Radio: Globe-trotting Cooper keeps his focus close to home

Jetlagged, his voice occasionally sounding ragged, Matt Cooper this week returned to our radios after a headline-grabbing trip to North Korea, enlivening the airwaves with accounts of embarrassing sexual antics at the top and outlandish political beliefs on the ground.

The problem was that none of the juicy tales on The Last Word (Today FM, weekdays) related to Cooper's time in Pyongyang. Rather, they dealt with two other notoriously dysfunctional regimes: France and Ireland.

Far from triumphantly blowing his trumpet about his scoop, the presenter was muted to the point of omerta as he opened Monday’s show. Without so much as an acknowledgment of his bizarre journey, to cover a basketball match organised by the former player Dennis Rodman in honour of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, Cooper went straight to the stories of the day. True, he had spoken by phone about his trip to his stand-in, my colleague Fintan O’Toole, last week, but one expected more once he was back.

What salacious political gossip there was came when he interviewed the journalist Gráinne McCarthy about François Hollande’s tryst. Cooper returned to the subject on Wednesday, discussing the Gallic attitude to infidelity with the writer Pamela Druckerman, who spoke about France and its president with the uncomprehending, cliche-ridden bewilderment one usually associates with accounts of, well, North Korea.

Druckerman said French attitudes to extramarital affairs were different from those in the “Anglo-Saxon world”: they didn’t worry as much about lying, or have a fairytale belief in finding “the one”. At the same time France was “a deeply romantic country”. It was toe-curling stuff, neither amusing nor informative.

When Cooper turned to the topic of closed borders on Tuesday, it was to do not with his journey to the world’s most secretive state but with the anti-immigration policies of the new National Independent Party.

Peter O’Loughlin, its European election candidate, rejected the suggestion that the organisation was an “extreme right party”, saying it merely wants tighter border controls to stop “people defrauding the state” and to curtail “economic migrants” who “compete” for jobs. Cooper picked up on the irony of targeting “economic migrants” coming into a country that sees thousands emigrate every year for, erm, economic reasons. “How would it suit us if other countries stopped us coming there?” the host archly asked.

Throughout, Cooper did his best to appear balanced, even speaking to the political scientist Gary Murphy about the prospects for new parties in Ireland: not good, apparently. But he could scarcely hide his irritation at O’Loughlin’s policies, as much for their lack of detail as for their ideology. When his guest gave an airy answer on how Ireland might leave the euro without causing chaos, Cooper ended with a curt, “Right, we’ll leave it there.”

It showed the strengths of Cooper’s deceptively understated style. But the deftness with which he avoided describing his much-publicised Korean experiences came close to short-changing his audience. It was a pity, because when he appeared on The Ray D’Arcy Show (Today FM, weekdays) to talk about his adventure, it whetted the appetite for more detail. “They’re a bunch of murderous thugs,” said Cooper.

There was no shortage of freewheeling expressiveness on the part of Seán Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays), though one might have questioned the sensitivity with which he juxtaposed his subjects. An interview with an Icelandic brewer who makes beer from whales was followed in short order by a discussion about whether there is such a condition as "almost alcoholic".

The alcoholism interview with a psychologist, Joseph Nowinski, highlighted Moncrieff’s aptitude for tackling potentially tricky subjects in an intelligent yet entertaining way. The host neatly summed up Nowinski’s thesis that alcoholism is not “black or white but actually a continuum”. There were heavy drinkers, Moncrieff’s guest said, who did not necessarily suffer the calamitous effects of full-blown alcoholism, and whose lives could be made better by “shifting left” to “low-risk drinking” rather than quitting.

This was thought-provoking, if slightly undercut by some banter that sailed close to the wind. When Moncrieff suggested that different cultures held varying views on what constituted a drink problem, his guest jokily remarked that “you’re an Irishman talking to a Pole”. Still, the exchanged showed that neither was in thrall to the niceties that often surround such discussions.

On Wednesday there was even less tact on show, when Moncrieff spoke to the Independent TD Stephen Donnelly about problems in the political system. Donnelly was articulate yet damning about the impotence of the Dáil in the face of the "most centralised state in the democratic world", where power resided with the Cabinet and a "cabal of senior civil servants".

But it was the host who made the most arresting contribution, when talk turned to Irish Water’s proposal to increase charges if usage was not as high as expected. Referring to an interview he’d heard with a Welsh Water executive, Moncrieff noted that “he didn’t say it this way . . . but he said that was total b******s”.

He may lack the balanced techniques of some presenters, but Moncrieff’s analytical language somehow seemed just right.

Moment of the Week: Family values
Employment figures may be crawling upwards, but the reality of many jobs was starkly illustrated on Today With Sean O'Rourke (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). Paddy O'Gorman interviewed a recently unemployed man signing on in Navan, who spoke about the problems of taking a post paying the minimum wage of €8.65 an hour. "That's very hard when you've three chairs and a table to feed," he said. "You can give that to a lad living with his mammy, but for a 38-year-old [father] it's almost impossible."

radioreview@irishtimes.com