Double acts and bad impressions

RADIO REVIEW:THE DECISION to stage this week's budget over two legs may have left some observers perplexed. As Tom Dunne said on Tuesday morning's Breakfast(Newstalk, weekdays), "it's only half-time and we're already 3-0 down" – but on Wednesday the logic behind the approach became clear.

Long an important media fixture in the schedule of any finance minister, the traditional postbudget question-and-answer session on Today with Pat Kenny(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) has become a test of political mettle since the start of the recession, as angry callers queue up to vent their displeasure.

As Minister for Finance Michael Noonan and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin stepped up to the plate, however, the budgetary double act operated like a two-man support group. Clearly adopting the old adage of “a trouble shared is a trouble halved”, they took turns dealing with the host’s opening questions, striving to find the right tone of empathetic humility.

It all went swimmingly until the first call. Stephen O’Riordan, whose teenage sister Joanne was born without limbs, phoned in to express his indignation at the decision to cut disability benefits for young people. Ominously for the Ministers, their host had a pre-election recording of Enda Kenny promising Joanne such payments would not be cut.

As other callers joined in – “We’re just giving the Ministers a sense of the anger that’s out there over this,” deadpanned Kenny – the ministerial pair sounded paddleless in a rivulet clogged with manure. When Noonan tried to mollify the on-air critics with the personal approach, O’Riordan had had enough. “You can promise bondholders who put an unguaranteed bond into a bank that has gone bust you can pay them,” he said, his voice cracking, “but you cannot give my sister the right to her education and to have an independent life.”

Already wavering on the wisdom of the cut, a chastened Noonan folded: “I think, Brendan, we can both agree we will revisit this.”

It was a dramatic moment, displaying the pressure Kenny’s programme can wield on crucial matters. The rest of the show proved comparatively plain sailing for the pair, as when a complaint about the flattening of child benefits for families with three or more children was nullified by Kenny pointing out that the caller had nine offspring. But when the going had got tough, there was no safety in numbers.

Afterwards, Christy Moore provided a straight-talking antidote to the spin. As well as sounding in fine voice, he spoke plaintively about the wider mood: “I don’t remember everyone being so full of fear.”

When he said people had been let down by politicians who had chased power and wealth, Kenny opined that the whole country spent too much in the boom years, acting like “a teenager discovering sex for the first time”. “And we all got shafted,” Moore shot back.

The singer’s charismatic presence was at once reassuring and humbling: Kenny sounded deferential, but he must have been pleased to be at the helm of such a memorable show.

The Kerry footballer Paul Galvin is another man who cuts a striking figure, but judging by his appearance on the Ray D'Arcy Show(Today FM, weekdays), his on-field aggression and sartorial style belie a more unassuming personality. When D'Arcy, who seemed slightly skittish, asked if his guest's taste in clothes led to fashion "atrocities", Galvin admitted wincing at his own clothes on a recent RTÉ documentary, "but I didn't understand TV as well then".

“It’s very easy,” said D’Arcy. “They take pictures of you, put it on television and they watch it.”

To Galvin’s credit, he didn’t take umbrage at D’Arcy’s needling.

Galvin has not been so tolerant of other radio tormentors. He reluctantly recounted his recent contretemps with the impressionist Oliver Callan, who has regularly lampooned him. Galvin insisted his annoyance was not due to the implied characterisation of him as gay – Callan has since revealed that he is gay – but because he had previously met the impressionist (“I’m a cautious person socially”) only to realise he was then mocked on air. Galvin refused to join Callan the next time they met and “probably didn’t behave perfectly”. He sounded embarrassed by the affair but was unyielding too.

When D’Arcy asked if he wanted to apologise, there was a long pause. “No,” Galvin answered finally, bringing a principled dignity to the spat.

Callan, on the other hand, does not seem ready to let go of the matter. Last weekend his show Green Tea(RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) featured a sketch with Galvin giving fashion tips to Santa.

“This time of year some children stop believing the big silly man with the beard,” intoned the female narrator, “but there is such a thing as Paul Galvin.”

Like most of Callan’s allegedly satirical show, the item had little in the way of wit. “Styling is a serious business,” his Galvin told Santa. “Do you want a kick in the sack?”

It was representative of a show that, for all the accuracy of Callan’s impressions, opts for depressingly obvious humour, such as the Taoiseach delivering his “state of the nation” speech with a German accent. When it comes to making politicians uncomfortable, phone-in callers do a better job.

Radio moment of the week

Sinéad O'Connor's on-air announcements of her fourth marriage grabbed the headlines, but her appearance on the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show(Today FM, weekdays) on Tuesday was more notable for the sly dig at her late mother, who the singer has previously accused of abusing her.

O’Connor spoke of her delight at the Koran being read at the presidential inauguration, before adding gleefully that “if my mother wasn’t dead already, she would have died of a heart attack”.