When the presenter becomes the topic

FOR A MAN who regularly encourages his audience to get fit and stay healthy, Ray D'Arcy did not offer much in the way of succour to those wavering in their New Year detox drives. Returning to the airwaves on Tuesday after the holiday break, the presenter opened his programme ( The Ray D'Arcy Show,Today FM, weekdays) with a manifesto for clean living in 2012.

The last beer of Christmas having been drunk, anything that was “pourable down the drainable” was bound for the sink, while the contents of the “goodie cupboard” were going into the bin. Or so D’Arcy said. “Of course they’re not,” he conceded immediately, echoing the nationwide sound of resolutions being broken almost as quickly as they were made. Still, he felt it important at least to try to make a new start as another year beckoned. “We have the intention to change our ways, to do things differently,” he said ruefully.

Such an admission of failure sounded odd for a man of his oft-stated competitiveness, but D’Arcy was setting up his listeners for a more arresting piece of personal information. Winding up his roundup of newspaper stories, he noted that the singer Aretha Franklin had just got engaged, adding that “so too have Ray D’Arcy and Jenny Kelly, and the aforementioned couple are expecting a [second] child, so there you go”. Indeed.

Given that D’Arcy’s relationship with Kelly – his producer and co-presenter as well as the mother of their young daughter – has long been an ongoing thread on the show, their engagement was always going to attract attention, so announcing it on air made sense in terms of both human interest and news management. But as the show went on, D’Arcy seemed unsure whether to be proud or embarrassed by the matter, resorting to puerile gags when discussing it later. “It’s the lady’s prerogative to show her ring,” he tittered, using a gag that even an adolescent might find a bit tired.

Kelly, however, sounded chuffed as she recounted how the presenter had proposed to her “in his jocks”. She added, tearfully, that it was a welcome event after a bad year for her family: in April, while on air, Kelly was informed about her father’s sudden death, causing the day’s show to end abruptly.

By Thursday, D’Arcy was saying that he wasn’t particularly comfortable with all the attention, but such is the lot of the presenter whose private life becomes conflated with his professional persona. D’Arcy is an obvious example, working with his betrothed as he does, but weaving personal details into one’s on-air spiel has in recent years become one of the distinguishing features of presenters working in commercial radio. Figures such as George Hook, Tom Dunne and Ivan Yates all regularly refer to their family life, whether by chatting about spouses or sharing minutiae from the domestic front. D’Arcy may wish it otherwise, but having his momentous personal news dissected in public is unavoidable, particularly when his relationship is a key part of his show’s chemistry.

This is in striking contrast to matters in RTÉ, where presenters are generally as guarded about their home lives as they are strident in justifying their large salaries. But there are exceptions, as shown by In Conversation: Sean O'Rourke Meets Colm Murray(RTÉ Radio 1, Monday), which featured the veteran sports reporter talking at length about his childhood, his career and, eventually, his experience of suffering from motor neurone disease. Recorded last summer, the public interview was less a rigorous examination than an affectionate exercise in anecdote, as O'Rourke's guest recounted a series of shaggy-dog tales with verbosity and wit.

Of the summer he and the future singer Ray Lynam spent in Galway as teenagers, Murray noted that “as David Norris might say of Plato’s Symposium, we got a gentle introduction into the ways of adult life, on, I should stress, the distaff side.” Presumably, to you and me, that means meeting older women.

Other stories, concerning horseracing wheezes or RTÉ backroom shenanigans, were less interesting for the uninitiated. While O’Rourke’s remit was to show off Murray’s gregarious personality, such yarns sounded better suited to social gatherings in Montrose.

Murray was most impressive when he spoke of his degenerative illness, which was diagnosed in 2010. He was a model of wry reflection and painful honesty as he spoke of his anger, shame and demoralisation at the realisation that his life was changing beyond recognition. He said he had “refocused” by telling himself that being wheelchair-bound was not the worst fate; that he was, above all, still alive.

Despite the (understandable) potential for sentimentality presented by the interview, which was essentially a living tribute to one of RTÉ's own, Murray maintained his sense of mischief, exemplified by the song he chose to play at the interview's end: Closing Time, by Leonard Cohen. After that, most New Year's resolutions seem easy.

radioreview@irishtimes.com

Radio moment of the week

Lest anyone think things couldn't get any worse in 2012, Prof John Crown appeared on Breakfast(Newstalk, weekdays) to outline his concerns for the public health service in the coming year. Crown, a senator and leading oncologist, spoke of the need for reform of funding and administration, but noted that the State's precarious fiscal situation could send the system into freefall.

With Ireland’s finances once again looking unsustainable, it was worth looking at Greece, he said, where hospitals unable to pay their bills were being denied shipments of basic drugs, such as insulin. There may be trouble ahead . . .