in the past year. Still a capable broadcaster – her other encounter, with the novelist Anne Enright, is by turns spirited and illuminating – O’Callaghan nonetheless increasingly exemplifies the spectacle of a struggling RTÉ dominated by big-name stars whose stalling performances don’t match their high pay. Those who switched lanes to Newstalk continue to motor along nicely.