Radio: George Hook finds his faith but loses his perspective

For all that the right to freedom of speech is being defended in the current climate, even the staunchest upholders of the principle may have found their forbearance tested to the limit last week. It’s one thing to pay lip service to pluralist values; it’s quite another to grit your teeth and listen to a man extol the virtues of his religious reawakening while spouting hardline slogans and eyeing contemporary values with suspicion.

But then, whatever else about him, George Hook has never been one to seek consensus. Still, as he returns to host The Right Hook (Newstalk, weekdays) the presenter surpasses even his own high standards for eye-popping indignation, tendentious editorialising and tenuous reasoning.

Back in the studio after being in hospital for a knee operation, Hook starts by telling his erstwhile stand-in Shane Coleman that he has rediscovered his Catholic faith. He recounts how, while awaiting his procedure, he summoned a priest to hear his confession and became a daily communicant. "I found a strange peace," he says.

But Hook's newfound inner tranquillity isn't much in evidence as he looses off scattergun opinions on a variety of hot topics. Never afraid to proclaim his Fine Gael loyalties, he lambasts the governmental capabilities of the Dáil's new opposition groupings, lampooning their anti-austerity stance as "antihistamine, anti-inflammatory" before adding, unconvincingly, that "this is nothing about me wearing my blue shirt".

It veers perilously close to party-political canvassing, although a baffling diversion about Éamon de Valera’s neutrality policies during the second World War is a reminder that Hook’s fulminating perhaps shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Similarly his condemnation of Islamist terrorists – or “fellas in black pyjamas”, as he repeatedly calls them – is widened to ask how they can use the Koran to justify their atrocities. “I know no other religious tome that allows two totally different interpretations,” Hook says, overlooking several centuries’ worth of Christian armies invoking the almighty while slaughtering others.

He then interviews Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald, to whom he voices his concerns about a High Court challenge by language schools to proposed visa restrictions for foreign students. "I think if I wanted to get in here to commit an atrocity I'd go to a language school," he says, not being in the least alarmist. He then conflates this with the separate issue of radical young Irish Muslims going to fight in Syria.

The Minister says the Garda monitors the “low numbers” of such radicalised individuals, but Hook is having none of this calm assessment. “I put it to you that the people who vote Fine Gael expect you to kick ass,” he proclaims, adding his wish that there be “no pussyfooting around with people who come in with malice aforethought”.

Listening to this, one could be forgiven for thinking that Ireland was swamped by would-be suicide bombers intent on transforming language schools into Isis hotbeds. One might accuse Hook of stirring up dangerous fears were his spiel not so laughable.

Not one to let popular anxieties go unstoked himself, Joe Duffy does his bit to raise the collective blood pressure by revisiting a reliably infuriating topic on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). But it's testament to the enduring egregiousness of the banking sector that there is no hint of outrage fatigue as Duffy talks to people who seek bankruptcy in the UK to escape crippling debt here.

Cornelia, a legal worker from Co Cork, tells how she bought a house at the height of the boom, aided by a loan taken out by her parents, only to slide into debt and negative equity after the crash. It’s an all-too-familiar story, but one is still taken aback by the callousness with which the bank sought its arrears. Cornelia paints a Kafkaesque picture, full of harassing letters to her father, daily threatening calls and a rotating cast of faceless, indifferent bank officials. In the end she felt she had no option but to move to Cardiff, return her house keys and be declared bankrupt.

Such quietly heartbreaking tales would move even the most jaded listener. But, just to be sure, Duffy punctuates the proceedings with clips of David Drumm’s testimony during his failed bid for bankruptcy in the US, remarking on the tone of the disgraced banker’s voice. “How are we going to manage what Drumm left behind?” says Duffy, plaintively.

When you know something is really important, there’s no need for histrionics.

Moment of the Week: Till debt do us part
The issue of mortgage arrears arises again on The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, weekdays). Kenny speaks to Tom, who tells of using a financial-insolvency agency to negotiate with creditors. The result is that Tom and his family have been freed from 80 per cent of the debts caused by two buy-to-let properties in negative equity, which he has given up. He's not quite starting from a clean sheet, however. "My name is on a register," Tom says. "But I'd prefer that than having my name on rip.ie." It's a jolting reminder that money all too often becomes a life-and-death issue in postcrash Ireland.

radioreview@irishtimes.com