RADIO REVIEW:IT WAS travel writer Eoghan Corry's great misfortune to arrive in a panic-stricken Mexico City last weekend. Or so Pat Kenny would have us believe on Today(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays). "Of all the places in all the world for Eoghan Corry to fly into," Kenny said on Monday, "he flew into a world of facemasks and fear of a swine flu pandemic." But being unlucky had absolutely nothing to do with it. This was a remarkably fortunate and well-timed turn of events for both journalists.
Corry’s plane to Mexico had been earlier delayed in London for five hours. Officially, the crew was going through a sanitation procedure. Unofficially, Corry was told that the pilot was refusing to fly. “It was a sea of facemasks, very apocalyptic,” he said of his eventual arrival in Mexico. Corry said that watching families pleading to get onto planes made him think of the last helicopter out of Saigon before the city fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975. “I did get a little bit of a feel of that,” he said.
Tapping into the human hunger for drama, Corry mused, “There is almost an affection among people for the next big plague, the pandemic that is going to sweep the world.” Patrick Wall, associate professor of Public Health at University College Dublin, picked up on this. “There are no sick swine in Mexico and none of the people who are sick have been in touch with swine,” Wall told Kenny on Tuesday. “It should really be called the Mexican Variant.” But that sounded like a Michael Crichton novel.
Damien O'Reilly had his own doubting Thomas on Tuesday's Liveline(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays). He was called Thomas, appropriately enough. "I don't know what their agenda is," Thomas said of all government warnings. O'Reilly quoted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said, "We are concerned that, in Mexico, most of those who died were young and healthy adults." The line went momentarily dead. "Are you there, Thomas?" O'Reilly asked, wondering aloud, "Maybe he's gone off to get the jab."
On Tuesday's Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) Cian McCormack interviewed John Wolfe, 71, founder of the Senior Solidarity Party. He is the party's only candidate in the local elections, but claimed, "Come the next general election we will have substantial candidates ready in the wings waiting to go . . . We will hold the balance of power by the year 2012." McCormack asked about "the elephant in the room", entering office in his 70s. Wolfe said his party wasn't restricted to senior citizens.
McCormack later asked Mary O’Rourke about ageing. “From the point of view of someone working in your 70s . . .” he began. “I’ve only gone into my 70s, so don’t lose the run of yourself,” she shot back. “You are just in the delicate early years of your 70s,” McCormack continued. “Do you find yourself losing energy?” O’Rourke laughed back, “Thank God I’m not delicate. Anything but, and I thank the Lord for the genes.”
Age, swine flu or Mexican Variant are unlikely to slow her down anytime soon.
On Wednesday, the nation awoke to a fine how-do-you-do. "The worst recession of any industrialised country since the Great Depression," Clare Byrne said on The Breakfast Show(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays), repeating the line from the Economic and Social Research Institute's latest forecasts. "Is Fine Gael ready to cut public sector pay?" she asked Richard Bruton. He advised cutting the cost of running Government by 20 per cent over four years: "The extravagance and waste has to be addressed."
But George Lee on Morning Irelandwas the one to put the boot in. "One of the things which is more terrifying is that, when economic growth recovers . . . it doesn't instantly mean an increase in employment," he told Áine Lawlor. "This is something that we are just going to have to face up to. This is a huge, huge human tragedy if there are 500,000 people on the dole next year and rising."
Even Tom Dunne (Newstalk, weekdays) was affected. “Don’t get out of bed, stay there with a cup of tea, it’s a terrible world out there,” he told listeners. But by Thursday he was cheered by research suggesting that drinking half a glass of wine a day adds five years to your life: “That means I’m adding 20 years to my life,” he chimed.
The elfin presenter is taking a week off to spend at the bottom of the garden in “man shed heaven”. If he’s smart, he’ll whistle while he works and bolt the door behind him.
qfottrell@irishtimes.com