Contrasting fortunes for Irish-speaking radio sisters

Fact File

Names: Brid Og and Cliona Ni Bhuachalla Occupation: Broadcasters Famous for: Being blonde and bilingual Why in the news: One's presenting RTE's Liveline the other's just been let go by Radio Ireland

They're blonde, they're bubbly and they both speak beautiful Irish, but the past week has seen contrasting fortunes in the lives of the broadcasting Ni Bhuachallas.

Brid Og, the older of the sisters despite the name, is consolidating her position as summer substitute for Marian Finucane on Radio One's Liveline; while, over at Radio Ireland, Cliona has suffered what many had considered was her inevitable fate.

Given the station's mid-morning slot when it opened in March, she has performed the loneliest job in Irish broadcasting for the past four months, competing with RTE's big hitters - Kenny, Byrne and Ryan.

She had the added joy of doing the job while her employers were dangling a reported £1 million offer to Gerry Ryan for the morning show; ironically, her departure comes hot on the heels of his decision to commit his future to RTE.

It wasn't all bad news for Cliona this week. She also won some light-hearted recognition in the youth lifestyle magazine, D-Side. And while the precise wording of the title awarded her could not be repeated in a family newspaper, it was intended as a tribute to her attractiveness.

In this respect, both the Ni Bhuachalla sisters can be considered God's gift to the Irish language, the cause of which was damaged in the past by an exaggerated association with middleaged, joyless, hurley-waving zealots.

"She's very popular," one gaelgeoir and casual acquaintance says of Brid Og, "partly because she's someone who has a high profile as an Irish speaker. And being young and attractive is no harm. She's helped to break away from that stereotype that a lot of people had of Irish speakers, and we're all grateful for it."

Although they were born in Dublin and both their parents are from Cork, the sisters' Irish is that of Dun Chaoin and the Kerry Gaeltacht. It was learned in childhood summers at the family's summer home there, where the girls went with their parents and the only other sibling, brother Traolach.

"You'd know it the moment either opens her mouth," says a family acquaintance. "It's a very, soft lilting Irish - Dunquin Irish, unmistakeably. And they really are bilingual. The parents were a classic Irishspeaking couple and the children were steeped in the language. They're as much at home in Irish as English."

But the Kerry link informed more than just their accents, he adds. "Dunquin was their spiritual home. The family really went native there, and it's kind of funny to see the girls now as glamour pusses in little black numbers."

The same acquaintance adds of the sisters that while they are "girls of considerable charm, I wouldn't use the term intellectual". Neither would most radio critics. Indeed, one critic complains of "a false naivete in interviewing style that you sometimes suspect is a cover for real naivete, or something worse".

This is an odd circumstance, because the Ni Bhuachallas are daughters of at least one heavyweight intellectual, the eminent Irish scholar and academic, Prof Breandan O Buachalla.

The professor's latest book - a 700-page analysis of 18th century Irish visionary poetry, 20 years in the making - was described in a review in this newspaper last Saturday as "one of the most important single volumes to come out of Ireland for a long time".

Another academic calls it "a tour de force, a major personal voyage in history, poetry, sociology, ideas". The same source suggests it is O Buachalla's defining work, designed for posterity in an academic sphere in which "there's no life, there's only immortality".

But proving he could compete just as effectively in the temporal world, the professor held the chair of Irish Language and Literature at UCD for almost two decades until his retirement last year a turbulent period in a highly political environment, of which O Buachalla proved himself more than equal.

Determined, ambitious and fiercely disciplined, he seems a strange contrast to his daughters. But in this respect at least, the family acquaintance says, the Ni Bhuachallas are chips off the old block.

"They have many of those same qualities and they're not to be underestimated. Behind the easy-going charm, they're tough and ambitious. For instance, Cliona will hate this setback she's had."

But if there was any toughness in her attitude during the Radio Ireland phase, she used it to help her carry on gracefully in spite of everything that was happening elsewhere.

Critics said her style improved markedly towards the end of the run, perhaps a sign of that genetic single-mindedness. When the axe fell, she took it well, mentioning the difficulties she had had but stressing she was going out "on a high".

Her immediate future is likely to be with Tyrone Productions, the John Colgan/Moya Doherty company with which she worked before joining Radio Ireland, and where among other things she produced the soap Ros na Run for Telefis na Gaeltachta.

One of the drawbacks of working in a minority language is that the national profile of your work is not very high. Both sisters are undoubtedly better known from their English-speaking work.

Brid Og's Irish-speaking friend, trying to recall shows she has worked in, laments that "a lot of them are only around for a year, so you forget them quickly". But her latest vehicle, "Beo le Bridog will not fall into that category, returning this autumn for a second season in its late-night slot.

A sort of Irish Nighthawks, without the sketches or any of the sharp edges, it will not do anything to expand the Ni Bhuachalla repertoire of soft-focus broadcast journalism. But her best, and the best of both the thirty-somethings, may still lie ahead.