One of Pat Kenny’s strengths is his healthy scepticism, as a current-affairs presenter, in the face of spin. It turns out that this characteristic predates his long career as a broadcaster, though not his affinity for radio.
Speaking on Wednesday’s Today with Pat Kenny (Newstalk, weekdays), the host recalls listening to the pop station Radio Luxembourg – “I’m old enough to remember it broadcasting from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg,” he notes – which then carried ads by a gambler named Horace Batchelor, offering subscriptions to a system that supposedly increased chances of winning the (completely random) football pools.
“The point was,” Kenny wryly observes, “even as a child, I kept saying, if Horace Batchelor is so good at this, why doesn’t he win the pools himself every week?” Then as now, Kenny didn’t take things at face value.
These recollections come in the context of his discussion with the economist (and Irish Times columnist) David McWilliams about another dodgy get-rich-quick scheme. This time, however, it’s a more sinister enterprise, with fake images of McWilliams being used in social-media ads for cryptocurrency investment scams. Not that you’d know it from the slightly glib tone Kenny initially adopts.
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“I’ve seen these things and didn’t believe them for a second, because I would have seen you in your Bentley every morning driving though the coffee shops of Dalkey if that had been the case,” he yuks to his guest, unsubtly highlighting their mutual residence in the well-heeled south Dublin neighbourhood.
McWilliams chuckles weakly before firmly disabusing his host’s notions of levity. “No, Pat, this is a very serious criminal enterprise,” he says. “It is a vicious, unrelenting, social-media-complicit scam.”
Sure enough, McWilliams recounts how one older woman was pressured into investing €15,000 in a fraudulent scheme advertised with these fake online images. He also points the finger at social-media companies, which allow AI-enabled ads be replaced as quickly as they are taken down.
“Somebody has to call this out and stop this,” he says, adding that the matter is in the hands of his lawyers. (McWilliams also highlights the scam earlier in the week with Colm Ó Mongáin on RTÉ Radio 1’s daily Liveline phone-in, which is still muddling along without a permanent host.)
Kenny, who has long been dubious about the effects of artificial intelligence, lets his guest alert listeners but also offers some wisdom of his own: “There’s a mantra you can live by: if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true.” Those evenings tuning into Radio Luxembourg clearly left a mark.
Generally in politics you’re nearly meant to shrug it off, shut up, move on, get on with it
Though the host shares his memories to make a broader point about avoiding shonky schemes, it’s hard not to detect a wistful tinge to the reminiscing. With the presenter due to move to a weekend show early next year, ceding his prime midmorning slot as Claire Byrne arrives from RTÉ, there’s an inescapable sense of Kenny gradually winding down, no matter how rigorous and compelling he is on air. (His steady and detailed grilling of Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless about student-accommodation shortages underlines his formidable qualities as an interviewer.)
Such moments of melancholy reflection are fleeting, however, particularly when Kenny deploys another distinctive trait: his flashes of mordant wit. After the Lawless interview he reads a sour text complaining that hard-pressed students don’t seem impoverished during rag week, before acerbically commenting: “What a killjoy.”
Likewise, when asked by his fellow Newstalk presenter Andrea Gilligan to name his favourite thing about her native Co Donegal, Kenny can’t help himself. “I’m tempted to say the road to Dublin,” he replies impishly, to theatrical outrage from Gilligan. As a broadcaster, Kenny remains the real thing.
The increasingly toxic nature of social media runs like a thread through much of the week’s radio, with the appalling threats made against the family of Simon Harris prompting widespread coverage, and indeed concern, across the airwaves. Amid the justifiable alarm, the most striking contribution on the issue comes from the Tánaiste himself, during his considered but powerful interview with Audrey Carville on Tuesday’s Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays).
Speaking in Mullingar at the Fine Gael think-in, Harris dutifully fields Carville’s questions about the forthcoming budget, Heather Humphreys’s presidential bid and the rumbling scoliosis scandal before finally being asked about his recent ordeal.
“It’s been a pretty rotten time,” he says, his muted language not quite masking his emotional strain. But the Fine Gael leader also strikes a determined note, explaining why he’s speaking out about the intimidation he’s faced. “Generally in politics you’re nearly meant to shrug it off, shut up, move on, get on with it,” he says.
But so vile and relentless are the threats – involving sexual violence, kidnapping and bombs – that he feels obliged to call out such actions. “If somebody can make those threats against me, what could happen to somebody else?”
Though he doesn’t expand on the point, Harris highlights the danger that this growing potential for violence poses to democratic politics. (Wednesday’s murder of the US conservative activist Charlie Kirk only reinforces this grim thesis.) At a personal level, however, he sounds ambivalent when asked by Carville about his own future in politics, replying that he’s trying to balance his love for his family with his love of public service.
It’s a bracing interview, the kind of agenda-setting item that the too-often-stolid Morning Ireland can still do well, with the Tánaiste’s deliberately moderated delivery somehow adding to the urgency of his message. If the toll taken by recent events is obvious in Harris’s voice – “I’ve dug deep, I’ve turned up and I’m trying to get on with the job” – there’s no doubting the gravity of his clarion call: “What I didn’t want to do this week was just jump over what’s happened. I’m just refusing to allow it be glossed over.” There’s no faking his alarm: with luck it will be heeded.
Moment of the week
An avid soccer fan, Matt Cooper sounds faintly anxious on Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word (Today FM, weekdays), as he speaks to the sports reporter Stephen Doyle before the Republic of Ireland’s must-win World Cup qualifying tie away to Armenia.
“I’m just hoping this line holds from Yerevan,” Doyle says about his spotty connection from the Armenian capital, “but there are two changes made to the team ...”
At which point the line goes dead. This only increases Cooper’s nervousness about the match. “Oh, I hope that’s not an omen for what’s about to come,” he frets.
Unfortunately, his sense of foreboding is well placed, as the Ireland team go on to suffer a calamitous 2-1 defeat. If nothing else, Cooper may have a future as a fortune teller.
