RadioReview:It was chilling to hear the warm, young voice of Baiba Saulite talking about her children ( Liveline, RTÉ Radio 1, Monday) while the news bulletins were still headlining her savage murder in her home in Swords, Co Dublin.
"Any regular listener to Liveline will have a connection to this woman," said Joe Duffy, who himself sounded distressed. "Ali's a real mammy's boy and he must be really upset," she said of her three-year-old son, who along with his one-year-old brother had been abducted the previous month. "The baby is always sucking his fingers, especially when he's afraid." Hard listening to that and not to imagine the state those children must be in now. I remember hearing that interview at the time and not questioning for one minute why the Latvian woman had resorted to phoning Liveline in the last-chance hope that maybe it might help get her children back.
Having replayed the clip this week, Duffy took calls from listeners who knew her, and he encouraged them to paint a picture of the dead woman, to personalise the headlines. It was very moving. But then the best of Liveline became the worst of Liveline - all in space of one programme. The father of the four-year-old girl who was assaulted in Swords at the weekend told his story - there's a PhD for someone who can deconstruct why people get the urge to talk to Joe. After he spoke, Duffy's impeccable facility for subtly shaping his programme went awry as he took calls from people telling bogeyman stories - tales of cruising white vans (always white - weird), near-misses of child abductions told by people who "didn't see it myself, Joe, but . . . ", with Duffy urgently quizzing for details like a detective in a made-for-TV movie. All it did was stupidly ratchet up fear. Bogeymen are more likely to be in children's homes and closely related to them than driving around cul-de-sacs in white vans.
At the start of the week, Vincent Browne ( Tonight with Vincent Browne, RTÉ Radio 1) put a call out for stories about bad conditions in care homes for the elderly. He asked listeners to phone in and tell their stories on tape, to be run by the lawyers and broadcast on Thursday's show. Are we really at the stage where people feel so disempowered that leaving a message on the answering machine of a late-night radio programme is the only way they feel they're getting through to the powers that be?
There were a lot of powerless-sounding motorists telling their stories about being trapped on the N11 and M50 because of a spot of roadworks ( Rick O'Shea, RTÉ 2FM, Wednesday) and each phone call and text added to a grim picture of chaos and traffic management ineptitude on an unprecedented scale. It worked because it was immediate - live news.
Earlier in the evening, the regular, chirpy AA Roadwatch broadcasts predicted a bit of bother - but not on the scale that occurred and with no meaningful advice on alternative routes, yet again prompting the question: what is the point of these bulletins, which even on regular days have a whiff of old-news about them? The following morning, the normally smooth AA man Conor Faughnan ( Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio 1, Thursday) gave a hopeless explanation of why his service had proved so useless - these things are apparently hard to predict - a fair defence if he was spokesperson for the Butchers' Association. Though you had to feel a bit sorry (easy, knowing I wasn't trapped in my car for four hours on the M50) for Brian McKeown, the water engineer responsible for fixing the hole in the road and in turn for the whole sorry mess. Predictably, he floundered under Cathal MacCoille's questions.
To mark Robert Altman's death on Monday, Páraic Breathnach's The Eleventh Hour(RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) had the inspired idea of calling Garrison Keillor for comment. Keillor is a bit of an icon among talk-radio fans, thanks to his A Prairie Home Companion, and last year Altman directed a screen version of the US radio series. The 81-year-old director, he said, was determined to die with his boots on, still making movies. He was famously cantankerous.
"Quite adequate," was as extravagant a compliment as he could muster.
Quite bonkers is the kindest thing you could say about the start of Mooney(RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday). He does this pompous "my big thought for the day" little spiel before the signature tune - it would make you want to gnaw your knuckles off in embarrassment for him. Has there ever been a bigger invitation to turn off a programme?
