Auntie Beeb was in little doubt as to what constituted her own top story this week: it was the Prince of Wales, Mad Uncle Chuck, whose sub-Lovelock musings on "spiritual values" and "a sense of the sacred in our dealings with the natural world", were deemed worthy not merely of a Reith Lecture (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday), but also of liberal plugs in the liberal press and extensive, po-faced discussions on current-affairs programmes across Radios 4 and 5 Live.
Of course, we shouldn't simplistically put this down to mere royalist sycophancy. You can never underestimate the extent to which, in this media-soaked age, the combination of modern, Hello! celebrity and antiquated, feudal authority turns Charles into an object of curiosity: "Look (listen), it speaks, it thinks".
Whatever the reasons, it remains hard for any sensible republican to listen to cant, however, well intentioned, about "our duty of stewardship of the earth" from a man who has been raised to believe that he has some sort of mystically endowed duty of stewardship of a nation. And not only was he raised to believe it, but apparently believes it still - he has never, as far as I know, in any of his self-conscious "intellectualising", acknowledged that his inheritance is patently medieval nonsense.
Is it any wonder that he went to those 22 minute lengths on the wireless to moan about the influence of "scientific rationalism" that "holds nothing sacred"? Does reverence for nature - what he calls "the perfect order, unity, wisdom and design of the natural world" - really equal reverence for the Natural Order, as in reverence for One?
Rational people who support genuinely "sustainable development" have surely got to avoid being drawn behind a self-appointed guardian of the earth who thinks environmentalism depends on belief in the "guiding hand" of our Creator.
No such luck. While the gathered "experts" on Radio 4 (the assembly of previous Reith lecturers in this high-powered sustainable development series) basically ignored the prince after James Naughtie's "Your Royal Highness, thank you", other environmentalists felt compelled to support him, rather than shun him as an embarrassment who could actually help to cost them the argument.
Angela Carter: now there was a woman who knew something about how to make tradition seem relevant to how we live in the modern world. The Company of Wolves (RTE Radio 1, Tuesday) turned up as part of an odd series of repeated dramas called Screenplay, featuring the work of writers who have also been successful through the cinema.
The 1991 RTE radio production was only so-so (Neil Jordan it wasn't), but the stylised dialogue between sinister old Granny and bright, pubescent Red Riding Hood made a perfect point-counterpoint of cautionary tradition and optimistic modernity.
The lesson Red Riding Hood learns is to put her fear away, and she seizes her own power, lying happily with the wolf in Granny's bed and hearing his tale of love between woman and wolf. Which I doubt is the sort of synthesis Prince Charles was on about.
Red Riding Hood finds tender affection with her wolf but, for better or worse, not quite all men are wolves. Take Padraig, for instance: meeting his wife's attractive friend Sarah in a trendy Dublin hotel room, he nervously declines her offer of a second glass of champagne: "You know what Shakespeare said . . . `it makes a man, and then mars him, provokes the desire but then takes away the performance'."
"Did Shakespeare really say that?" Sarah asks, incredulous. "It's the only quote I ever remember. That and `the boy stood on the burning deck' . . ."
Poor Padraig sounds like he's hopping on the burning deck barefoot, but he duly produces a babyfood jar from home and proceeds to the bathroom to make a small donation for the childless Sarah.
Padraig's hilarious efforts at AI are easily the most decent acts committed by any man in Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday May 10th). This is the round-table literary effort by a great gaggle of women writers - Maeve Binchy, Clare Boylan, Deirdre Purcell, Anne Haverty, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Emma Donoghue and Kate O'Riordan.
Dramatised by Dermot Bolger and directed in Belfast by Gemma McMullan, Ladies Night . . . is Grand Hotel in Celtic Tiger country - a once-rundown fleapit now poshed-up by a rock star's wife - with a wonderful best-of-Irish cast, including Liam Cunningham as Padraig, the serial masturbator, and Sorcha Cusack, Pauline McLynn and Angeline Ball as the leading ladies. The use and application of a turkeybaster is by far the most dignified activity any of these ladies gets up to.
The other women really stoop low. On the eve of her wedding, Ronnie revisits her "six years of degradation" with a truly awful exlover. Meanwhile Emily, from Athlone, snoops around after the husband she suspects of adultery, but who turns out to be a mere transvestite.
Ultimately it's lightweight listening for a weekday afternoon, with more or less happy endings all around and even a certain endorsement of the joys of matrimony. I'll take the campy wholesomeness (or wholesome camp?) of this motley lot over His Unsustainable Highness any day.
Harry Browne can be contacted at hbrowne@irish-times.ie