Cause for reflection at the end of a difficult year

RADIO REVIEW:GOD BLESS Sean Moncrieff for working Christmas week . . . even if most people were watching the television instead. Many regular radio presenters were off this week. On a wet and windy Wednesday, "Catherine in Cava" wrote into Moncrieff(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) to say, "I can't wait to get back to work." Moncrieff wondered if it was because she was stuck in a bottle of Cava, but it turned out she was from "Cavan.", writes QUENTIN FOTTRELL

Poor Moncrieff was working. “Every day I’ve left a house full of people who haven’t gotten up, some of them in their pyjamas,” he said. Another texter said Newstalk was the only station he could get while driving through the Port Tunnel, which must make broadcasting during Christmas week a little more worthwhile.

Radio Kerry is a cracking regional station but is no longer on digital, so you won't get it in the Port Tunnel or anywhere else in Dublin. Still, it's worth catching the Kingdom online from time-to-time. Dáithí McMahon's historical drama Tom Crean and the Terra Nova Expedition(Radio Kerry, Friday), which traced Crean's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition with Captain Robert Falcon Scott, was a treat, like a voyage to the bottom of a giant tin of multi-coloured Roses.

They set off in 1911. "You are standing on the world's last unexplored continent!" declared Scott (Cormac Cortello). He, Crean (Alan Teahan) and the team were racing Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen to be the first to the South Pole. It had all the taut melodrama of the old Buster Crabbe 1930s Flash GordonB-movie serials. In short, I loved it.

Following last year's Presidential Lecture Series, Conversations at the Áras(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) was hosted by President Mary McAleese and presented by Joe Duffy over five days. The first broadcast on Monday was ambitious in its scope: culture and heritage – Discuss. Actor Gabriel Byrne, (right), poet Paula Meehan and, to a lesser extent, former Cork hurling manager John Allen all tried to out-waffle each other.

The President – who is rarely brief – said, “Ireland is going through a very testing time and it requires a lot of reflection and a lot of discussion.” That’s just what I was afraid of.

Duffy asked Byrne if we over-valued or under-valued our culture. Byrne drew breath: “Culture is the accumulation of the wisdom and pain of our story as a tribe and who we’ve been for thousands of years. It serves as a kind of inspiration or road map. Not just the present but the future.” And that was an abridged version.

Meehan said, “If the bin men go on strike, the streets start to smell. If the artists went on strike it could be 100 years before anyone noticed there was a big hole in the heart of the culture.”

The conversation moved to Cork GAA player Donal Óg Cusack’s homosexuality. “It was a nine-day wonder for Donal Óg and it’s not being spoken about anymore, and rightly so,” Allen said. Byrne said writers like John McGahern and Edna O’Brien “were the first ones to lift the rocks.” President McAleese added, “The more our young people are encouraged to believe in their identity, and in particularly their sexual identity, the more healthy it is for their mental health, their emotional health, their physical health.”

In a country with a Civil Partnership Bill that does not protect gay families or give gay couples equal rights, her words – while welcome – carried precious little weight.

More cause for reflection: Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin told Ger Gilroy on Wednesday's The Right Hook(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) that TV3 News making Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan's illness public knowledge was "a direct invasion of a man's personal life at Christmas time". This was the first confirmation from a Government minister of his illness. Hanafin said Lenihan was upbeat and doing well. "Obviously, as colleagues, we are all very upset that he has this illness, but he is ready to take on this challenge," she said.

Poet Paula Meehan turned up again on Morning Ireland's (RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) review of the decade on Thursday.

She read from Death of a Field. ". . . The end of dandelion is the start of Flash/ The end of dock is the start of Pledge/ The end of teazel is the start of Ariel/ The end of primrose is the start of Brillo/ The end of sloe is the start of Oxyaction/ The end of. . ."

We get it. We get it. Enough pouring over the past. It was now time to get out of bed, face the day, and whatever else this New Year may bring.