A philosophical puzzle: if a scandalous allegation is made in Dublin Castle and there is no Tonight with Vincent Browne/Emily O'Reilly programme to dramatise it each evening, does it make any sound?
The puzzle is further complicated by wrinkles in the space-time continuum, with Browne having abandoned his space in favour of the demon picturebox, and O'Reilly broadcasting way beyond her time and the call of duty into July's dog-days to facilitate Flood. And to top it all, at virtually the same time as they could be heard doing Hanratty and Stafford on Wednesday's unscheduled programme, the esteemed actors who have brought us the tribunals, Joe Taylor and Malcolm Douglas, could be seen in an entirely distinct space, in their Dublin revue, Will We Get A Receipt For This? Will We F***! (Sad to say, this column is in no position to comment on WWGARFT?WWF!, thanks to the bizarre Irish Times decision to send its theatre critic to the theatre rather than its radio critic.)
Anyway, it was wonderful to hear the story aired on Tonight with Emily O'Reilly, when the story this time, metafiction or metafact, was itself about radio. And it was lent a certain extra piquancy for radioheads by the coincidental familiarity of a couple of the old names in the more recent commercial wireless world: Dermot Desmond as a Today FM shareholder and Mara (not P.J., but his son John) as a key executive in the start-up of the new Dublin "youth" station, Spin FM.
If the opening of the Flood gates may be regarded as an exceptional and acceptable intrusion into the delta of summer radio, we are still not to be denied the more languid pleasures of silly season. For me, back from holiday travels but not yet back to the dayjob grind, this was that rare week when, between moseys around the garden, the kitchen, the shops, the telly, the CD collection (a regular Harry Potterer, really), I could concentrate on - wait for it - listening to the radio.
Bless its transistorised heart, it rarely let me down. Even the disappointments were ennobling: I finally shed my sneaking regard for a certain brash youngish Scot who occasionally presents on BBC Radio 5 Live when I heard the All New Dominik Diamond Radio Show (Monday). There Diamond never touched on his impeccable football allegiance, but strove laddishly to create humour out of vague pop-culture meanderings and pathetic, tongue-in-and out-of-cheek 1980s nostalgia. (Yes, I know, but RTE's Morning Glory is pure genius by comparison.)
Oh, he had a couple of half-decent lines. "Americans apparently say that the questions on the British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? are too hard. Among the examples they gave are `What is irony?' and `How do you make a $100 billion defence system work?' " Then, in an odd little routine about favourite Georges, having abused George Best mercilessly (and witlessly), Diamond suggested that George Formby, on the basis of those "leaning on a lamppost . . . until a certain little lady walks by" lyrics, could be described as "Britain's first stalker".
The BBC also, of course, provided one or two of the week's more elevating moments. No Triumph, No Tragedy (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday), a definite nominee for best-named series about disability) contained an extraordinary interview with journalist David Beresford, who has Parkinson's disease.
Beresford was interesting when he spoke of Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve, disability and achievement. He was utterly riveting when, his speech slurring and bits of his body audibly flapping as he shook, he talked about his own experience - all the more intriguing because he clearly, carefully and appropriately guarded his privacy on certain issues. ("How frightened are you of the potential future consequences of the disease?" "That depends on the time of the day.")
There is actually, now, a drug Beresford can take that effectively returns him to virtually "normal" control over his muscles for some hours. But oh, what a side effect: it seriously impairs his ability to think clearly while it's working. So what'll it be today: body or mind?
More than for many conditions, biotechnology holds out the hope of a cure, without a catch, for Parkinson's. When he thinks of that prospect, sometimes, according to Beresford, his reaction is "yes, but please wait: Parkinson's gives me such insights, like being in another country . . .
"Other times, I just long, long for a miracle."
Still, when it's not music I'm after, RTE Radio 1 has pride of place on the dial, in summer as at other times. And this summer there has been the special afternoon pleasure of hearing Rattlebag (Monday to Friday) becoming quite a nifty little package, a Dunganesque combination of erudition and irreverence that, for all the necessary seasonal servicing of the arts-festival constituency, is making good on its promise to take a different approach to the arts. And I love the 11.10 p.m. repeats.
Then there's the erudite and irreverent Prof Seamus Deane, who really should drop this academic lark and take up radio full-time. Summer Lectures (Wednesday) featured a sample of the Prof at his Proffest, talking about Newman and Joyce, with brilliant digressions into Bram Stoker (didja ever think about the "coffin ship" by which Dracula comes to England?) and Flann O'Brien.
No one summarises summer better than producer/presenter John Quinn, and This Place Speaks to Me (RTE Radio 1, Wednesday) is ideal summer radio. Last week painter Paddy Graham brought Quinn out to the wilds of Westmeath, "the lived-in, rolled-up landscape", to the "silence that isn't silence", and you had a feeling Quinn didn't need his arm twisted. Then it was on to "sophisticated" Mullingar where, Graham claimed, he had once been "the first graffiti artist in the midlands", chalking popes on to any available surface.
That urban scene too was rich in words and soundscape, but it prompted a comment from Quinn that could be his radio epitath: "Well, maybe it's too nice a day to be even someplace as sophisticated as this. I think we'll go to the bog."
Artist of the week, however, is Susan Fitzgerald, for her reading of Alan Bennett's Nights in the Gardens of Spain on Talking Heads 2 (RTE Radio 1, Tuesday). It's not the first time I've noticed that Bennett's glib but pithy suburban insights are supremely radio-friendly; but I've never noticed them so perfectly captured.
Fitzgerald was Rosemary, whose late-middleaged voyage of discovery begins when she happens upon a neighbour, Fran, who has just murdered her sadistic husband. It unfolds in a series of journal entries, in which the details are invariably just-so, from the gardening worries to the way the policewoman says: "I want you to know I'm here for you. I'm on a bleep."
Rosemary befriends Fran and learns the nasty truth about her own husband in the process. Along with the other wives on the street, she develops a more than sneaking regard for Fran's man-killing exploits. As one of the neighbours puts it, after Fran is convicted and sentenced: "A couple of years basket-weaving and you get the bed to yourself. Well worth the price. Me, I'm banking on his prostate . . ."
Harry Browne can be contacted at hbrowne@irish-times.ie