The national scandal of arts evasion

MY COLLEAGUE John Waters wrote the other day that moving The Arts Show on Radio One from 7 p.m. to 2.45 p.m. is a "master stroke". Previously, he says, the show was heard only by those who chose to listen: "Now, there is a chance of it being listened to by people whose lives it might touch in spite of themselves."

People who aren't arts followers might now (over)hear it accidentally, you see. Indeed, John himself says it was a pleasure to be able to listen to a recent edition of the show "by accident in the afternoon". Of course (we must remember that) there are good and bad accidents as well as "terrible" accidents, the sort we Irish are most prone to.

But this notion of catching people unawares is damned good. We all know that too many people in this country are getting away with murder, but (typically) the focus is usually on tax fiddles.

Arts evasion, however, is a national scandal and if people refuse to tune in voluntarily to first class arts discussion programmes provided at considerable expense by our national broadcasting organisation, something has to be done. It isn't as if people are even paying a licence fee for the radio. This innovative scheduling is but a start, one hopes.

John further says that The Arts Show, which used to go out "after teatime", is a "sit down" programme unlike mindless chat shows, it generally requires attention and provokes thought.

Well, for me The Arts Show was never a sit down programme going out after teatime but a stand up programme going out just before dinner time. (I don't mean stand up pejoratively, i.e. as in stand up comedian). We will probably need definitions of these vague mealtimes plus some national consensus or compromise on them before we can get ahead with the new programming but that's not my business, I can't be doing everything.

Anyway. Due to this tedious business of daily employment, (the fact is that) I have not heard The Arts Show once in its afternoon incarnation, accident or no accident. In the old days, when the programme ran at 7 p.m., I would usually have been at home, but not (yet) sitting down, and tuning in.

Hold on: coming up, typical home based scenario in the old fashioned programming days, with people going about their lives with the radio on, just as a programme requiring attention and provoking, thought is about to come on air.

Hello and welcome to The Arts Show.

God is it that time already. Oh don't tell me the tonic is all gone again.

Tonight we will be looking at Roddy Doyle's latest book, the new IMMA exhibition and going over live to the Galway Arts Festival.

I cannot believe there is no tonic. What? What do you mean, isn't water as good? Am I to be mocked in my own house?

(Sounds of cupboard doors opened and slammed. Music somehow suggesting "futility".) All right, all right, I see it. No, it is definitely not where I left it, thank you anyway.

Of course, like, the behavioural ethos in the typical Roddy Doyle production is always self evident, but never to the protagonist. What I most admire is the author's willingness to jettison all identifiable links with the world of appearances just when one least expects it.

That Doyle fellow has it cracked. Wish to God I knew how he does it. Are you having one? Well suit yourself. Plenty of ice there. Listen - is that your one from the Indo, what's her name?

All right. Now we're going over live to Galway, where, of course, the Festival is in full swing.

Galway is getting too big for its boots, they should remember the goose that laid the golden eggs. Cheers. I hear Roddy bought himself a holiday home down Ballymoney way.

Well Mike, this year's Macnas parade is the biggest and best - but isn't it always!

I heard he paid £20,000 over the odds, £60,000 and not even a place to park the motor, never mind a garage. Is there a lemon anywhere?

. . . well to me, like, what is most obvious in this IMMA show is a curious reflection of the loose non geometric abstraction which as you know suddenly became irresistible to a new generation of artists in the Paris of the late 1940s.

The lemon makes all the difference. A gin and tonic with no lemon isn't the same at all. Ah. God, that's good. What a day. Slainte. What a bloody day.

The odd thing too is that in the faux naif Romano Graeco representations one sees the mindset of Gibbon - a historical ironist from the beginning, of course, and a Humean sceptic, rather than a Bollngbrokean deist, from an early stage in his post religious formation.

I tried lime once, it wasn't bad at all. Roddy must be near enough the millionaire by now, fair play to him. Is that roast chicken I smell? {CORRECTIONS} 96072000042