Gaybo's back on the radio - one hour, three nights a week for a fortnight on RTÉ Radio 1. In The GB Collection (Tuesday to Thursday), he plays whatever music he fancies interspersed with a bit of dialogue and reminiscence. He has been teamed up with Brendan Balfe, a producer he first worked with in 1965 on one of Radio Éireann's sponsored programmes. Byrne's taste is certainly eclectic, ranging from jazz to musicals, Mary Coughlan to Fats Waller. However, listening to the one-time housewives' f
Some of the intros are pure Gay, combining easy chat with maiden aunt-style prissiness. Shirley Bassey "looks gorgeous and is always presented so beautifully"; Ronan Keating is so "well-mannered" and Byrne plays one of his songs "seeing as I am the fellow who introduced him to an unsuspecting public". There are reminders of how great The Gay Byrne Show and The Late Late Show were, with the first song played on Tuesday night the full version of the original Late Late theme tune. Why condense the six hours of radio into two weeks instead of using them weekly over the summer? It's the same audience-grabbing trick used by Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Byrne's daytime job, but it's difficult to see the reason for doing the same on evening radio, which usually works best with consistent scheduling.
By Wednesday, Derek Davis (Liveline, RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) was growing weary of the FAI. Montrose must have had Merrion Square on speed dial - if there was a talk programme on RTÉ (or, for that matter, on any station this week), there was an FAI official on one end of the phone attempting to defend the indefensible.
Liveline's producer had put in a call to the FAI asking for someone to come on air and Davis said he was relieved to report that no, the FAI wasn't making anyone available. The organisation had just appointed a PR and even he wasn't going to come on.
But the subject wouldn't go away, even for a couple of hours, and a caller from Tipperary explained just how bonkers the idea of getting people to come together in a public hall to watch a match really is. The deal-making FAI might be trying to sell a quaint Mickey Rooney-type "hey, let's put on a show in the barn" approach, but Mr Tipperary calmly wondered who'd pay the insurance, who'd bring the telly and what if it turned out to be too small to be seen from the back of the hall.
Before the talk took the inevitable turn in the direction of the Sky deal, Davis had interviewed Dr Lydia Foy, the Irish sex-change dentist who had just lost her court battle to have her birth cert classification changed from male to female. Filling Joe Duffy's seat, if only for a few holiday weeks, must be one of the trickiest gigs for any Irish broadcaster, even one as experienced as Davis.
With Duffy, Liveline is part confessional, part soapbox. For his first few days in the chair, his holiday stand-in seemed to be talking more than he was listening. However, the interview with Dr Foy was striking for its sensitivity and sheer straightforwardness, and it sounds as if Davis is going to have a comfortable time in the Liveline seat. He struck the perfect balance - probing without being voyeuristic, respectful without being cloying. There was nothing of the victim about Foy; she came across as a strong person simply looking for her rights. On the same day that the papers were full of her case, simply listening to her voice put an everyday ordinariness on her extraordinary and painful story.
THE FAI talk brought up the usual licence fee discussion and, predictably, it concentrated on television content. But who else would produce a full-length piece of "theatre of the mind", if not a public service radio station? The Play of the Week was The Burning of Bridget Cleary, (Sunday, RTÉ Radio 1), an adaptation for radio by James and Abigail Hayes of Angela Bourke's absorbing book. It was a fine hour of radio, superbly acted and tightly directed, mixing music, drama and narration to tell the story of an independent woman who was burned alive because she was suspected of being a witch in the superstitious Ireland of the 1890s.
Just as dramatic and definitely worth the repeat was Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors (The Book on One, RTÉ Radio 1, every evening), read by Pauline McLynn.
"It was a fright finding out I was stupid," says Paula, the central character, describing in a single sentence how her childish confidence was destroyed by the class system. Leaving national school for secondary, she recounts the shame and surprise of being put in the second-lowest graded first-year class. McLynn's flat Dublin accent, which is full of weary acceptance and love, captures every nuance of the powerful story. The pacing, under Seamus Hosey's direction, is perfect, condensing the novel neatly into brief 15-minute slots; every evening, I' ve looked at my watch not quite believing that the 15 minutes were already up, so absorbing is McLynn's performance. This was yet another worthwhile example of a programme that no one else would do except a public service broadcaster.
Finally, Radio 4 has taken on the task of explaining life and the universe - in half-hour chunks - in The Lopsided Universe (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday). The Big Bang apparently started the ball rolling by producing matter and anti-matter, which should have cancelled each other out, but didn't. Most humans are bilaterally symmetrical - one ear on either side of the head, one arm on each side, that sort of thing. But we're all slightly asymmetrical, which is just as well because apparently that is what makes us attractive to each other. Not too asymmetrical, of course, just enough to add interest.
Most animals, it seems, are similarly bilaterally symmetrical. Evolutionary pressure made us symmetrical - for example, both legs the same length is probably a good idea for walking. This first programme in the series was a bit Stephen Hawking meets Desmond Morris, but as a programme designed to satisfy the burgeoning popular interest in science, it worked. Worth tuning in for next week.
Harry Browne is on leave