The hitchhiker’s guide to putting on a concert

SUNDAY MISCELLANY

RTÉ1, Sundays, 9am TODAY WITH CLAIRE BYRNE

RTÉ1, weekdays, 10am LIVELINE

RTÉ1, weekdays, 1.45pm

On Sunday Miscellany the impresario Ollie Jennings was recalling the first concert he promoted, 50 years ago. It was The Chieftains in Galway’s Leisureland, and he ended up with a full house and a profit of 50 quid.

But it was the journey there that lifted this from a personal memoir to a thing of resonance for many listeners – literally the journey there, as he described hitchhiking from Galway to Tipperary to meet Paddy Moloney to try to persuade the formidable Chieftain to do business with this 21-year-old student.

Some listeners at this point might pity Ollie, so desperately poor that he had to be thumbing lifts – meanwhile many other listeners would have been having misty, water-coloured memories of the way we were, when hitchhiking the roads of Ireland was a routine experience for any young person of ordinary means.

You didn’t need to be poor to get 12 different lifts down the road from Dublin to Cork so you’d have a few quid left at the other end for... eh... a substantial meal.

Thus Ollie enlisted the empathy of most listeners with just one line, and then another one to clinch the deal when he described how he passed that night in Tipperary. He had nowhere to stay, but he had a sleeping bag. On the main street he saw a door was slightly ajar. He entered a hallway leading to some flats, and there he settled down to sleep, beside a few bikes.

For many Irish people, sleeping in a hallway beside some bikes in a town where nobody knew you was as normal a part of growing up as standing in the rain at Newlands Cross with your thumb in the air. The impresario had turned the story of his life into the story of all our lives.

The slightly disturbing aspect of being able to identify with such musings is that it means you must have been alive at least 50 years ago. And then you have to ask yourself if that officially makes you a Poor Ould Fella?

In this vein there were many radio items about the GAAGO debacle, but Age Action Ireland had perhaps the most poignant outing.

Speaking on Today with Claire Byrne, Age Action’s Nat O’Connor stood up for those who don’t use the internet or smartphones or any of that stuff, the sort of people whose cause was first championed in this paper – the ones we called the Poor Ould Fellas.

Yes, we could see how this would be an issue for Age

Action Ireland.

After a lifetime of hardship, the Poor Ould Fellas don’t expect to be asked to subscribe to some internet racket that is utterly beyond their ken, or to show up at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh with their e-ticket on their Samsung Galaxy – the mere thought of it is deeply traumatising.

Age Action Ireland would be regarded as a non-governmental organisation, or NGO. I confess I took little interest in the doings of such bodies, until recently, when I noted NGOs were being ritually abused as one of the many agents of evil identified by the far right. Therefore I thank the far right for alerting me to the fact that these NGOs, for the most part, must be making an important contribution to the public good.

Indeed Sheila Gilheany of the NGO, Alcohol Action Ireland, was on Liveline, where we were reminded of her singular campaign to draw attention to one of the most shameless marketing tricks of our time, the advertising of

0.0 drinks at sporting events. Ah, what a ruse this is – since the advertising of alcohol is prohibited on the field of play during a game, you advertise non-alcoholic products in a way that gives tremendous exposure to the brand.

Now she was on Liveline talking to Joe Duffy about the extraordinary sight of Michael Flatley on The Late Late Show with a bottle of Michael Flatley whiskey, which he proceeded to advertise with alacrity.

Joe, as is his wont, was unsparing in his scrutiny of the organisation for which he works, and the weaknesses that enable a man to sell whiskey on prime time public service TV – all of which further reminded us these “progressive” NGOs must be doing something right. I do think fondly of that “regressive” Ireland in which we’d be hitchhiking all day long, but I wouldn’t want to live there again.

Dublin-based artist Orla Walsh immortalises household brands – Tayto, Jacob’s, Brown Thomas bag – as prints. Her pop-up show at Powerscourt Townhouse in Dublin runs until Saturday.

BOOK THIS IS GOING TO HURT

A book that can make me laugh out loud and then bring me to tears is my favourite kind. When I was given This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay a couple of years ago, I was hooked from the first page. Kay was a junior doctor in the UK’s NHS and kept a diary about the highs and lows of his experiences while training. He manages to bring you along on his trip, an emotional rollercoaster of elation and chronic tiredness that comes with the crazy long hours. It’s truly awful and absolutely hilarious at the same time.

TV AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

My husband and I recently watched American Nightmare.

It’s about a young suburban couple who were asleep in their bed and a man broke into their home and abducted the girlfriend. The police didn’t believe the boyfriend’s story and assumed he had done something to her. Two days later the abductor dropped her off at her parents’ home hundreds of miles away. The unfolding story of what happened that night, and its impact on the couple’s life, is a living nightmare.

PODCAST SCAMANDA

While I’m painting I listen to podcasts for hours. Ryan Tubridy’s The Bookshelf is a good, chatty listen with recommendations. Who Trolled Amber was also brilliant. It’s a six-part series about the Depp’s vs Heard case and how the trolling of Amber was not entirely organic. It’s a fascinating listen about fake news. Scamanda is also great, about a beautiful young girl who seems like she has everything going for her but for some godforsaken reason she pretends that she has cancer. There are 15 episodes of this true story of deception and swindling.

ARTIST CJ HENDRY

If money was no object, I’d buy a piece by CJ Hendry, best known for her large-scale hyper-real drawings. Her thought process is extraordinary and she and her team come up with quirky ideas so outside the box. One exhibition was in a London church that snowed inside; another a lifesized adult playground.