As is sometimes the way when Joe Duffy thinks listeners require some relief from accounts of societal chaos, Wednesday's edition of Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) is awash with fond reminiscences about Dublin in the rare auld times. And what a place it must have been then, judging by the parade of callers testifying to the politeness and kindness that once permeated the capital's localities.
Parents constantly looked out for their neighbours' children, and people indulged the eccentricities of others, even gathering to listen to the singing that emanated from the bathroom of the house next door. But if these sepia-tinted memories sound straight from the much mythologised era when the capital's teeming inner city was populated by the likes of Fortycoats and Bang-Bang, the callers are in fact recalling the suburban north Dublin of the 1970s that Bono grew up in.
This unlikely nostalgia is prompted by the release of U2's new album, Songs of Innocence, which deals with the band's upbringing in the capital and which was given away free last week to half a billion users of Apple's iTunes service. This latter fact particularly sticks in the mind, as Duffy refers to the band's promotional wheeze with a frequency that a 1950s DJ in receipt of record company payola would blanch at.
In fairness, Duffy’s enthusiasm extends beyond the commercial stunt to the music itself. But as host of an afternoon phone-in show, he doesn’t neglect his main duty, that of tweaking his audience’s emotional temperature, though in this case the setting is “warm glow” rather than “boiling outrage”.
From Today FM presenter Bob Conway, a childhood pal of Bono, he hears about the decency of the singer's late parents, Bob and Iris Hewson; Bob's bathtime vocal abilities are attested to, while on several occasions, Duffy points out that it is almost 40 years to the day that Iris died.
But there are hints that Duffy finds all this fuzzy goodwill a tad stifling. When another neighbour says the young Bono was “very bubbly”, the host seeks out less edifying details: “Tell us the truth, was he a brat?”
Duffy also frets about the consequences of Bono naming one of the new songs Cedarwood Road, after the street he grew up on, inquiring whether Vera is worried about street signs being stolen. No matter what the subject, the spectre of urban crime is never far away on Liveline.
Wistfulness for the good old days isn't a staple currency on The Ray D'Arcy Show (Today FM, weekdays), but the presenter's tendency to bring a personal angle to his subjects leads to an entertaining outbreak on Tuesday. With last week marking the 60th anniversary of the first appearance of comic strip Roy Of The Rovers, D'Arcy takes the opportunity to sing the praises of his childhood reading matter.
"Those comics were great value for money compared to children magazines now," he says, before recalling how he was an "agent" for British comic Warlord. "That's why you love the Royal family," jibes his producer and on-air sidekick Will Hanafin.
By now, D’Arcy is in full modern-life-is-rubbish mode, noting with mock exasperation that “when you got a freebie in a comic then, it was decent, something that would last”. Tat just isn’t what it used to be.
By now, D'Arcy is laughing at his pantomime indignation, but world-weary realism seems to underpin his views. Pondering the U2 giveaway, D'Arcy suggests that, as the band's previous album "didn't do too well", handing this one over to millions of people "avoided another failure".
He also speculates that Apple may have made U2 "an offer they couldn't refuse". Still, his cant-free analysis is striking beside, say, Dave Fanning's contribution on the matter on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), when the 2FM presenter – and long-time U2 fan – continually ducks giving a verdict on the album or its release strategy.
As for D’Arcy, he is well capable of altering his approach as the occasion demands. He sounds curious and engaged when interviewing children’s author Julia Donaldson, while admitting that he only became aware of her after becoming a father.
But talking to Maria Walsh, the 2014 Rose of Tralee, the presenter sounds more calculating.
Walsh sounds a sparky character, joking that the presenter is getting his facts from pieces of paper handed to him as he speaks. But D’Arcy soon gets to his main point. “And now you’re a lesbian too,” he says, the ostensibly casual tone at odds with the inevitability of the question.
Walsh talks about the post-competition kerfuffle about her sexuality with good humour, but tries to gently nudge the topic away. “I like to be known for more than my sexual orientation,” she says. This only prompts D’Arcy to ask whether the Rose of Tralee organisers asked whether she was gay.
For all the joshing ambience that D’Arcy affects with his guest, he returns to the juicy main subject with the focused myopia of the most jaded hack. Times may have changed, but our sense of prurience hasn’t gone away.
Moment of the Week: Simple pleasures
The first in a series of plays by Limerick writers to their hometown's tenure as City of Culture, Kevin Barry's Drama On One: Toronto And The State Of Grace (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday) sets the bar high with its deceptive simplicity and sparseness. Two elderly Cavan brothers (Michael Harding and Padraic McIntyre) drive to west Limerick to scatter the ashes of their late mother; on the way, they swap disparaging remarks, surreal memories and fatalistic wisdom, all delivered in drolly mannered style. "Would we be sure we're on the way?" one brother asks. "There's only one place in this life we can be sure we're on the way to," replies the other. In finding the sweet spot between Martin McDonagh, Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett, Barry crafts a darkly comic gem.
radioreview@irishtimes.com
