Radio: Newstalk men will be heard, by Hook or by crook

In a week that sees the publication of a report highlighting the scarcity of female voices on radio, it's good to hear George Hook step up to the plate and discuss the possibility of gender quotas with a strong-minded, successful woman.

With The Right Hook (Newstalk, weekdays) named as one of the shows with the highest proportion of male guests, perhaps the presenter (for whom the word "irascible" could have been coined) is mellowing in his frequently referenced old age, and bowing to contemporary sensibilities.

Well, not really. The issue of gender imbalance may be in the air, from the media to the theatre, but as Hook talks to Frances Fitzgerald, the Minister for Justice and Equality, he appears to posit the notion that, if anything, women are getting too much help in the quest for parity in public life. Taking his cue from a court case against legislation requiring 30 per cent of party candidates to be women, Hook refers to the career taken by the Minister and others.

“You came through a political life [when] there were no gender quotas to help Frances Fitzgerald or Mary Hanafin or Tánaiste Joan Burton. You did it without any help,” the host says, helpfully reminding his guest of her achievements.

This notion gets short shrift. Fitzgerald, a calm presence in an interview that largely dwells on the charged issue of immigration, takes on a more urgent tone and says that gender quotas are critical.

Noting that “the best decisions come from men and women working together”, she describes the quota as a “temporary necessary measure” to help increase the proportion of TDs who are women beyond the current 15 per cent – even less than the proportion of female guests reportedly featured on her host’s show. Hook is wise enough to yield to the argument: “All right, I believe you.”

Perhaps, but don’t expect Hook to cede his berth in the name of politically correct poppycock any time soon. He later speaks to Roger Highfield of the Science Museum in London about cryogenics, joking (presumably) that he wants to freeze his body after he dies. “I’ve decided I’m better off putting my pension fund into liquid nitrogen rather than giving it to grasping children,” he quips.

It’s a diverting piece of whimsy, at least until Hook reveals that if he is ever re-animated “I’ll have to renegotiate my deal with Newstalk, because 50 years hence I’ll want my slot back.” So much for retirement.

To be fair, Hook is only following the trend elsewhere on his station. Over on Breakfast (weekdays), where even more male guests are to be heard, Ivan Yates is often so keen to play the grumpy old man to the progressive presence of his coanchor, Chris Donoghue, that he makes Hook sound like Gloria Steinem.

Still, it would be churlish to accuse Newstalk of completely failing to tackle the gender balance. After all, the station has its share of female presenters, including Sarah Carey, Colette Fitzpatrick and Dil Wickremasinghe. All three are given the chance to build audiences with one-hour weekend shows.

Such tokenism is disappointing, a retrograde step from a station that has had women in high-profile presenting roles, most notably Orla Barry, who hosted the daily midmorning show in the mid noughties.

Barry is still on air, as presenter of Newstalk’s long-running weekly arts show, The Green Room (Saturday). The programme is an hour shorter than it was in its previous Monday-night slot, but that Barry can be heard at all this week is testament to her perseverance, as she repeatedly apologises for a croaky voice. Instead she lets her guests do the talking, which makes for a mixed bag.

The actor Liam Cunningham is an engaging if unrevealing interviewee; an item about food-themed movies by Stephen Benedict, its resident film critic, is slightly undone by his choice of largely foreign-language and even silent features, making audio clips a tricky option.

Despite rationing her vocal input, Barry remains the show’s main asset, at once enthusiastic and gently self-deprecating, as when she bemoans her “lowbrow” tastes compared to Benedict’s.

Of course, there are still important male voices that need to be heard. On The Pat Kenny Show (weekdays) the Clare councillor Jim Breen explains why he is calling for corporal punishment to be reinstated as a deterrent against rampant rural crime. Kenny asks if his guest is thinking of something like the cat o' nine tails, to inflict offenders with "a dose of their own medicine".

Breen says he is happy to let the Minister for Justice decide these finer points: he just wants to get the idea out there, as prison sentences no longer work. “People are afraid to say these things, but I’m not,” he adds.

Still, Kenny continues to probe the details, musing whether prison officers might be reluctant to carry out such tasks. “You could design a cat-o’-nine-tails machine, like the death-penalty machine in the United States, where you don’t have a human involved in the infliction of the punishment,” he says, triumphantly.

Thank goodness there’s still a rational male perspective around to keep the airwaves safe from shrill, hysterical voices.

Moment of the Week: Audible illumination

It’s an unlikely subject for a series, but

Lighthouse Stories

(

RTÉ

Radio 1, Sunday) uses the humble maritime watchtower to produce an eclectic, sonically stimulating show. Presented by

Luke Clancy

, it’s an erudite, imaginative audio essay, connecting disparate dots, from the writer Melissa Murray’s meditation on Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse to the sound designer Chris Watson’s tales of recording tortoises off South Africa. Most striking is the novelist Dermot Bolger’s story about bringing Salman Rushdie to visit Baily Lighthouse, in Dublin, where the keeper greeted the then-fugitive writer as if it were perfectly natural. For fans of unpredictable, arresting radio, it’s a ray of light.

radioreview@irishtimes.com