Shrugging off the saintly mantle

RADIO REVIEW:AN UNWRITTEN RULE of celebrity culture is that if a public figure is hit by serious illness, the tone of their media coverage changes in an instant. Where once someone may have been fair game, now the unfortunate personality is viewed with prurient sympathy: the late Big Brothercontestant Jade Goody went from tabloid target to "brave Jade" once it was known she had cancer. The trouble with this stance is that the person is now characterised as a selfless saint. Human beings being what they are, this is an unrealistic expectation for most people to live up to.

So Orla Barry’s interview with the writer Terry Pratchett on

The Green Room

(Newstalk, Monday) constituted a small act of rebellion against such conventions. Pratchett, author of the bestselling

Discworld

comic fantasy novels, is almost as well-known as an Alzheimer’s sufferer: since 2007, when he was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 59, he has campaigned to raise awareness of the condition while continuing to write, publishing his latest volume,

Snuff

, only last month.

So far, so inspirational. But while Pratchett spoke calmly about the effects of his illness, he was unwilling to play the stoic martyr. When Barry suggested that, despite everything, he seemed content, the author took umbrage.

“What makes you think that?” he asked, after a long silence.

Though he took a reflective, rational view of his terminal illness, right down to advocating planned suicide, he was not enjoying some passive state of grace. “I don’t mind who I attack and I don’t care what I say,” he said. “All fear disappeared after Alzheimer’s. You think, what else can go wrong?”

Pratchett had other foibles. He had a high opinion of his own work – " Snuffis a damn good book" – and of the people who read it: "I suspect my [US] fans are somewhat brighter than the average American." Occasionally, he sounded annoyed with Barry's mainly softball questioning. But far from diminishing sympathy for the author, such understandable behaviour reminded the listener that Pratchett was a human trying to cope with an appalling situation, not some saintly vessel of suffering.

The encounter was the highlight of Barry's show. At two hours long, the programme could be leaner – a 20-minute chat with the former Riverdancestar Colin Dunne seemed generous – but the host's knowledgeable enthusiasm and her regular big-name interviews deserve a bigger audience. Barry's stint as a daytime presenter on Newstalk was not a success, but relegating her to 10pm, the margins of the schedule, is surely a waste.

Human weaknesses of a more carnal stripe were found on The John Murray Show(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). On Tuesday, Murray spoke to Tom Hogan, founder of the Irish Swingers Club, which caters for "consenting adults who engage in sexual activity with multiple partners". With admirable understatement, Hogan described swinging as an "alternative lifestyle" mainly practised by middle-aged, middle-class couples. But beneath the blandishments, which made swinging sound as respectable a pastime as bridge, there was a palpable undercurrent of unease. Hogan was not a swinger himself but an entrepreneur engaged in a commercial venture to take the practice out of private homes and place it in a "controlled" public space. But for all the talk of the club being just another business enterprise, he had not told his wife about it: "I don't think she'd be too pleased." He was using a pseudonym, lest the venture damage his other businesses. "I don't want one interfering with the other," he explained, using a somewhat unfortunate choice of phrase.

Murray seemed unsure whether to take the moral high ground or a more candid approach. Early on, the presenter asked whether “we’re talking about threesomes and foursomes”, but by the end he was charging that it was “a bit seedy”. And, indeed, it was all a bit peppery for a morning show, as the outraged texts testified. But dull? No.

There was no need for any lurid embellishment to the testimony of Paddy Byrne, the sole witness to the 1982 murder of the nurse Bridie Gargan by Malcolm MacArthur. The crime triggered events famously branded by Charles Haughey as grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented – MacArthur was eventually found hiding in the attorney-general's home – but Byrne's account of the incident on Today with Pat Kenny(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) was markedly sober.

He spoke of seeing MacArthur pulling Gargan’s hair and punching her face in her car. Byrne attempted to intervene, despite having a gun pointed at him, but MacArthur drove off with his victim. “He had a newspaper over her in the seat,” Byrne said. “But she came to. I could hear her crying.”

Byrne’s story was all the more chilling for its stark retelling, though his emotions were obvious: he had regularly visited Gargan’s grave. Kenny called Byrne “a decent man”, and he was right. Sometimes the worst situations can bring out the best in people.

Radio moment of the week . . .

Having stated that he would no longer deal with black Africans because of previous bad experiences, the mayor of Naas, Darren Scully, went on local radio show Kildare Today (KFM, weekdays) to explain himself to host Clem Ryan. After much jousting, Ryan delivered his verdict. “Your stance is racist,” he said, “because you’re making a decision which is predicated completely on a person’s skin colour, rather than judging each individual on their merits.” In response, Scully all but conceded defeat. “I suppose, Clem, when you look up the word racist in the dictionary, yes, you could probably say that it’s wrong of me to make that decision.” Within hours, Scully had resigned.