Having spent his career covering stories of horrifying institutional abuse and devastating personal ordeals, you might suppose that Joe Duffy is pretty much unshockable. But some subjects test even his ability to broach taboo subjects. On Tuesday’s Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), for instance, one can almost hear the host wince as he hesitatingly utters the words “amputated” and “penis” in the same sentence.
He’s unlikely to be alone: half of Duffy’s audience surely blanches at the thought of such a drastic procedure. Although he warns that the item is not for “very young ears”, he could probably include male listeners of all ages in his caution. But if the host’s conversation with Peter, who recently had such an amputation, seems designed to play on men’s worst fears – “This is a nightmare for you,” Duffy says to his guest – the discussion eschews sensationalism or voyeurism in favour of salutary advice.
Peter explains how, after noticing some small changes to his urinary routine, he was diagnosed with cancer of the urethra. To have any chance of surviving this rare condition he had “no option” but to have his penis removed. Less than four weeks after his operation Peter is admirably phlegmatic, even making light of his experience. He nicknamed his tumour Urethra Franklin, and is wryly philosophical about the negative impact on his love life: “The days of me swinging out of a wardrobe in a Batman suit are long past.”
And although his long-term prognosis is uncertain, Peter believes he has a better chance of a future than would otherwise be the case, and urges male listeners to seek medical advice if anything is amiss in their nether regions. “My symptoms were so slight,” he says, “I was very close to just ignoring it.”
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Duffy also talks to Paddy, who had a similarly severe operation some years ago, and has since undergone penile reconstruction. “There is hope,” Paddy remarks by way of succour. “It’s only a part of your body.” Sure enough, difficult though the topic is, it’s no more corporeally traumatic than, say, mastectomies, which women face far more commonly. Men’s health may be having a radio moment right now – the broadcaster Adrian Kennedy recently talked about his prostate cancer on Newstalk’s Lunchtime Live – but women have long blazed a trail of openness about illness, as Duffy acknowledges. “Women have led the way over the years in talking about breast cancer especially,” he observes, before allowing himself a little humblebrag: “They did it on this programme two years ago about the menopause.”
That’s not to downplay the severity of Peter’s situation, nor his remarkable candour. Duffy rightly commends his guest as a “brilliant interviewee”, and is audibly affected when Peter declares his love for his wife. “You’ll have us all in tears,” the host says after a conspicuously long spell of dead air. Even an old hand like Duffy can get still caught off guard.
Elsewhere, the long tail of election counts dominates airtime, from interviews with candidates to analysis from pundits. Notable among the former is the erstwhile talkshow host and Independent Ireland European Parliament candidate Niall Boylan, who is much more amenable than his shock-jock persona would suggest when he talks to Cormac Ó hEadhra on Monday’s Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays).
Still in the running at that point – he’s eliminated on the final count the next day – Boylan is in talkative mood, admitting he’s not sure how his bid will turn out, while downplaying the primacy of anti-immigrant sentiment to his voter appeal. Even Ó hEadhra sounds pleasantly surprised by his guest’s countenance, briefly citing their shared experience of live radio, though one wonders if Boylan’s air of Zen acceptance would have persisted had he made it to Brussels.
Meanwhile, over on The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, weekdays), the host mulls the electoral performance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with the political commentator David Davin-Power, who ascribes the two Coalition parties’ comparative success to “a public that, despite the protestations of the Opposition, is largely content in the year 2024”. Given the furore over immigration and the housing crisis, this seems deeply counterintuitive, but Davin-Power sticks to his guns: “Without being complacent about the state of the country, I think it’s fair to say that Government tapped into a zeitgeist that things really are going quite well.”
Pat Kenny apparently agrees, observing that despite wide complaints about the cost of living, the airports are “chock-a-block”. It’s a tendentious argument, but if both host and guest overstate their case, it’s at least a rejoinder to the apocalyptically racist fever dreams of the far right, largely kept at bay at the polls by the voters.
Not that all Kenny’s guests think elections are the best way to determine how we’re governed. On Wednesday the host talks to the Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who praises the virtues of “sortition”, or choosing people by lottery to make decisions. It doesn’t sound like a recipe for stable government, as even Monbiot admits: “In theory this system is a total disaster.” But he claims, without citing much evidence, that ordinary people asked to deliberate on important matters generally make better decisions than politicians seeking to appease powerful interests.
Again, this is a contentious assertion. But as Kenny and the Trinity College Dublin academic Peter Stone note, citizens’ assemblies were crucial in formulating the abortion referendum, though their role was advisory. Either way, while the idea of a government comprised of people who stick their name down for a lottery sounds dubious – just listen to the self-selecting collective wisdom of a phone-in show on a bad day – Kenny thinks it an unlikely prospect. Asking politicians to accept such a system, he suggests, is like turkeys voting for Christmas. In this case, however, the turkeys may have a point.
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