A letter from America - and a bum note from the backbenches

RADIO REVIEW:OVER 100 years ago, when families were split by emigration, there was no Skype, no e-mail, no texting, no sharing photographs in a New York minute using iPhones or Facebook, and no cheap jet travel. Not even a reversed charged call from a phone box once a week. Those left behind had to rely on handwritten letters arriving by steamship.

Documentary On One: The Starry Frame(RTÉ Radio One, Saturday), originally aired by ABC Radio National in Australia, was a beautiful and heartbreaking piece of radio, tracing 40 years of a family's letters.

Using actors’ voices, producers Helen Townsend and her daughter Sophie recreated the correspondence between Helen’s great-grandfather William Irwin in Ballarat, Australia, and the Irwin family in Co Tyrone. Reading like eloquent sermons or formal biblical texts, the letters spanned from 1852 to 1892. William became a successful hotelier and fathered 10 children, married three times, and died in January 1893. He sent home generous amounts of money, but he never did see his parents or seven siblings again.

Early letters from his father Joseph were full of hope that he would honour the promise made to his mother and return after six years, but in his heart he knew otherwise. “Dear Son,” Joseph wrote. “It may be that never will we meet on earth but I hope that we will meet in heaven above the starry frame.” His mother never wrote herself, perhaps because she was illiterate. After William’s parents died and ties grew weaker over the years, William stopped writing back. His sister Eliza wrote him desperate, heartfelt letters. She said of their mother’s death: “Oh, dear brother. My mother. My mother. No kind mother have I now.” Eliza wrote that, on the day their mother died, she asked, “Was anyone at the post?” Yearning to hear William’s voice on paper, an older Eliza wrote, “The time will soon be up . . . let all be ready for that call.”

In recent years, Lunchtime(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) has become a headline-generating political show that has given Sean O'Rourke's News at Oneon RTÉ a run for its money. Eamon Keame never wastes a political interview, grilling politicians with such polite intensity that they are practically purring by the end of the interview; problem is, they may begin as a grinning Cheshire Cat, but they usually end up as hairless and pink-skinned as a Sphynx. Fianna Fáil backbencher Mattie McGrath got his whiskers twirled on Monday, and duly lost his coat.

On the subject of drink driving, Keane asked, “Would it be fair to say if you get into a car, after you hit that 50mg limit, that you’re not the same driver?” McGrath said, “I know people for whom drink is a relaxant and they might be more nervous without it.” Keane asked if he was suggesting that nervous drivers might be more relaxed if they have a drink. McGrath replied, “Yes . . . People say that after one drink it lessens your concentration or whatever or you’re not as good a driver, or you’re not able to drive. I don’t accept that.”

Equally worrying was his response when Keane asked if the Government was looking for opposition support for cutting the drink driving limit. “I don’t know where this is coming from,” McGrath said, “because after our meeting last Tuesday the Taoiseach asked us for a period of reflection and to stand back from the issue for a week or two.” He may be a lowly backbench TD, but he revealed a lot about the psychology of his party.

The Lyric Feature: Fifty Years of Music in Dublin(Lyric FM, Saturdays) was a welcome antidote to last weekend's The X Factor. Veteran presenter Ian Fox reminisced about the heyday of the legendary Dublin Opera Society in the 1950s and 1960s when it attracted world-famous singers such as Joan Sutherland and a young Luciano Pavarotti, who sang in the Gaiety Theatre with the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra.

Fox said he made his opera debut as an extra in Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénierin April 1959 as an urchin selling newspapers on the streets of Paris during the French Revolution. "There's no better way of getting to know an opera by being in it," he said. Fox loved Andrea Chénierfrom the start, but added, "Some refined persons find Giordano's rough and tumble score a trifle vulgar."

Let's hope they've never heard those Irish twins John and Edward on The X Factor.