Taking risks is what makes a good show
MEN take rock music awfully seriously, don’t they? They’re not all as whisperingly devotional as John Kelly on Lyric FM’s Mystery Train, thank goodness, but even The Ray D’Arcy Show has bought into the myth.
Last Tuesday, the RTE presenter played a song by 1970s New York punk band The Ramones, dedicating it to all those youngsters walking round in T-shirts bearing the group’s logo but who’d never actually heard their music, for all the world as if it was a recently discovered cantata by Bach. Then, turning on for that evening’s Late Debate on RTE Radio 1, I happened to catch the last few minutes of The John Creedon Show, which was playing a song by Leonard Cohen. It was pleasant enough, like many pop songs, but I couldn’t help remembering how, when he played some concerts in Dublin a few years ago, the late singer/songwriter was practically treated as a deity descended from heaven by Irish critics. There’s nothing wrong with the music. It’s the reverence which is funny.
Bryan Dobson has now completed the second weeks of his tour of duty on Morning Ireland. The transition from Six One News has proved seamless, One News has proved seamless, but then why wouldn’t it? The jobs are essentially the same — to feed the right questions to reporters on the ground so that they can provide the information needed, and to cross-examine politicians in a way that is probing without being too aggressive — and these are skills he’s honed for decades. They were hardly going to desert him now.
It’s hard, though, to listen to Dobson’s disembodied voice, after so many years watching him on TV, without also picturing his face, and imagining the moment when, for example, his eyebrows raise in sardonic scepticism. This was never a problem in the Cathal Mac Coille days.
The thing about Morning Ireland is that the presenters rarely make a mistake, but then they rarely surprise either. It’s all very solid and steady and, dare we say it, a little dull. Newstalk Breakfast does not have the luxury of complacency, so its presenters have to work that much harder.
I must admit to some doubts about whether Paul Williams would make the transition from guest to presenter, because it’s not an easy one, but he won me round by taking such an honest and unpretentious approach to his new role. On Wednesday, he was passionate about the failure of many large publicly-funded bodies to supply adequate accounts for the work that they do, contrasting that with his own experience working with a small victims' group which receives a "tiny" stipend from government, for which, he said, they have to jump through hoops. Shane Coleman said he sounded annoyed. "I bloody well am," Williams replied. Williams replied. It was only a quarter past seven in the morning, but it was good to hear some fire.
What helps is that Coleman and Williams are such different characters. It’s not always smooth, but the contrast creates tension. Sparks make good radio.