RADIO REVIEW:DID WE KNOW what Gay Byrne thought of anything? From what I can remember, during the prime time of his career, Gay spent most of his time asking the questions rather than sculpting his own personality in/for the public eye.
He left that up to us. He didn't constantly go on about how he got ripped off last weekend while out dining. He didn't want to give us his thought for the day. He didn't tell us that he knits. He didn't go on about what he got up to on his holidays. He didn't chronicle his ailments or refer to himself in the third person. And I'm pretty sure "Gaybo" was the nickname we came up with for him. Which is why it stuck.
Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest.
George Hook is back on The Right Hook (Newstalk 106-108, weekdays). He is part likeable uncle, part relative who is used to being indulged, and who you wouldn't cross as a result. He is referred to on the Newstalk website as "the people's presenter", which I suppose is a riff on "the people's princess".
He had a great quote a few weeks ago, currently used on promos, which I heard live, and wish I had reported then: "Poor people are not poor because they want to be poor." Logical, I know, but he was passionate and it was an instinctive reaction to some of the fascistic texters out there. That's the nice part out of the way, so.
For the last part of his show on Tuesday, "Travel With Fionn Davenport", he went on about his trip to South Africa and Mauritius. "We're talking about Hookie's great trip," he said. "You cannot buy a bottle of wine in a restaurant for more than €10." Then there was the ear infection and swollen ankles and mixing his antibiotic - which he said could also be used for vaginal infections - with ibuprofen. He went swimming with sharks: "Hookie's breakfast came back up." His guest barely got a word in edgeways. And what did he do in Mauritius? his guest asked. "Nothing," he said, "I was on my holidays." Still, I wouldn't go swimming in the Cape anytime soon.
There was less navel-gazing and more reticence on Wednesday's The Last Word (Today FM, weekdays) with an engaging Anton Savage standing in for Matt Cooper. Savage is one of the few stand-ins who doesn't fall victim to the freelance poverty trap - RTÉ will have him on Ryan Tubridy too. (Between you, me and your Auntie Bessie, a more insecure Newstalk guard their contributors more jealously than a Scientologist.)
Savage interviewed Damien Peelo, director of the Irish Travellers' Movement, and James Cody, who is closing down his Step House Hotel in Borris, in anticipation of the annual fair there this week.
Increasingly, radio is either a virtual screen grab from the newspaper where a person is on or off in five minutes flat, or it's a two-hander where participants do a maypole dance around the presenter. For instance, writing in the Carlow Nationalist Siobhán Cronin pointed out that there is no formal organising committee and that some say the fair previously left Borris in line for first prize in "Untidy Towns". Savage gave it his best shot, but avoided focusing on the fallout from such an event, instead wearing a pair of liberal blinkers, targeting Cody on whether it had anything to do with them being Travellers. Cody side-stepped: "We wouldn't be in a position to understand which was which . . . It's just not possible to control the situation." Peelo said: "It goes without a hitch 99 per cent of the time." I got the impression they both avoided certain truths.
The Friday before Ryan Tubridy was "back to school" (as he put it on Monday), Jenny Huston stepped into his winklepickers on Tubridy (RTÉ Radio One, weekdays). This switcheroo mallarky just adds to the summer's RTÉ Radio One/2FM split-personality. She had Tanya Sweeney, Anne Sexton and DJ Ruth Scott talking about this amazing statistic: 46 per cent of women who have one-night stands feel used, while only 20 per cent of men feel bad.
Firstly, that study is a month old. Secondly, it's hardly revealing. Thirdly, they got three women on to talk about it. Fourthly, they started the item with the well-worn Radio One trying to be too-cool-for-2FM opener: "What is . . . a one-night stand?" Worse, all four women instead spoke about "friends". Is it so difficult to get a man and woman to admit to a one-night stand?
What century is Radio One living in? Plus, I think we all know the sex-crazed nocturnal habits of heterosexuals by now. Sexton said Vitamin D made people horny. Sweeney said sex was like a bar of chocolate.
Scott said of one-night stands, "it's a fleeting satisfaction . . . so they say". As a DJ, she had a "bird's eye" view and said men and women have sex in toilets and car parks of nightclubs. How revolting! Don't they have bedsits to go to?
Young alcohol-mad heterosexuals are obsessed with casual sex. Is it any wonder there's an outbreak of syphilis in this city? They go on a rampage. Ever Saturday night is the same.
I'm off to join the Legion of Mary, if they'll have me.
qfottrell@irish-times.ie