In this bitter 'n' twisted old world, what a sweet 'n' simple joy to turn on the radio and hear The Teddy Bears' Picnic, as beautifully sung by Gloria, Ireland's only lesbian and gay choir.
Sing Out Gloria (RTE Radio 1, Wednesday) wasn't all a teddy-bears' picnic, however. This documentary was supposed to be an example of an altogether under-utilised radio genre, the audio diary. Gloria member Joan Murphy led us through the choir's experience as 20 of its members went on its trip to California in July, when 6,000 gay and lesbian singers gathered for an international choral festival. (In fairness, 90 per cent of the choirs were from the US.)
Fly-on-the-wall is certainly harder to do on radio than on television. For the first quarter-hour Murphy went quite heavy on straight (as it were) interviews with members; these were good - I liked the woman who joined the Gloria choir because they wear jeans on stage, as opposed to the green skirt and turquoise blouse her previous group demanded. But whereas a TV documentary could use these words with images that gave us some sense of the choir's pretrip build-up, in Sing Out Gloria we were stuck with only words, and early on the programme was already losing some of that goin'-to-California momentum.
Murphy also couldn't resist a blast of Do You Know the Way to San Jose to bridge the journey from Dublin to that California city, where Gala (Gayla?) 2000 was taking place. As soon as she got there, it was down to the swimming pool for ... more interviews, this time with singers from other choirs. Audio diary?
Not really. It was more repeated variations on the theme: What does being in a lesbian/gay choir mean to me?
That's fine, and maybe that's what Murphy calculated that a general audience would most want or need to hear. But by the time she'd moseyed along to an interview about what's involved in organising a festival of lesbian and gay choirs, she'd just about lost me.
At long last came the few minutes of backstage nerves and Gloria's glorious appearance before a wildly appreciative audience. Maybe I'm just indulging in my own bit of stereotyping in thinking the whole programme should have had this sort of fun and energy. Anyway, it was worth waiting for: She Moved Through the Fair was let down a bit by poor sound quality, but you could just make out the lumps in the gathered throats.
Sing Out Gloria misses out on the usual documentary repeat slot tonight (I imagine you can find it on the RTE website), but this is one wrinkle in the schedule that you won't see me ironing out. In an admirable - not to say brave, not to say foolhardy - move, Radio 1 is actually doing a live outside broadcast of a radio drama, direct from the heart of Dublin and the Octocon science-fiction convention.
A couple of safe pairs of hands are involved: the producer is Tim Lehane, and Invasion from Planet Vampire ("an intergalactic sci-fi comedy") is the work of actor/playwright Roger Gregg and his Crazy Dog Audio Theatre company.
Over in Amerikay by and large "audio theatre" is not something you can hope to hear on the radio, but it has a substantial audience of people who buy or download CDs to amuse themselves on those interminable commutes. (Surely, now that Mullingar and Carlow are Dublin suburbs, this is going to catch on here too.) Anyway, Gregg has made something of a US name for himself with his one-man fantasy tour-de-force, Time Out for Bill Lizard; that programme, broadcast on RTE a couple of years back, was previously praised in this column and, rather more importantly, it picked up a prestigious prize from Americans who know about these things.
The vivid and bizarre soundscape that Gregg created in his home studio for that programme cried out for revisiting. And so comes the sequel, Tread Softly Bill Lizard. This is a five-episode series on CD that brings us back into the mind of Bill Lizard, private eye. (Some radio-drama traditions are too good to lose, and the detective-as-hero is such a cliche-rich archetype.) Bill, it says here, "is thrown off his speeding train of thought straight into the fertile landscape of the Celtic Imagination". Do I hear the American audience calling?
This time around, Gregg has decided to add a few voices other than the myriad ones he can create himself with his vocal cords and personal computer. The Lizard universe is still uniquely his own, but it's enriched by Morgan Jones, Jonathan Ryan, Derry-Anne McEvoy and Danna Davis.
In this Irish-American mindscape, the crazed local guide grunts at Bill Lizard a a la De Niro: "Did you say top of the morning to me, huh? Did you say top of the morning to me?" That comes between mad swings through Wilde, Swift, O'Casey, Haughey etc etc, with Gregg's beloved Wizard of Oz never far off.
Does it work? Mine's an emphatic, Molly Blooming "Yes". Apparently you can learn more about this madness at www.crazydogaudiotheatre.com
It's always tricky enough for a beloved broadcaster to put his reputation on the line with a quiz show. Proven versatility is one thing, but the requirements of this genre are so particular and audience expectations and attention so heightened - with the delivery and difficulty of every question under scrutiny, and the host's interjections regarded largely with suspicion.
John Kelly is no Gaybo, but he's doing well enough so far with pop-quiz The Vinyl Curtain (RTE Radio 1, Saturday), in which the answer "grass" is more likely to relate to a Jamaican crop than an Irish one. The series so far has also revealed yet another thing that thriller writer John Connolly is brilliant at. (I knew that guy when he was answering poxy pub quizzes.)
But it's John Kelly's musical selections on The Mystery Train (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) that still provide more excitement. Star-song this week was June Carter Cash's tongue-in-cheek country ballad Tiffany Anastasia Lowe, in which a southern granny tracks a girl who has run off to Hollywood in search of some fella called Quentin Tarantina (sic).
And the chorus goes a li'l somethin' like this: "Go and find an earthquake, girl, and jump into the crack/ And don't let Quentin Tarantina find out where you're at/ Coz Quentin Tarantina makes his women wild and mean/ And Quentin Tarantina makes the strangest movies I have ever seen."
Sometimes you gotta laugh or you'll just cry.