Oh my, this late-night talk radio is simply a scourge and an affront to decent, right-thinking people, what with its gratuitous abuse, demeaning language and sense of old scores being settled - not to mention its obscure arguments and pointless tangents.
Really, what was Vincent Browne thinking at about 10.50 p.m. on Tuesday when he chose to mercilessly, interminably "rib" our own Geraldine Kennedy about her alleged, erstwhile affections for one C.J. Haughey? (Tonight with Vincent Browne, RTE Radio 1, Monday to Thursday). As a nation's radio receivers were set on "cringe", he pursued her with a relentless, charmless snigger.
Kennedy, who wasn't having any of it, wasn't entirely short of a comeback either - suggesting that Browne had unhappy memories of Haughey selecting her rather than him for his first press interview as Taoiseach.
With numbing monotony, this column has for years praised Browne for breaking the shackles on political discussion, for respecting none of the State-radio rules about when to back off. But for those few, bizarre minutes in a week when his resurrected programme has been the only radio that matters - with its captivating re-enactments of the Haughey testimony at the Moriarty tribunal and the presenter's razor-sharp analysis of same, with the help of perfect panels - I really wanted to say: "Show some respect. Back off".
Without actor Joe Taylor's version of Haughey to bring it to life, the latest Moriarty story is something of a summer repeat. The gist of it, anyway, was known to us, and revelations are thin on the ground. Even when a listener phoned Browne to pithily, powerfully contrast her dismal and degrading experience at the hands of AIB with Haughey heroically giving the bank the run-around, the line was familiar from 100 long, etherised phone-ins. The real, compelling slow-burn drama this week starred Haughey (via Taylor) and his old nemesis Browne, and it got a suitable venue when the programme switched to a feature-length two hours on Wednesday.
The genuine after-10 p.m. phone-ins in Dublin, Chris Barry on 98FM and Adrian Kennedy on FM104, couldn't be bothered with recycled Charlie. As Browne and co. explored Baldoyle deals and spiralling debts, a (reluctant) spin of the dial revealed the most asinine exchanges about, oh, the dangerously dodgy clothes certain women are inclined to wear; the way taxi-men will rip you off; how much Dubs hate culchies and vice versa; the related topic of what a pain the gardai can be; the equally related topic of stopping at traffic lights in the wee hours of the morning - for and against; vigilantes - for and against.
In sum: a sad picture of a small coterie of callers who insist on presenting their lives in working-class Dublin as if it were Fort Apache the Bronx - and a pair of radio stations that insist on facilitating them. It need hardly be said that this Dublin is largely unrecognisable, but what the hell, maybe the phone-ins are an outlet: if half the violence that is verbalised nightly for Chris and Adrian actually spilled onto the streets, there wouldn't be enough casualty wards and morgues in Ireland to cope with the consequences.
Middle-aged, middle-class me prefers the daytime phone-ins, even if they are a bit dozy this weather. Scott Williams's Dublin Today (Lite FM, Monday to Friday) has shown an admirable facility for opening the microphones to the wandering thoughts of its listeners as well as to more coherent magazine-type stories. While the subject matter may stray into Barry-Kennedy territory - a couple of weeks back it was the way mechanics rip you off - the tone doesn't; and while Williams has no pretensions to encyclopaedic expertise, he keeps things amiable, populist and informative.
The summer's phone-in revelation, however, is the extended graduation of Teri Garvey from Godline to Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday). Faced with hard-news stories and less-forthcoming interviewees, Garvey can still be a little uncertain. But give her a few ordinary people with stories to tell, and she is absolutely terrific - listening, reacting, moving things along. And her instincts about a story's tone are good. On Wednesday, a half-dozen callers were moaning about being scammed by a travelling discount-sales show; once she'd pieced their tales together, she soon had them, and us, laughing at the scenario and celebrating their shared naive victimhood. Without losing sight of the consumer issue, she turned "I could do with a power-hose" into a hilarious call to arms.
Liveline also did a fine job with a local angle on the Concorde story. Although she intoned "extremely tragic" several times, Garvey and her team seemed to sense, correctly I think, that the tragedy was quite remote for listeners here. So on Wednesday, veteran aviation journalist Arthur Quinlan happily told us how this very Concorde had spent summer afternoons in years gone test-flying around Shannon, with the airport cleaning up on landing fees because each passing touch-landing counted for Air France cash. Concorde crews' affection for Durty Nelly's pub was also a boon to the local economy.
Quinlan's, and Garvey's, apparent confidence that Concorde can still be regarded as having an exemplary safety record because only one has gone down in flames might not impress a statistician, but otherwise it was an exemplary interview.
Thanks, perhaps in some small measure to the phone-in culture, children and radio go together in our minds like Maxi and gangsta rap. Think of your kids and the radio and the memory is likely to involve an insistent voice from the kitchen door or the back seat putting an awkward question: "Mammy/Daddy, what's sex addiction/abortion/cocaine/Charlie Haughey?"
Otherwise, young children are the lost listeners, presumed to be immersed in visual culture until such time as their pre-adolescent hormones drive them to slam their bedroom doors and blast Atlantic 252 or FM104 at anti-social volumes.
It's rare enough these days to hear even lip-service for children's programming. But RTE being what it is, the old public-service conscience often has a seasonal outbreak. This summer, it's called The Ivory Tower (RTE Radio 1, Saturday), and I can honestly say it's eased a couple of car journeys.
I'm not sure what else I can say about what sounds more or less like a science-fiction comic-drama serial. The special effects are minimal, the "science" is out-and-out double-Dutch, with a few bits of real history or geography thrown in, and in every episode its boy-hero breaks out of the narrative on the flimsiest of pretexts to discuss a book report with a real-life child-caller. And even that is something of a relief, because the narrative is entirely bewildering and often over-reliant on dialogue descriptions of essentially visual events.
My kids? Oh, they absolutely love it.