Charting the improvement in the life of Ryan

RadioReview: Given the time of year that's in it and in fairness to a programme which is much improved, I thought that maybe this would be an opportunity to grab a knife and fork, get out the salt cellar and prepare to eat some words.

The Tubridy Show (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) isn't the hysterical prattlefest it was when it took over the Marian Finucane slot nearly 18 months ago and the difference - noticeable since September - isn't so much down to Ryan Tubridy but to his producers who fill the show with items so that there isn't room for too much aimless chat.

When those features deliver - and stand-out ones in recent months include interviews with John Banville, Pat McCabe, John Humphrys and Frank McCourt - it makes for good listening. With space for arts coverage on RTÉ Radio 1 now down to a shameful minimum, Tubridy's show appears to get the pick of the authors who come to town, which isn't such a bad thing given the poor choice of available alternatives, including RTÉ's wretched and numbingly unfocused late-night arts programme, The Eleventh Hour.

Tubridy always sounds as though he has not only read the book the author is flogging but actually has his own opinion on it, and it's that genuine interest that makes those interviews tick. The contrast with Pat Kenny when he has to interview a fiction writer is night and day.

Tubridy does a monthly book club, which like all radio book clubs drives me up the wall, but I can see it's well done and popular. And at least once a week there is a lively and engaging group interview covering widely diverse subjects, ranging from how the print media approaches stories to a discussion on Latin.

A plus is that Tubridy has laid off much of the old fogey cornball routine - though not all - and the music isn't stuck in a 1950s Las Vegas lounge - there really is only so much Tony Bennett a person can hack.

But then just as I was getting ready to tuck my napkin into the neck of my jumper and eat such previously applied words as "smug" and "completely pointless" along comes this week's Tubridy Show, which was mostly made up of repeats - a sign that the programme is rather too pleased with itself. Us poor listeners are resigned to a diet of reheats and repeats in the week after Christmas, but not bothering to fill a programme the week before is a bit too self-satisfied. And the producers, not the presenter, is surely to blame for that.

At least Tubridy never sounds as though he's sitting on his interviewee's knee licking their faces. On TV, Eamon Dunphy unleashes his inner rottweiler while talking about football, and it's entertaining stuff even for footie-phobics, but on radio he has a tendency to flatter shamelessly. It was one of the more tiresome features of his stints at Today FM and Newstalk, but on his ill- conceived Conversations with Eamon Dunphy, (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday), it reached a point of no return with this week's schmoozing of a bullish-sounding Harry Crosbie.

There are a hundred questions any interviewer would be happy to ask a self-made property developer, especially given Crosbie's pivotal role in the future shape of Dublin's docklands - but Dunphy was too busy lapping up stories about Michael Jackson's kids falling asleep on the Crosbie couch and hackneyed guff about how Dublin is a world-class city - this on a day when the news bulletins were filled with tales of daily shootings. It's a programme that seems unconnected to anything other than some desire to keep Dunphy within the RTÉ fold, but without actually thinking of giving him something challenging to do.

A man who questions everything, except the existence of God, is monk, writer and tarot enthusiast, Mark Patrick Hederman, (Sunday Sequence, Lyric FM, Sunday) who has been at Glenstal Abbey since 1956, when he was 12. His mother, he told interviewer Theo Dorgan, was an American who fell in love with a Limerick farmer and didn't believe in sending children to school until they asked to go, which he eventually did, aged nine.

Glenstal school, he said, "was there so that the monks could have a pool from which they could fish" - a momentarily horrifying image.

"You make a big decision when you're young," said Hederman, "either you are God or there's another and you decide to get in touch with whichever one is in charge of the universe and make a difference."