ISN'T it ironic, as a pop star might say, that with the western world awash in post modern derision of such concepts, a certain (thick) stratum of European opinion insists on designating Ireland the equipment's repitory of musical "authenticity"?
Time was when a catchy cubes cent pop song like Gina G's Just a Little Bit (the UK entry and the bookies choice until late in the day) would have cruised through Eurovision remember that Swedish crowd from the Seventies? In 1996 she's smothered in the dry ice that passes for Celtic mist defogged so effectively by Luke Clancy in these pages last Friday.
Four out of five Eurovisions, God help us. Tempting though it is to think of this as Europe's Irish joke, it's far more perverse than that. For one thing, those juries of our Euro peers have condemned us radio heads to heavy air play of a truly dreadful song the worst of our four recent winners, surely and its likely imitators.
Worse yet are the financial ramifications for RTE. Barring highly unlikely EU intervention, the prophecy made by a trainee producer overheard by Des Cahill and repeated on his effervescent Talk Radio (RTE Radio 1, Saturday) will be fulfilled in spades. "There goes my contract!"
Joe Duffy has sometimes come in for criticism in this space, or worse yet faint praise. Isn't it typical that amid the Montrose murmurings about "reviewing" his position on the Gay Byrne Show (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) I find myself warming to his work?
He had a bloody good week, anyway, even in the studio incarnation for which he is usually slagged. It was in this format that he welcomed retiring Dublin city manager Frank Feeley into the radio block and conspicuously denied Feeley the easy ride he might have expected in the circumstances.
Dublin is a thing Joe Duffy knows a bit about, and he wasn't about to be fobbed off. Such limitations on his questioning as RTE manners might dictate were compensated for by a long, pointed intervention from a south inner city caller speaking first hand about the conditions faced by the Corporation's tenants.
All this happened before mid week, when Basin Lane and "the Barn" entered the nation's lexicon. When it did, Duffy was there, literally, the morning after the killing of Josie Dwyer. And he wasn't talking to community "leaders" or social workers, but to Dwyer's peers on the mean streets.
That day, Wednesday, was a good one for RTE and the public service ethos. Every programme, from Gaybo through to Liveline, brought us revealing, unpatronising angles on the Dwyer killing and the tactics of heroin, dealers. On the News at One (RTE Radio 1, Monday To Friday) Sean O'Rourke conducted a long interview with the victim's brother a which alongside the denials that Dwyer had been dealing heroin of late we got a painfully graphic picture of a junkie's last days.
Perhaps the day's most telling exchange came on Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), when Marian Finucane asked local activist James Boyian if he knew the area's pushers "Are they neighbours?"
"They probably could be neighbours of yourself, Marian."
A couple of weeks ago we raved about the soccer coverage on BBC Radio 5 Live, and we're hardly alone in our enthusiasm. All the same, it was surprising to see that the Beeb's television ad for its Euro 96 coverage features radio quite prominently, complete with punters on remote coastlines clutching trannies to their ears.
In a Skyjacked world, 5 Live has achieved virtual official status Match of the Day sometimes seems more like an addendum. This was evident on the final day of the English Premiership, when a dejected Niall Quinn of relegated Manchester City said on air that the team's players had briefly believed a false rumour in the ground about a score line elsewhere. The 5 Live interviewer rightly proud of the station's bush telegraph status took this as a direct insult and demanded that a bewildered Quinn tell him where this dastardly report had come from.
One consequence of all this is that some of us no longer necessarily feel we are "missing" a game if we can't see it on telly. This phenomenon hasn't yet affected Irish international games, but watch out those notorious "lost" hours when workers slip off (or are released) to watch a match could be "found" again by employers who can credibly stick a wireless in the workplace.
Our occasional Neck of the Week award has another winner. How about that doctor on yesterday's Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) responding to WHO criticism of inappropriate prescription of antibiotics by complaining about the terrible pressure doctors come under from patients?
David Hanly was having little of it, to be fair, but he could have been even tougher. Or am I the only one who has ever heard from a GP "I suspect it's a virus I could give you an antibiotic for it"?
