On Tuesday, as the general-election campaign enters the final stretch before polling day, The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays) features a rare broadcast interview with a mercurial, controversial figure whose provocative reputation has long divided opinion. And if Kieran Cuddihy’s conversation with the veteran journalist and author Kevin Myers isn’t contentious enough, the host also hears from the gangland boss and Independent Dáil candidate Gerry Hutch. But while the latter’s appearance makes the news – it’s Hutch’s only radio Interview – it’s Myers who generates the on-air pyrotechnics, with his talent for inflammatory opinions given full rein. All this while discussing his favourite books.
Speaking on Cuddihy’s weekly Bookshelf slot, Myers nominates Rudyard Kipling’s Collected Verse as his go-to volume – but adds in theatrically weary tones that this choice didn’t find favour with the show’s researcher. “Kipling is enormously unpopular in Ireland,” he says, citing the writer’s fervent support for the British empire. Myers doesn’t try to justify Kipling’s imperialism, though he insists the writer wasn’t racist.
The columnist, who once wrote offensively about single mothers in The Irish Times, then gives a stirring recital of Kipling’s poem The Female of the Species – as in “is more deadly than the male” – quickly adding that its sexist sentiment is “ludicrously untrue”. “You have to forgive him for his many errors, but he is nonetheless a compelling poet,” says Myers.
Still, feeling compelled to dispel any unease about choosing a writer with such extravagantly outdated views, Myers picks a more acceptable alternative: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, “in many ways a vile book, about a pederast’s infatuation with a young girl”. Stop playing it safe, Kev!
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At this stage it’s tempting to think that Myers is back to his old scheisse-stirring tricks, but he adds that, despite the book’s evil theme, it has a “moral schemata”. Myers also praises the “Russian vigour” of the writing, which he also finds in his preferred Nabokov novel, Pale Fire.
Throughout all this a clearly amused Cuddihy largely stands back, allowing his guest to fire off all manner of sweeping (if not entirely inaccurate) statements: “Men over 50 don’t read fiction”; “Many artists are unpleasant people”; and so forth. For all his robustly opinionated persona, however, Myers makes some serious points, notably the need to view artistic work on merit rather than purely through the lens of modern attitudes.
That said, he still revels in pricking contemporary mores, plumping for Kipling’s poetry as his favourite work. “Now no one’s going to talk to me,” says Myers, not sounding particularly bothered. It’s an entertaining and intelligent segment, albeit with a frisson of the inappropriate: Cuddihy is probably wise to confine his guest’s comments to books.
Compared with that, Henry McKean’s exclusive interview with Hutch is an anticlimax. The perennially breathless roving reporter tells Cuddihy how, after a chance encounter in the Dublin Central constituency, he persuaded Hutch to take part in Front Bench, his election vox-pop series. (It’s not the only bench Hutch has been around recently, following his Special Criminal Court acquittal for the 2016 murder of David Byrne, a Kinahan cartel member.)
Alas, that’s as exciting as McKean’s scoop gets. Though Hutch is guardedly polite, he approaches the discussion with the same uninhibited candour as he would a Garda interrogation. He says little about policies beyond bemoaning the lack of affordable housing and tersely deflects McKean’s softball question about his chequered past: “That’s all yesterday’s news. You want to move forward.” It’s only when asked if he has any regrets that there’s a flash of mordant wit. “Yeah, maybe I should have run as a politician when I was 20.”
However his political future pans out, Hutch doesn’t seem destined to be one of the great parliamentary orators. And there’s something uncomfortable about the way Cuddihy repeatedly and enthusiastically plugs the interview, given Hutch’s dubious past. Perhaps mindful of such queasiness, Cuddihy – whose show isn’t as top-heavy with election coverage as some of his peers’ – finishes by quoting Ms Justice Tara Burns’s opinion that Hutch is the figurehead of an organised criminal gang. At times like this the old saw about all politicians being crooks seems especially trite.
While the direction of the country is decided at the ballot box, Spoken Stories (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday) gauges the national mood more imaginatively, in the form of short new fiction on the theme of “the state of us”. The latest story in the current series, The Impasse, by the Irish-Indian author Cauvery Madhavan, tackles this idea in deceptively light-hearted fashion. As Madhavan remarks to Clíodhna Ní Anluain, the programme’s producer, in the introduction, the thematic brief can refer to broader society or, less flatteringly, to personal mishap or embarrassment: her story, as read by the actor Dawn Bradfield, takes its cue from the latter definition, initially at least.
The plot is simple. Two estranged old friends, Nuala and Imelda, nearly collide while traversing a narrow boreen. With both refusing to budge, old grudges and newer bugbears surface. The resentments are directed not just at each other but also towards the new, sports car-driving African parish priest – “the Trócaire baby brought to life”, in Imelda’s cosily prejudiced phrase. But far from being racist caricatures, Madhavan’s characters are nuanced if imperfect beings, sketched with good-humoured affection, while Bradfield’s reading imbues the tale with a pleasing tone of gossipy mischief. Much like the protagonists, the story doesn’t get too far, but there’s a lot of fun and the odd thoughtful moment while it’s stuck there.
It’s a typically absorbing instalment to the strand, which this season has featured works by Carlo Gébler and Mia Gallagher, as well as an Irish-language instalment from Colm Ó Snodaigh. Whether these tales end up as firm favourites on bookshelves in the future is yet to be seen, but for now Spoken Stories does an admirable job of representing the country.
Moment of the Week
On Tuesday’s Rising Time (RTÉ Radio 1, daily), Shay Byrne’s trademark chirpy irreverence leads to unexpected ruminations on being made redundant by technology. Shooting the early-morning breeze with the traffic reporter Sinéad Ní Uallacháin and the sports presenter Darren Frehill, Byrne remarks, apropos nothing, that an “AI Jesus” has been installed in a Swiss church to hear confessions.
After the trio ponder this titbit at length, if not necessarily in depth, Frehill takes the notion to its logical conclusion: “Will it be long before there’s an AI Shay and an AI Darren?” It’s hardly a new concept: that reliable font of wisdom The Simpsons envisioned the show’s clueless radio-jock duo Bill and Marty being replaced by the automated DJ3000. Byrne, in turn, does little to help his case. “My wife has always said, ‘Talking to you is like talking to a robot,’” he says, chuckling. Given RTÉ's parlous financial state, Byrne probably shouldn’t be giving management such ideas.
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