Pet subjects and pet hates

Radio Review:  Yap, yap, yap. You are virtually guaranteed to hear this sound every time you tune into Playback (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday). Not from people, mind you, but dogs. Ruth Buchanan seems to be incapable of getting through a Playback without ticking at least one of three boxes - mentioning "a doggy story", husband Shane Ross, or singing - badly, tunelessly, and unneccessarily.

On bad weeks, it's all three. The maddening thing is that Playback is an excellent flagship show, and the week's best opportunity to catch up on the highlights and gems that you have missed. But it's consistently distracting to listen to Buchanan's apparent inability to keep off her three pet subjects.

On Saturday we got two for the price of one, courtesy of a punter on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Mon-Fri), whose made-up song to the tune of Raglan Road managed to mention Shane Ross. Then it was "I love dogs, as you know", as she introduced an unmemorable clip from Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, Mon-Fri) about acquiring a canine.

I didn't wait around for Buchanan herself to get in a tuneful mood, too like waiting for the person in the apartment above you to drop the second shoe.

Bank holiday weekends are always odd radio days, with lots of music filling the schedules, and a laid-back feeling of hard news being on hold. One running story that nobody could ignore over the weekend, however, was the search for Dublin man Brendan Brady, who went missing in Paris last week after he got separated from the RehabCare people who had organised the trip he was on at EuroDisney. On Monday evening, he turned up safe and well in central Paris. The following morning, Cathal MacCoille on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Mon-Fri) interviewed his esctatic mother, Eileen Brady, as she waited for a taxi to the airport.

"There were times when I was wondering if I'd even get a body," she confided. A short time later, MacCoille had Angela Kerins of RehabCare live from Paris. It was an opportunity for him to grill her thoroughly on the very public embarrassment for the organisation, but when he asked breezily: "For five days to be missing like that in Paris - was he off on a skite?" he let her right off the hook. It was all far too cheery and soft, given the decidedly unfunny circumstance of vulnerable Brady's five nights in the open.

Next week's presidential election in the US bulked out a lot of air time, with polls, analysis, and comments coming in from all the stations. On Wednesday on The Right Hook (Newstalk, Mon-Fri), George Hook was talking about the "most polarised election in history". We heard that 10 per cent of the ballot has already been returned to the States, sent in from overseas voters.

However these things are worked out, Hook reported that this cohort had 51 per cent of the vote going to Bush and the rest to Kerry, but didn't explain how he came up with these stats. How do you do an exit poll on a ballot mailed from around the world?

The Documentary on One featured Michael O'Kane's The Auction (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), which focused on Victor Mitchell's famous auction house in Roscrea. This was a brave subject to tackle on radio since an auction - and this one had 700 lots for sale - is essentially visual. It didn't pay off. When you can see neither the lots nor the silent, intense bidding of the punters, you're not left with much to make a programme from, once you add in a lot of filler music.

The only time The Auction came to life was when it followed some of the objects home with the people who had bought them. Orla Kelly of the Landmark Trust found a magnificent bed carved with stags for The Barbican, the trust's property in Glenarm, Co Antrim, which has only one bedroom, atop a stone spiral. She'd been searching for over a year for the right piece. "I don't care about provenance. I don't want a bed that Yeats slept in. I just want the bed," she said pragmatically, worrying it wouldn't fit up their stairs. It did.

It was a week where people paid more attention than usual to the weather forecast - when youeventually got to hear them, that is. Sponsors are everywhere. Newstalk's one promises to "paint a brighter picture - whatever the weather". RTÉ's new news bulletins with their lengthy pre-forecast ad for a heating product which promises to "Keep you warm - whatever the weather" gets increasingly irritating as the weeks pass. Hopefully, they'll drop it. After all, who'll be wanting heating in the summer?