TV host with most rapport
QUESTION What is the story of Irish chat show host Gay Byrne phoning a woman to tell her she had won a car, only to discover she had recently suffered a family tragedy?
Gay Byrne was Ireland’s most famous and influential broadcaster, hosting rTe’s The Late Late Show from 1962 until he retired in 1999.
Byrne conducted thousands of interviews including famous encounters with U2, Sinead O’Connor and Boyzone.
One of his most remarkable encounters came in 1997 when he rang viewer rita Hanley to tell her she had won a car.
However, viewers gasped in shock when she informed Byrne that her daughter, Linda, who had entered the competition on her mother’s behalf, had died in an accident the previous night.
Wrong- footed, Byrne made a rare mistake. ‘and why did she die?’ he asked. ‘are you being funny?’ she tersely replied. ‘She got knocked down. She was in a car crash last night.’ There were more gasps as the irony hit home.
Byrne rescued the situation. He first asked if she wished to continue the call. rita replied that she did. The audience applauded and Byrne talked soothingly about her daughter.
The two studio guests Byrne had been interviewing couldn’t have been more appropriate for the unfolding situation.
The first was a nun, who offered rita words of comfort and told her it had surely been no accident that her daughter’s entry had been picked.
The other was Brendan Kennelly, the poet and Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin. Byrne asked him to recite some words to console rita. He recited his poem Begin from memory. Here is its final stanza:
Though we live in a world that
dreams of ending That always seems about to give in Something that will not
acknowledge conclusion Insists that we forever begin.
By the time he’d finished, rita was weeping. Byrne told her she had the support and prayers of Ireland and urged her to accept the prize. reflecting on the incident years later, Byrne felt that fate had intervened.
‘I was holding in my hand the postcard that the girl had posted,’ he said. ‘We had this big plastic thing with hundreds, if not thousands, of postcards in it. Out of all of those, this postcard came out.’
Rachel Dunne, St Ives, Cornwall.
QUESTION What’s the longest pop or rock song?
THe longest song was 2016’s The rise and Fall Of Bossanova by PC III (Pipe Choir Three), which is an incredible 13 hours, 23 minutes and 32 seconds.
PC III was a project by U.S. musician Michael J. Bostwick. He describes his music style as Onistwave, a combination of pop, rock, classical, ambient, electronic and world music.
The longest pop song is Giancarlo Ferrari’s 2008 apparente Liberta (apparent Freedom), which is 76 minutes and 44 seconds. It didn’t make the charts. Ferrari was the founding member of Goth band Some Sad Clowns.
In Britain, the longest chart hit was 1992’ s Blue room by The Orb at 39 minutes and 58 seconds. It reached no 8 in the singles chart.
The longest unedited chart hit, and the longest no 1, is all around The World by Oasis, a 1998 chart-topper with a running time of nine minutes and 38 seconds.
at ten minutes and 21 seconds, Fear Inoculum by rockers Tool reached no 93 in the U.S. singles chart in august 2019, making it the longest in Hot 100 history and the first to exceed ten minutes.
It displaced David Bowie’s Blackstar, which previously held the record at nine minutes and 57 seconds. It debuted at no 78 in January 2016 after Bowie’s death. american Pie (Parts I and II) by Don McLean in 1972 is the longest U.S. no 1 at eight minutes and 37 seconds. In the days of the 7 in single, the song was divided into two halves, hence its strange title.
Tim Mickleburgh, Grimsby, Lincs.
QUESTION Why are antibiotics losing their power to treat the diseases for which they were designed?
THe repeated and improper uses of antibiotics is the primary cause of an increase in drug-resistant bacteria.
antibiotics are designed to treat bacterial infections of the urinary tract, sinus and ear, and strep throat. They are not effective against viral infections such as the common cold, most sore throats and the flu. Widespread use of these drugs promotes antibiotic resistance.
antibiotics are designed to kill or inhibit the growth of susceptible bacteria. Sometimes one of the bacteria survives because it has the ability to neutralise or escape the effect of the antibiotic. This may then multiply and replace the bacteria with a resistant strain.
The chances of this happening increase markedly when patients do not complete a prescribed course of antibiotics.
Typically, a patient feels better after a few days and decides they are cured, but there may well remain a residual infection. alternatively, they may not be willing to put up with the common side- effects, which include stomach upset, nausea and cramps.
More generally, widespread exposure to antibiotics for human and animal medicine creates a selective pressure for bacteria to develop resistance.
This might come through mutation of their genetic material or by acquiring pieces of Dna that code for the resistance properties from other bacteria.
Several classes of bacteria that have developed antibiotic- resistance are causing problems in hospitals, the bestknown being antibiotic- resistant Clostridium difficile ( C. diff) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MrSa).
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
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