RADIO REVIEW:THERE WERE no cameras flashing in the studio, which was a small mercy. The John Murray Show(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) began with reflections on a glum-looking Brian Cowen at the presentation for Tipperary's All-Ireland win at Croke Park. "The shipwreck that is Anglo may well be wearing our great leader down. Anglo Irish, the bank that has Ireland well on the way to becoming a cashless society," Murray said.
Murray has that solid, Everyman RTÉ Radio 1 personality you could listen to five times a week. He also begins with a considerable amount of goodwill and eerie lack of sniping. There is no shortage of people to tell you what a nice guy he is. He doesn’t have a discernible edge and, weirder, one doesn’t sense that he has been waiting in the wings for his own self-titled show, which is rare in this inglorious era of self-entitlement.
His items were sometimes good, other times iffy. Murray did a dull interview with the chef Conrad Gallagher, who was saving all the juicy bits of his rise and fall and return to Ireland for his autobiography. “C’mon,” Gallagher said, more than once, “I’m here to talk about my restaurant.” I wanted Murray to stop being Mr Nice Guy and tell him how much this time on RTÉ would cost if he had to go through the advertising department.
In a surreal twist, Edel Maher, a mother of 10 from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, came into studio to get some meditation exercises from Master Zheng, a Shaolin expert from China who is currently practising at Monart Spa, in Wexford, of all places. “Did you set out to have a clatter of kids or did it just happen?” Murray asked. “We set out to have five kids,” Maher replied. “We’re finished now, so we are.” After her treatment she said, “I’m so much more relaxed. Thanks a million.” Murray asked her again. “I’m really relaxed, and thanks very much,” Maher repeated. Maybe the item looked good on paper, but it was kind of daft. Then Master Zheng broke a metal bar over his head. There was an almighty crash. There’s got to be a bad joke in there somewhere: a mother of 10, a Shaolin master and a radio presenter walk into a bar . . .
On Wednesday, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern reappeared and rattled his ghostly Shakespearean chains in Murray’s studio. “The world recession didn’t start and end in Ireland,” Ahern said. Asked ever so quietly by Murray if he’d fancy the presidency, as Barnardos’ chief executive, Fergus Finlay, has said he would, Ahern softly replied, “Yeah, a lot of people fancy lots of jobs.” From a steel bar to a brass neck.
On Tuesday's The Ray Foley Show(Today FM, weekdays) the gang were doing their usual smarty-pants jack-acting. You will either like their larking or not. Ever since Foley said Today FM was like a "puppy bloodbath" after Tom Dunne left the fifth floor of Marconi House for Newstalk, I likey. Co-presenter Ann Gleeson said she dropped her computer off for repairs. The IT guy's job title: "Front of house technical executive adviser". They guessed the jobs of callers. Owen was a professional EMU driver. They wondered if EMU stood for emergency medical unit. Was he an ambulance driver? No. European monetary unit? No, he wasn't a currency trader either, or a security man who emptied ATMs. Turns out he drove an electrical motor unit: a Dart. Róisín said she was a fuel-injection technician's assistant. They all guessed she worked in a petrol station.
More bizarre, on Today with Pat Kenny(RTÉ Radio 1), Paddy O'Gorman did a vox pop on how drugs and mobile phones get smuggled into Mountjoy Prison. Brace yourself. "It's amazing what you can fit in the human body," a woman visitor said, "because I've seen a girl pull a mobile phone and a charger out of her private parts. I've seen that with my own eyes." It was a disturbing item, but ears must have been popping in the studio.
On Thursday's Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan called the split of Anglo Irish Bank into funding and asset-recovery banks an "orderly work-out" rather than a wind-down. "We can't go on having fresh headlines, variable figures," he said. The latter, at least, is true.
Labour’s finance spokeswoman, Joan Burton, said of the drip feed of ever-worsening news damaging our reputation abroad: “The scale of the losses in Anglo are simply of historic proportions . . . It’s killing the country and it has to stop.” You might say that the Government has taken a leaf out of Master Zheng’s book and repeatedly hit itself and the rest of us over the head with a steel bar. Only this time it didn’t break.
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