RTE'S passionate commitment to the unemployed was extended last week to someone who doesn't even fit into that category yet, well known Irish Times columnist Maire Geoghegan Quinn.
And it just goes to show: if you give these people a chance, you just might find they can do a job for you. In fact, last week's host of Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), while not a patch on our Marian, was arguably better than the usual summer substitute.
So it was a week of "Failte go Liveline" - half the callers welcomed Maire as quickly as she welcomed them, showing a sound sense of common ownership of the programme.
The callers, at least, didn't seem quite so constrained as Maire, who actually sounded more uptight about her awkward, controversial position as the week went on. On Monday, we got a clue about her limitations as a constituency politician, when she lectured a caller: "Well, you have to admit, Cork County Council seem to be doing a lot about this matter."
By Thursday she was openly stating that as host of the programme she was not allowed to express any opinion, which will come as a surprise to Marian, Pat, Gay, Gerry etc. It sounded less like RTE policy than a woman whose critics had put the fear of God into her.
Perhaps it was fear of God that made her so timid with the Northern clergyman who was protesting the Penthouse Pets" show, coming to a theatre near him. "I believe a civil right is something that contributes to life's necessities," he said, a conveniently narrow definition if ever there was one. Maire said little, and presided over a mess of a conversation, finishing it vaguely with "we all strive for a better way to live".
Impartial? She said nice things about Bobby Molloy and Des O'Malley, but it seemed she couldn't bring herself to be nice to a Fine Gael woman.
Whatever else this week long PR stroke amounted to, it was not riveting radio. Maire - and a lot of other people - could take lessons from Gerry Ryan (2FM, Monday to Friday), whose Friday interview with Lavinia Kerwick was heartbreaking stuff.
After Myles Dungan's well meaning but over rational interview with her a couple of weeks ago, Ryan came across as low key and loving, not arguing with Kerwick about her self-blame, exploring the ways she personifies her anorexia. "The fight has gone out of me," she said. "If I could eat, I would eat - mark my words."
A while back the local commercial stations made a pitch for their share of the licence fee, in recognition of the public service portion of their programming. The plea fell on deaf ears.
Happily, Clare FM carried on with an initiative, "Community Access Radio", which reflects the best of public service commitment. With the financial help of Rural. Resource Development, the station went to Kilmihil in west Clare and involved 30 or so local people in making Dear Susan (Clare FM Tuesday), a drama documentary about a nasty local incident in the War of Independence, in which one man on each side died; so we hear, for instance, today's members of the Legion of Mary portray Cumann na mBan reciting the Rosary in Irish.
Scripted by local American Niall Williams (whose work has appeared on the Abbey and Peacock stages) and full of press excerpts, interviews, letters etc - this is no glorification of the Old IRA, who ambushed a group of RIC men as they walked out of Mass. Nonetheless, we are left in no doubt about the sympathies of the community; the coroner's inquest could unite characterise local man John Breenas an innocent victim of British" terror, so the jury instead found that "he died ... fighting for the freedom of his country". Indeed, the verdict is so packed with anti imperialist language that it's hard to believe the jury framed it in only an hour's deliberation!
Produced by Anne Jones, this is a terrific piece of work, even if it doesn't always live up to the script's repeated claims for importance and complexity. Community radio, how are ya.
ALTHOUGH this column is on record welcoming the trend away from "issue based" documentaries and towards more personal, idiosyncratic works, it is possible, after all, for the form to tell an important, coherent story about a pertinent issue.
The relevant exemplar is Document - And Sheep May Safely Graze (BBC Radio 4, Thursday), a detective thriller of a Cumbrian documentary presented by Rob Edwards. It started with the contamination of thousands of acres of high ground in Cumbria by the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. Then Edwards asked why just 11 farmers are still collecting compensation for high levels of radioactive caesium 137 - and why their farms line up in a crescent centred on Sellafield.
Mixing interviews with "actuality" and Edwards's own ground breaking research, Document took us back to the 1957 "Windscale" fire - and unearthed information about its effects that have been secret for 40 years. Disturbing, fascinating, provoking and well worthwhile.
