A week of ifs and buts

Radio Review: It was, said Catriona Crowe, "a very old-fashioned scandal" and looking back on it now, after a full decade of truly scandalous discoveries in the Catholic church, it's easy to say the downfall of Bishop Eamon Casey was somehow quaint, like an Irish version of that old pot-boiler of a novel, The Thorn Birds, only with less hair and wetter weather.

He was the celebrity bishop who, when he wasn't singing on the Late Late Show, was on the altar with the Pope, and then up popped American Annie Murphy, with the bishop's son in tow.

The story was examined in What if . . . (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday), an excellent series presented by historian Diarmaid Ferriter which discusses an historical event through clips culled from the sound archives.

This week he was joined by Crowe, an archivist, and historian Marguerite MacCurtin. There was a danger, the panel agreed, that historians looking back on the 20th century might lump Casey in with the likes of Brendan Smith and Ivan Payne, clerics who brought scandal of a very different kind to the door of the Catholic church. And as the panel was made up of people whose business it is to know how the past is presented, Casey is facing the grim prospect of finding himself in some truly despicable company in the index of future history books.

Another what if . . . that has been debated to death is what if Roy Keane had played in the 2002 World Cup. He was the first subject in a new series, Ireland's Soccer Top 20 (Friday, RTÉ Radio 1), produced and presented by Colm Keane. Proper footie fans probably discovered nothing new but for those of us for whom the offside rule will forever remain a mystery, it sounded like a comprehensive look at the Cork man's career.

Keane is smart, articulate and as self-aware as any self-help guru. Keane knows he's driven, "a lot of it might be fear, fear of failure", and he constantly describes himself as lucky.

The year he was forced to take off through injury (1998) was, he said, a turning point in his life because it gave him a lot of time to think and to realise that his wild boy carry-on had to stop. And he still can't see any funny side to Saipan. People try to joke with him about it - who'd be that brave? - but for him it still gets back to his belief that teams have to give themselves a chance. "I just felt we were conning everyone and I didn't want to be part of it."

As he approaches the end of his playing career, he's considering going into management, though he's in no rush. "As you get older you realise there's more to life than football," he said. "Life without football doesn't frighten me."

In The Other Medicine (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday), Anna Ford looked into the burgeoning business of complementary therapy or alternative medicine (CAM). This is a series made for the Open University and the newsreader brings just the right hint of scepticism to the subject. There were 20 million visits to CAM practitioners in Britain in 2003. and to put that in perspective, there were about 14 million visits to A&E departments. Ford explored the side effects of CAM, something few patients seem to consider. As CAM covers around 200 different therapies, she pointed out that side effects vary dramatically. An acupuncturist with a dirty needle can do more damage than someone swaying a lump of rock in front on you. It's down to regulations - and CAM is woefully under-regulated - an area the series will investigate next week.

While all the attention was on Eamon Dunphy starting at Newstalk 106, there was little notice given to the arrival of Orla Barry to the morning slot (The Orla Barry Show, Monday-Friday). She's up against the big guns on the other stations, but lately when Marian Finucane gets dull, I'll tune into Barry.

At its worst it can be a bit girly lite, more like the features pages of Cosmopolitan, but its magazine style means she jumps from topic to topic so there's a broad range of subjects and she has a forthright interview style and a way of asking the obvious that's refreshing.

On Tuesday, Fr Shay Cullen was on the line from the Philippines talking about his campaign against sex tourism. He's about to come to Europe on an advocacy tour to lobby Internet service providers (ISPs) to filter out child pornography. BT has done it in the UK, so it can be done, he said.

ISPs have been asked for the past two years to self regulate, said Brian Lenihan, Minister of State with responsibility for Children, and if they don't, legislation will be introduced. Well, why don't you just go ahead and do that, asked Barry. His answer, that it's always better if industry polices itself, didn't quite cut it after Shay Cullen's stories of European paedophiles using the east as a sort of giant playpen.

Another what if . . . waiting to happen.