As industrial-relations stories go, the nurses' action is a talk-radio natural, packed with human interest - with the media forced to rein in its typical anti-strike bias because of the overwhelming sympathy for them. The ex-nurses who spoke on Thursday's Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) may have chafed at the "vocation" and "angel of mercy" images, but those longstanding cliches have done their old colleagues no harm.
Certainly these aren't the picket lines of my political youth: one morning this week I watched a row of nurses crossing themselves in unison as a hearse drove nearby.
The Gerry Ryan Show (2FM, Monday to Friday) saw callers lining up in solidarity. One woman on her way to receive her chemotherapy from nurses volunteering their "emergency" time was particularly strong in her praise for the angels.
"So you're saying," Ryan put to her, "that if you die because of this your family will still support the nurses?"
"That's right, Gerry."
"Well you can't put it much stronger than that."
Other angles inevitably emerged from the phone-ins, notably the traumatising shortfalls in geriatric and psychiatric care that were arising from the strike. One care assistant told an unusually flat-sounding Joe Duffy on Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) that a strike committee had prevented her from getting elderly patients out of bed. RTE's own Gerry McArdle, who happened to be in the Mater himself, told Today with Pat Ken- ny (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) about the indignity of unchanged sheets.
However, at the time of writing, the hospital horror stories still fall some way short of the anti-nurse propaganda threshold. Wednesday's Morning Ireland went to the likeliest scene of such tales, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, where consultant Dr Roisin Healy told of doctors' stress at having to insert intravenous drips. The doctors are "now having to stab the children", she said - a phrase that was emotive enough to merit replaying and horrified commentary from Pat Kenny later that morning; one e-mailer reckoned this story alone had changed her support for the nurses to opposition.
It was a terrible image, true enough, but one that highlighted what Dr Healy called the "relatively de-skilled" doctors more than the mercilessness of the angels of mercy. Just what did we expect when nurses were withdrawing their services? Something worse than that, quite possibly.
Typically, the issues of the strike weren't particularly well aired or explained. On Tuesday, Morning Ireland spent an extraordinary amount of time on what sounded like an election count - round-ups from regional correspondents telling us what was out: how many beds here, how many outpatients there, how many nurses. The boredom was compounded when 5-7 Live (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Fri- day) more or less repeated the exercise.
No such anorak numbers on The Last Word (Today FM, Monday to Friday). This sort of comment is getting repetitive, but nonetheless I repeat: the programme had the best commentators offering the most thorough, intelligent analysis.
Radio 1's dedication to being the radio station of record is often more laudable. The Synge Season is a good example of a public-service remit at work. Another production of Playboy of the Western World (RTE Radio 1, Sunday) is perhaps not what the nation needed most, but devoting The Book on One to Synge's observations of The Aran Islands was a lovely touch, as is delving into the archives for tomorrow's The Well of the Saints and next Friday's Riders to the Sea.
My highlight so far is The Tinker's Wed- ding (Monday). This roaring story of a group of Travellers who violently confront a hypocritical priest may have been considered blasphemous in its day, but they're ideal PC heroes for Nineties Ireland.
The wonderful Rosaleen Linehan as drunken old Mary Byrne gets all the best lines: "What did you want meddling with the likes of us?" she asks the priest, her erstwhile drinking partner. "It's little need we had of the like of you to get us our bit to eat and our bit to drink and our time of love when we were young men and women and fine to look at." Tell 'em, Mary!
As for matrimony, she's a few fine words of advice for her son on that subject: "And you're thinkin' it's paying gold to His Reverence would make a woman stop when she's a mind to go?"
Yes, it's rough, sexually suggestive and distinctly overheated, but no more so than the early rock 'n' roll played by Paul McCartney on his BBC World Service series, The Routes of Rock (Wednesday and Thursday). (What's with the punny title, Paul? We can't hear that class of cleverness on radio - Hi Noon please note.)
Routes is McCartney's personal nostalgia trip, laced with plugs for and tracks from his rockin' new album. Those tracks mainly remind us that John Lennon was always much the better raver - just listen to those 1962 Hamburg sessions - and covered this nostalgic territory with more conviction way back in 1975.
That said, McCartney's informal, unscripted-sounding links between the likes of Heartbreak Hotel and Be-bop-a-lula are full of youthful obsession with the music, and touched with Beatles magic. To wit: his teenage pal Ivan brings Paul to Woolton village fete, where he knew "a guy called John" had a band playing. After the Quarrymen's back-of-the-lorry gig, Paul meets John, gets a guitar, turns it upside down 'cause he's left-handed and bangs out Eddie Cochran's immortal 20-Flight Rock. The lads are particularly impressed because Paul knows all the words.
Some of us (I) can't resist that sort of detail. You know that famous first bit of black-and-white Granada TV footage of the lads rocking Liverpool's Cavern Club? That's Richie Barrett's little-known Some Other Guy they're playing, Paul and John singing in unison, each trying to match the sibilant S of the original singer.
Play it again, Paul.