RADIO REVIEW:IF YOU suspected Bertie Ahern was hamming it up during the budget speech, you may be right. He followed up with a well-timed appearance on Easter Sunday when he rose from his political grave, stuttering and limping like a ghost who didn't know he was dead. Instead of giving a grand speech Ahern acted like the innocent caught in the jaws of the Celtic Tiger. On Sunday Magazine On 4 (4FM) Derek Davis asked him what he'd have done differently. Ahern said he would have liked to have been able to implement the Kenny Report, allowing the government to buy land at its agricultural value, but said the constitution wouldn't let him. On the bloated public sector, Ahern said he was "pilloried" to increase the numbers of doctors, nurses and teachers. A crude response to a bigger question, writes QUENTIN FOTTRELL
Predicting that the global economy should turn a corner after two years, Ahern sounded like he was cogging from the business pages. He thinks bankers will be prosecuted, adding, “I got into trouble over pittance and we’re talking about these people with hundreds of millions.” Our economy on a cliff edge, yet he still doesn’t get it.
Hinting at his own irrelevance, now he is no longer Taoiseach, Ahern said many “so-called” developers couldn’t afford the train fare to a Galway Tent today. That sounded like a dig, rather than a dig-out. It made me wonder if their invitations and phone calls had stopped coming.
On property speculation, he said, “Unfortunately, I never had the money to do it.” There then followed the most stomach-turning laughter.
Ahern also said he’s given up all breads, butters, jams and marmalades. (Go away, we don’t care. . .)
However, on The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays) my ears perked up, albeit momentarily, listening to Patrick Holford from the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. He is a controversial figure in the diet world, with his mantra that a low glycemic load helps not only with weight, but lots of other illnesses.
His plan comes under the title of “The Holford Low-GL Diet”. Importantly, Holford also has his face on a range of mineral, vitamin and anti-oxidant diet supplements. Stand-in presenter Anton Savage should have gotten his teeth into that when interviewing this nutritionist/salesman. Even the similar South Beach Diet found a merchandising partner in Kraft for a range of packaged foods.
Holford made patriotic recommendations like “Irish wholemeal soda bread” over white yeast bread. Savage said, “Put slightly less stuff in your mouth, cut out dessert, run around and you’re sorted.” Holford replied, “It doesn’t really work, that’s the whole point.”
But it does really work: less sugar/carbohydrates, more protein/fresh fruit plus exercise . . . and less expensively packaged diet supplements.
Derek Mooney hasn't been taking his essential omegas. On Wednesday's Mooney(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays), he was all chesty, but even a magician like Keith Barry, right, couldn't emerge from this dizzy den of daft dippiness with his reputation intact. Listen back online at 49 minutes into the programme for what could be the funniest piece of radio all year. "A lot of people think I can predict the future," Barry said, "I can't." On this show, he was right.
On air Barry flicked through a dictionary and asked Brenda Donohue to shout “Stop!” at a certain page. He then asked Mooney to look at the word on “the top of the page” and instructed Donohue to read an advertisement from that day’s Evening Herald, which would somehow throw up a connection with Mooney’s word.
She read, “Hey Derek . . . I predict you are thinking of the word. . .” But before Donohue finished, Barry first asked Mooney what that word was.
“It was a three-letter word,” Mooney said. “No, no, what word did you. . .” Barry interrupted. “It began with P,” Mooney continued confidently, “ended in G and had I in the middle. Pig!” Barry was in a panic: “No, no, it was the index word. We’ve still got the page open. What’s the index word?”
Donohue continued reading, “. . . thinking of the word ‘pilot’.” She then exclaimed excitedly, “It’s bizarre!”
This was a disastrously comic turn of events to rival that famous moment on Larry Gogan’s Just a Minute Quiz where the contestant said, “Happy as. . .” with Gogan asking him to think of his name as a clue “. . . a pig in s***!”
Keith Barry probably now wants to make both Mooney and Donohue disappear. I only wish he’d shove Bertie Ahern into his magician’s box while he’s at it.
qfottrell@irishtimes.com