Bertie's ramble through life's foliage

Radio ReviewTwo weeks ago, he was hanging with Hector on television and this week the Taoiseach stepped into the poetic lair of Theo Dorgan for a half-hour radio interview on The Invisible Thread (RTÉ Lyric FM, Sunday).

Those disastrous election results haven't just prompted a loosening of the government purse strings; someone in the Fianna Fáil media boiler room must think it's time for the nation to get to know the "real Bertie". And there are no flies on those handlers. Bertie wasn't forced to hang with Miriam O'Callaghan or be cornered in a radio studio with Cathal Mac Coille.

They couldn't have picked a softer radio slot - though in doing so they got stuck with a fairly obscure one. The nation isn't exactly gathered around listening to Lyric late on a Sunday evening. Dorgan follows an abstract line of questioning and he sounds very laid-back, so when his interviewee's answers don't bear any relevance to the question asked, he never minds too much. As expected, this interview was a gentle ramble, mostly through the Taoiseach's early years, which at one point sounded like a missing link experiment by some crazed Drumcondra Darwinian. As a lad, he spent a lot of time swinging out of trees, and eating peanuts.

When he wasn't kicking a ball or wielding a hurley in what sounded like an idyllic childhood, young Bertie was up a tree - probably the same northside ones he later sent Dermot Ahern up in search of evidence against Ray Burke. Dorgan didn't make the connection - another interviewer wouldn't have been able to resist. The 1960s didn't swing for him. No one he knew smoked dope and all his time was taken up with the GAA and following the unfolding events in Northern Ireland.

"Beatles or Rolling Stones?" asked Dorgan, using classic hippy shorthand for square versus cool.

"Beatles," said Bertie, and Dorgan sighed, as if his deepest suspicions were confirmed.

"As a young accountant in the Mater Hospital, weren't you a good catch?" asked Dorgan. Now, no disrespect to the current bean counters in the Mater, but being the leader of a country is quite a bit higher up the desirable date checklist. Dorgan didn't go down that road. Instead he opted for the mystically modern, "do you like women?"

"Yeah, eh, of course" - well, what else could he say? Bertie spoke of Charlie Haughey with genuine affection, saying he wouldn't be where he finds himself today without Haughey's help.Dorgan has done enough of these interviews to know he wasn't really getting to the heart and soul of the man.

"I get a picture of you keeping the head down and keeping the eyes open," he said, "but there's something missing here." Overall, the "real Bertie" as presented by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern sounded like every mammy's dream - unassuming, nice and steady - and a bit on the dull side. He doesn't like getting too excited, "bad for the heart", he likes things to be simple. Due to retire from politics in seven years' time, he didn't seem too interested in Dorgan's suggestion that he walk on an exotic beach in cut-off denims, picking up interesting shells and young ones.

"Not a hope," said the Taoiseach; he intends getting involved in sport in some way.

Also in a fairly obscure spot is a new consumer programme Eye on the Goods(RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday). It's wall-to-wall with information, well-produced and researched but the programme is curiously abstract because the consumer, who always has the best story to tell, is left out.

This week it was about builders and it plodded on with someone examining a new house for defects, and a spokesman for the Guild of Master Craftsmen. That was fine, but it was really crying out for some personal experiences of extensions collapsing and roofs leaking. Pinning down dodgy service providers on air and solving individual problems is the lifeblood of consumer programmes, and with good reason. There are fewer things more entertaining than some marketing suit trying to talk his way out of a faulty goods nightmare.

Consumers seem to have made their choice on the presidential election. Nobody's talking about it anymore - a week really is a long time, etc etc - but on Wednesday Marian Finucane(RTÉ Radio 1) conducted another poll asking listeners if they wanted an election. Sixty-two per cent now said no - a drop of 10 per cent on the previous week. Listeners seemed far more exercised by nits - schools are crawling with them.

The subject was raised by a singer who is not exactly famous for her long hair - Sinéad O'Connor - but as a mother of three, faced with the creepy-crawly problem, she sounded eminently sensible in calling for action. The downside was that there can't have been anyone listening who didn't spend the hour scratching - more simian stuff when you least expected it.