When no one will play the crying game, you've just got to laugh

RADIO REVIEW:MIRIAM O'CALLAGHAN is a talented broadcaster, especially when it comes to hard news, and she brings an engaging personality to her lighter interviews. But she had her work cut out for her on Miriam Meets . . .(RTÉ Radio 1, Sundays) with the comedian Maeve Higgins and her sister Lilly.

The Cork-born sisters are actually happy, thanks to supportive parents and six other siblings, and they can see sentimentality hurtling towards them like an articulated lorry on the M50. So they nimbly sidestep it. This created a problem for O’Callaghan. She has become the queen of empathy. If you take Joan Bakewell and Kirsty Young, with a generous sprinkling of Oprah, you would have the best (Bakewell and Young) and the worst (Oprah) of this presenter.

There is also a school of thought in Irish radio that if you make your subject cry, or help

to cause their voice to falter as they speak about a personal crisis, you score points for your interview.

We used to be a nation with pictures of the Sacred Heart over our mantels. These days a bleeding heart would do the job just the same. And so O’Callaghan asked Maeve if

she was looking for love. This would knock her for six, surely. But Maeve replied: "That would be a strange thing to do, wouldn't it? I think it's creepy when people are looking for love . . . I read the lonely hearts at the back of Ireland's Ownall the time, and I love them."

O’Callaghan went for the much-used battle-of-the-sexes question. Why are there more male comedians on the circuit? “I guess there aren’t a lot of women comedians because women don’t feel compelled to show off the fact that they are funny, or get all that attention,” Maeve said.

Lilly, who blogs and appears on RTÉ's Fancy Vittleswith Maeve, said they went to school with a bank of self-esteem from their happy family – even if the real world didn't always match up. Of her boyfriend she said: "He is able to talk to Daddy for half an hour about rhubarb."

In fairness to O’Callaghan, what could she do with that? There was no impromptu confessional, no Oprah light-bulb moment, no tears, no heartbreak to flag on a press release. Thanks be to God.

On Breakfast On 4(4FM, weekdays) Gareth O'Callaghan and his newsreader Cathy Cregan have also

become a bit of a double act. On Monday Cregan said she was back in her boots because of the cooler weather. O’Callaghan asked what happened to her other ones. “They aren’t boots, darling, they’re strappy high heels.” (The word “darling” set off one listener’s unfounded suspicion of a romance.)

Rather than moan about the weather they agreed it was good for hayfever sufferers. Cregan said she is now taking an antihistamine. “It makes you

a bit drowsy.” And she started snoring, right there, live on air.

There was more comedy on the 1950s BBC radio serial Hancock's Half Hour(RTÉ Radio Choice, Thursday). In this episode the unsinkable Hattie Jacques, who played Griselda Pugh, Tony Hancock's secretary, is introduced. The hapless Hancock advertises for a blonde bombshell with Brighton- postcard measurements.

Then Griselda turns up. She is not what he expected. “I’m the one who gets mistaken for a famous beauty queen,” she says. “Some mistake,” Hancock replies.

Griselda is a terrible typist. The sound of the keys being slowly and methodically punched is a joke that works best on radio. Finally there is a “ding!” of the typewriter, followed by Griselda: “Bother. I haven’t any paper in it!”

Griselda answers a call from the manager of the Palladium theatre, and Hancock's sidekick Sid James turns up to borrow money. She is rude to the former and, in Hancock's absence, gives £150 to Sid. Hancock later dictates a letter to both of them: an apology to the Palladium manager, addressing him as "Your Grace", the second telling Sid: "If you bother me any more I'll get the police on you!" Of course Griselda puts the letters in the wrong envelope, then posts them. This classic mix-up is very Seinfeld and, given that Hancock and James used their real names, also a precursor to Curb Your Enthusiasm. All three stalk the postbox.

Then Kenneth Williams arrives as the postman. They plead with him to open it and give them back the letters. “I cawn’t,” Williams drawls, “I’ve lost me keys.” They beg him to get new ones. “No, I cawn’t, they’ll think I’m sawft.” The live studio audience was laughing loudly; I am sure listeners half a century later were, too.