There was a time when Newstalk seemed mainly populated by dyspeptic males of advancing years – aka grumpy old men – who would hold forth on the follies of modern society and the general decline of civilisation. With spiels that were by turns showily splenetic and blokeishly amusing, presenters such as George Hook and Ivan Yates helped establish the fledgling station as a fixture on the national airwaves.
But times change and personalities move on, and so it is that the Newstalk’s default atmosphere is no longer one of irritable outrage but one, rather, of irreverent curiosity, with an attendant (if hardly uncoincidental) growth in listenership.
There is, however, one plucky outpost where the station’s old spirit still occasionally splutters into life: Newstalk Breakfast (weekdays).
On Wednesday, for instance, Ciara Kelly gets righteously annoyed at the prospect of schoolchildren addressing teachers by their first names rather than as “Sir” or “Miss”, worrying that such a move would make it harder to keep order in the classroom. “I don’t think it serves a society particularly well to bring up a generation of kids to have no respect for any kind of authority,” Kelly opines, a touch dramatically.
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When her cohost, Shane Coleman, wonders whether authority should rest on titles, he’s firmly rebuffed.
“I think it is one of the trappings of authority and see no bloody harm in it,” Kelly says before delivering her coup de grace on the topic: “What is even the point of this rubbish?”
Well, quite. On the face of it, Kelly’s fulminations appear to be aimed at those evolved listeners who once complained about the PC brigade but now prefer to decry the woke mob. To her credit, she good-naturedly stresses it’s only her opinion, adding that, when working as a GP, she didn’t stand on ceremony. “I referred to myself as Ciara to my patients,” she says, “But I wasn’t trying to maintain discipline.”
Ultimately, the whole argy-bargy is predicated on a flimsy premise: an article written by their Newstalk colleague Simon Tierney. It underlines the stagey nature of such on-air indignation: when Kelly finally chats to Tierney about how to address teachers, the conversation is deflatingly affable. Coleman plays the role of the voice of moderation but isn’t immune to an outbreak of the why-oh-whys himself. On learning that some people prefer to give cash as a Christmas present rather than go shopping, he gives a weary sigh: “Nothing says Gen Z more than this story.”
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If nothing else, the duo’s various bugbears give the lie to Generation X-ers’ self-image as the chill guys caught between shouty boomers and enraged millennials.
Yet in much the same way that both admirers and haters of the Daily Mail are never disappointed by the paper’s red-faced rants, so the duo’s theatrical impatience with contemporary foibles is all part of the package, continuing to enliven proceedings on even the dreariest news days. And, it’s worth emphasising, Coleman and Kelly do also cover the news in zippy fashion, from breaking stories to broader issues.
So Tuesday’s refreshingly rational discussion on data-centre expansion has Prof Hannah Daly of University College Cork outlining the environmental hard such digital hubs do, while the former Amazon executive Mike Beary lays out the economic arguments in their favour. If nothing else, both agree that Ireland needs increased renewable energy sources.
The following day Coleman hears the People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy call on the suspended Social Democrats deputy Eoin Hayes to resign his Dáil seat, bemoaning his “gross hypocrisy” for divesting shares in a tech company supplying the Israeli military only after being elected as a councillor. But the host is wary of such demands. “Is no one allowed make a mistake any more?” Coleman asks plaintively. “Is this not performative Punch and Judy politics?”
Given Coleman’s frequent bickering with Kelly, this characterisation might seem a bit rich, but it speaks of a welcome scepticism of absolutist positions. For all the Newstalk Breakfast pair’s grouching, they’re more pantomime bark than poisonous bite.
Over on RTÉ, on Drivetime (Radio 1, weekdays), the usual jousting between its presenters, Cormac Ó hEadhra and Sarah McInerney, is for once absent, as they take turns as solo hosts early in the week. But a knockabout air still reigns when Ó hEadhra frames the festive season in oddly antagonistic terms. “Christmas is around the corner, when families get together and disagreement and conflict can also flare up,” he says on Monday’s show, by way of the introducing psychologist Dr Paul D’Alton: “Help is at hand.”
As D’Alton sketches strategies to manage conflict, regular Drivetime listeners may have mixed feelings: Ó hEadhra’s bellicose side is one of his trademarks, so removing it is akin to depriving Miriam O’Callaghan of her attentive hmm-ing or robbing Marty Whelan of his dad jokes. Luckily, D’Alton has no such intentions. Not only is disagreement inevitable, he says, but “the absence of conflict is a worrying sign – maybe we’ve begun to throw in the towel”. Instead he talks about “dual identity” as a way of overcoming differences. Despite the name, this isn’t a licence to be two-faced but a way of “allowing for human fallibility” – advice that Eoin Hayes, for one, may hope more people will heed.
Occupying the Drivetime hotseat on Wednesday, McInerney proves that Coleman and Kelly don’t have a monopoly on grumbling about pet peeves. As she talks about the seemingly innocuous topic of Christmas pudding with the chef Catherine Fulvio, McInerney can’t hide her distaste, muttering in horror as her guest sings the praises of the seasonal dessert. “Oh God,” the host says. “It’s the whole idea of the Christmas pudding: it’s so heavy and dense.” Noting that the pudding’s sturdy texture originated in the pre-fridge era, McInerney is baffled by its continuing place as a festive favourite. “Can we not just say that it’s of its time?” she pleads. Clearly, not everyone thinks things were better in the past.
Moment of the Week
He’s an erudite fellow, so it’s no surprise that Seán Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays) should cover the words of the year, as chosen by various English dictionaries. The host, who is also an Irish Times columnist, asks a University of Limerick linguistics researcher, Gail Flanagan, if youthful slang is dictating the direction of language, citing ubiquity of the term “brat” in 2024. (For the uninitiated, it’s the title of a Charli XCX album, meaning “a hedonistic attitude”.) But as Moncrieff struggles to pronounce “neologism” – “That’s really hard to say,” he says, conceding defeat – his guest picks her favourite new word: enshittification. “Even if you’ve never heard the term before, you know what it means,” Moncrieff says approvingly. But even he has his limits, gently upbraiding Flanagan for repeatedly using the vernacular term for fecal matter. “Congratulations,” the host says with a chuckle. “You’ve used up our quota for the S-word for the rest of the year.” Just as well it’s December: he won’t have to cut the crap for too long.
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