Sometimes what the British find interesting about Ireland is genuinely interesting. A Shout in the Distance (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday), a small, even slight drama by Maurice Leith, is an example of the sort of story we too rarely tell about ourselves.
Set in the not-too-distant past, the play follows naive young Winston McKinnie when he leaves Belfast for London - partly via his letters home to Aunt Ethel. At first fiercely protective of his Protestant heritage (for fortitude he prays to a litany of Ulster-descended US presidents), Winston soon falls into a boarding house where he's just another Irishman "in with a crowd of leftfooters", as his Uncle Bob laments, "in the Papers' parlour."
Sure, it's the sort of easy conclusion about identity and Taigs-have-more-fun that Marie Jones got hung for portraying in A Night in November. Nonetheless, this London twist on the tale had real resonance, as well as strong characters and a funny script: one old fella in the boarding house, known as JCB, fantasises about returning to his bulldozer and destroying all of London's monuments to Empire. The acting was top-class, too: T.P. McKenna was particularly good as the unquenchable old Paddy who befriends Winston, as was Sorcha Cusack as the landlady who seduces him.
BACK home, not every row 'n' ruckus on talk radio is worth commenting upon in this column. Even something which so dominates our listening hours as the swings and roundabouts of that bloody Budget can end up overtaxing our ability to say anything remotely new on the subject (though you have to make allowances). But when what Gerry Ryan calls "the biggest musical controversy ever" has been born just a partition or two away from the heap of old cassette tapes, dead batteries, ancient press releases and tangled earphones laughingly, weepingly known as "my desk", well, I just have to get a go at teasing the baby.
And to do so with due critical detachment (aka ignorance): I haven't seen Messiah XXI; (I did eventually see Riverdance on telly and wish I'd got in early with calling it "monumentally crass".) I don't know Aidan Twomey, except as a byline on some exceptionally good music criticism in recent months. On Monday I joined the rest of the staff in a stirring, strictly traditional rendition of the "Who Is He Anyway?" chorus. I, like other punters, noticed the Irish Times logo on the ads for Messiah XXI; (But we journalists don't bother about that sort of thing.) I wouldn't tend to compare anything, in print, to a bucket of vomit. (I'm more likely to say "as magic as dry toast", which is probably why they never read my reviews on the radio.)
The arts editor, Victoria White, joined the public chorus on Tuesday's Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), and it was easily the most constructive contribution I heard on the subject in a week of lotsa heat, very little light. She solidly defended the reviewer, while also, from her own equally legitimate perspective, praising Messiah XXI as a soul-flavoured "gospel oratorio". (This was as close as I heard anyone come to mentioning race as an issue in a critical understanding of this show. Which doesn't make her "right" - Riverdance's use of black culture is perhaps its most lasting monument to crassness - but it is interesting.)
Then there was Frank McNamara himself on Wednesday's Gerry Ryan Show (2FM, Monday to Friday). It would have been wonderful if he, as the show's creator, had felt able to say "Yes, Gerry, that review really hurt me" or perhaps even "Aidan Twomey has a right to his honest opinion." Unfortunately, following Ryan's lead, he indulged in a little of the old ho-ho-ho we-don't-let-this-sort-of-thing-bother-us guff, then, after the quickest nod in the direction of free speech, let himself go with bitter ad hominem attacks on the critic.
He didn't limit himself to Twomey. The Irish Times's reporter on the scene, Robert O'Byrne, got a peevish little earful for a parenthetical complaint: how, McNamara asked, could Robert have heard a neighbouring punter tapping his foot, when Aidan Twomey could hear nothing over the wailing guitars? Foot-tapping on a wooden riser, Frank, is not entirely an auditory experience. But Twomey got the worst of it, being accused of elitism, attention-seeking etc. "We've got this on tape," McNamara cried warningly (so you have been warned). Directly addressing Twomey, he said that when Messiah XXI goes out on television later this month, "people will see what you are". Nasty. But then I've never had my work compared to vomit. (Well, actually, Hugh Leonard came uncomfortably close once.)
AS this column suggests, I tend to get my pre-work commuting laughs from RTE. An esteemed colleague - no, really - has tried to sell me on the comic merits of the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show (Today FM, Mon- day to Friday). Personally, I reckon Japp Stam, Bertie Ahern and their antics fall a few microns short of the satire threshold, but, sure, they are funny at times.
Packaging such ephemera for the Christmas market, however, is a particularly pointless exercise - and therefore entirely in keeping with the spirit of the season. I've already suggested in an earlier column that the Navan Man double (double!) CD yields hardly a chuckle in its two hours - and that's with material that had me yelping with laughter when it was new, timely and dropped in small doses. (I did laugh at The Blair Orgy Project, which didn't get past the Last Word censors but may prove highly significant if Cherie Blair's baby emerges in overalls, with a perverse appetite for chickens and Ford Capris.)
If Navan Man can do it, why not Cavan Man? On The Strawberry Alarm Clock (Dublin's FM104, Monday to Friday), marginally the more sufferable of the capital's zoo-format breakfast shows, veteran DJ Colm Hayes plays Matt Molloy, Cavan publican, barber, restaurateur and prankphonecaller, and can be extremely, if intermittently, funny. Matt's Golden Memories is the album gathering some of his better moments; in a large dose like this it's probably more tolerable, because less ugly, than Navan Man.