A radio reviewer doesn't get asked to a lot of parties. At least, this one doesn't. I'm not whingeing or fishing: my mother reckons I'm antisocial, and even if you asked me to one, I'd only end up checking your house plants for evidence of insects or finding the flaws in the pub's paint job, all the while wishing I could plug in the earphones and listen to Donal Dineen's Here Comes The Night on Today FM or Late Night Live on BBC Radio 5.
This week, however, some very nice and very talented Dublin broadcasters asked me along to what they fervently hoped was going to be a celebration of their new-found legitimacy, on the night the Independent Radio and Television Commission announced the recipient of a "special interest" music licence for the capital.
Being antisocial, I didn't go to what I can only imagine turned into a teary beer session, where I no doubt could have recruited a team of plant and paint inspectors. You see, the sort of people who'd invite me to a party aren't the sort of people the commission licenses to broadcast.
The sort of people who do get radio licences are, on the one hand, the great and good of the Dublin archdiocese and their variously affiliated partners in Solas, who got the religious-service nod, and, on the other hand, the sleek broadcasting professionals and money men who will bring us the country sounds of "special interest" Star FM.
Solas, the forthcoming religious service on medium wave, is the one I'm looking forward to hearing, if only for the challenge of choosing between liberal tolerance for diversity and liberal disdain for sanctimony as my headline reaction. I just pray Solas opens up the AM dial as an attractive proposition for potential licensees, now FM in Dublin is officially jam-packed with rubbish.
Star FM I can't get excited about; my only choice as a reviewer is likely to be between benign and malign indifference. I can, however, get a bit worked up about the process that brings it to us, because it has deprived Dublin listeners for the past few months of their two best pirate stations, Jazz FM and Phantom FM. Both were lured off air and into the licence-application process, then kept there through the hearings only to be disappointed, in Phantom's case for a second time in less than two years.
It seems likely that a substantial number of the commission's members were always of the opinion that country music was the special interest that most deserved being catered for. The cull of solid rock-oriented applicants in the shortlisting process earlier in the year suggests the indie rockers of Phantom were being heard out of misplaced manners rather than any widespread conviction at the commission that they merited a licence. Jazz FM's application has been similarly costly in terms of time, money and credibility. We can only hope Phantom and Jazz are ready and able to spend more of all three to get their pirate flags back up the mast.
Whether or not Jazz and Phantom were strung along, the case for country has its merits. You only have to listen to most of the local stations around the State, and to one of the city's most popular pirates, the presentable Radio Dublin, to know the audience is there. And of the two excellent country applicants, Star FM was probably the safer choice, politically, financially and even aesthetically. Star will be less tedious country and Irish than smooth country and middle-of-the-road.
There was also the consolation-prize aspect. In 1999, Star's head honcho, t he Crimeline presenter David Harvey, and his team came within a vote or two of securing the easy-listening licence that Lite FM is using to print money. Although Harvey is no cowboy, Star will presumably go in with all guns blazing to reclaim some of that loot.
Me, I'll be tuned in elsewhere. I've never been much of one for the pretentious "Irish radio is so provincial, I'd much rather listen to the BBC" lark. But lately I find that Irish radio is so provincial, I'd much rather listen to the BBC. Last Sunday morning I was tuned to BBC Radio 5 in aid of my provincialism, hoping to hear extensive previews of the afternoon's riot-inducing Rangers-Celtic match. (So much better an excuse for stopping traffic and baiting cops than the depredations of global capitalism, don't you agree?)
Instead, I heard a chat show of such literacy, political savvy and easy allusive wit that I thought I was tuned to the wrong station - although I was sure it wasn't RTE Radio 1 or Today FM, obviously. On Sunday Service, presented by Fi Glover, Charlie Whelan and Andrew Pierce, I heard a sensible assessment of Bread and Roses, Ken Loach's latest film, and where it fits into his oeuvre, for God's sake, followed by a grand wee chat about the merits or otherwise of consumer boycotts against all-powerful multinationals, a conversation with its light heart in the right place.
Sunday Service was followed by a solid documentary on 5 Live Report - often home to the dodgy variety - about the idiocy and worse of the psychic industry in Britain. This included stories about some nasty, exploitative letters whose writers prey so mercilessly and greedily on the vulnerable and credulous that Royal Mail agreed to stop dealing with the guilty direct-mail company when the programme makers presented the evidence.
The pitiable users of tarot-reading premium phone services will have got no consolation either. The programme sent a reporter with no tarot-reading experience to apply for work on one of the lines. She was hired after an hour's "training" on the computer program that would do the "reading" for her, having been given the single, firm instruction to keep victims on the phone for as long as possible.
Speaking of which, how about Anne Doyle filling in for Marian Finucane (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday)? I thought her diction was just great, didn't you? But it's a pretty tough job, and Doyle established that, done properly, it differs somewhat from news reading.
An esteemed fellow radio reviewer has been known to transcribe one of Finucane's grammatically challenged run-on intros. Right enough, her words don't look good on the page. Fortunately, they don't live there. Some of Doyle's spiels, on the other hand, could have been plausible only in print.
I cringed at her obvious reading of one intro on Wednesday, to an interview with a teacher from St Columba's College who said he can improve the maths even of those who reckon they were hopeless at school. "Well, have I got news for you. With the right approach you could just have been an A student. And perhaps you still will be. Well, that's according to my next guest, anyway."
Doyle has a wonderful voice, but it's no match for Edna O'Brien's, heard to stunning effect on Reading The Future (RTE Radio 1, Monday). Mike Murphy was interviewing her, and she proved herself to be one of those writers who speak in beautiful prose. "I have often been castigated for crimes I do not think I have committed." Then, later: "I'd better not appear to you or my beloved listeners as the most arrogant woman who ever came out of Co Clare." O'Brien could take the chance of sounding something like that to her beloved listeners, because any arrogance was justified.
hbrowne@irish-times.ie