Icons without irony

LAST autumn that wise man, RTE producer and presenter Brendan Balfe, kicked off the Sounds Personal series with B.P. Fallon spinning the discs.

Fallon was, of course, wonderful - so much so that the rest of the series was a bit of an anti climax. It's not just that his musical taste is so good. The memories that go with the music are also in a different class: where other folks might recall the time they saw U2 at the Dando, B.P. remembers the night that Iggy Pop got tar all over his sheets, or the time David Bowie French kissed him. (By the way, I blame B.P. for teaching a whole generation of Irish listeners to say "Bowie" with a faux Cockney accent, but I forgive him.)

On BP Fallon's Icons (RTE Radio 1, Wednesday) we'll get this sort of thing for 13 weeks, no less, as Fallon takes us through "flashes" and "vibes" of some of his favourite artists, from Howlin' Wolf and Hank Williams to the Sex Pistols and - of course - John Lennon.

The series title is not ironic. Certainly B.P.'s enthusiasm for last week's subject, the "yes, still living legend" Iggy himself, borders on worship. The form that this worship takes is an exploration of the artist, with stories, a few of his finest tracks and songs that influenced, or were influenced by, him. So we got U2, Bowie and Jerry Lee Lewis as well as 1969, Lust for Life, Search and Destroy, etc. I particularly enjoyed the novelty of Iggy and Debbie Harry singing Cole Porter's Did You Ever?

I was planning a quibble about B.P. failing to give dates and details for all songs - then he ended the show by offering to send an annotated track list to anyone who asked. Gotta love him.

I love a sport phone in as much as the next macho man, but when I've heard Sportscall with Des Cahill (RTE Radio 1, Monday and Friday) has tended to be amusingly harmless, rather than hard hitting. (I must confess my sample size is limited; Sportscall coincides with a kid's bedtime.) A couple of weeks - ago Cahill was taking calls from fellas who support unusual British sides - Woking rather than Liverpool or United.

However, last Friday, to his credit, Cahill took on the awkward sports issue of the moment: the controversy about Michelle Smith, following a report in this newspaper last Thursday and the heated reaction to it. The programme was well balanced - Phil Whitten, editor of the US based Swimming World magazine, was pitted against Chalkie White, swimming correspondent of the Irish Independent.

Although the argument has moved on very little since the summer, both men made useful contributions, with White citing Smith's pre 1993 improvements in short course times in Ireland, which would be unknown abroad and could establish a pattern that predates the changes in her training.

Of course some callers insisted on seeing the argument in patriotic terms, and complained about the "national airwaves" being used to facilitate an American talking about an Irish swimmer. Thankfully, Cahill didn't agree, and while he was a tough, adversarial interviewer with the US journalist, the fact that he allowed him a hearing marked this out as the best treatment of the issue on RTE.

Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) was full of sport talk. In addition to the Smith stuff, Jack Boothman of the GAA told Marian Finucane on Friday that the association should have the right to sell its "product" to the highest bidder, even if that means Sky Sports showing the All Irelands instead of RTE.

Boothman took an extraordinarily sanguine view of the prospects of every home in rural Ireland getting a satellite dish and forking out the subscription money to unscramble the Sky signal. And he took the opportunity to have a go at RTE, complaining about its failure to cover the North - and even about the fact that its cameras missed a goal in one of last year's big hurling contests!

In fairness, there is probably little prospect of such a change, especially since the EU wants to ensure that certain major sporting events are reserved for terrestrial television. Boothman was actually laying down the line about his association's autonomy, its right to decide its own future.

"The GAA is a religion," he said. "The GAA is a way of life. There is no word in the language to describe the GAA."