The names and numbers don't add up

RADIO REVIEW:IT SHOULD come as no surprise that Colm Hayes(2FM, weekdays) was obsessing over numbers last Tuesday.

Since he took over the last hour of the late Gerry Ryan’s mid-morning slot (with an additional hour to take the show into the early afternoon), Hayes has seen his audience decline steadily.

These were not the figures that concerned him, however. Instead, the presenter focused on the US’s $14 trillion debt. The numbers involved left Hayes in a state of bemused wonderment. “Trillions,” he said, “I’ve never heard this word.” One trusts he was hamming up his ignorance for effect; either way, he sought contributions on how much a trillion actually was.

Soon, however, the talk took a different turn, as three callers expounded theories as to how the US had accumulated such debt. The resulting discussion was so confused it made the average Livelineding-dong sound like an economics seminar chaired by Paul Krugman. The root of the problem, said one caller, was that the US had come off the gold standard: the dollar, like the euro, was now "a fake currency".

This debate, dating back a century, was not the only old chestnut being dusted down. Another caller said that since the Bank of England was set up in the 17th century, “the same names” had controlled the banks: the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and the Warburgs. Far from dismissing this hoary hypothesis, Hayes encouraged talk on the matter, apparently unaware of its unsavoury historical aspects. (In the past, talk about international banking cartels had an anti-Semitic undertone.) “So, in respect to the money in the world,” Hayes asked, “the biggest reserves are owned by about three families?” Receiving an affirmative answer, he said such a scenario was “scary”, adding that the Chinese would soon “become the fourth family”. At least the presenter cited impeccable sources for his musings: “There’s a very good book at the moment, or is it a movie, about the families that basically control the world.” Quite.

To be fair, Hayes’s main objective was to inject life into the show. The day’s other topic, about the paucity of ATMs in some areas, was as exciting as one would expect. But the deeper problem is that Hayes lacks the innate touch of Ryan or even Tubridy, whose show precedes his. Having made his name as part of a duo with “Jim-Jim” Nugent, he is less sparky as a solo act. Smarter than he sometimes appears, he can be hampered by his content. Wednesday’s item about buying a good bed, with the physiotherapist Fiachra MacLeid, would have been fine in a health magazine, but was flat in the context of this once-fiery slot.

Hayes only really came into his own after reading an e-mail from a man whose brother had killed himself after, he wrote, being pursued for a €112,000 debt by two banks. “That’s a tough e-mail to write,” said Hayes soberly. Wisely, he did not harp on the matter, beyond the bare minimum. “It’s only bloody money,” Hayes said. “Let them wait.” Some numbers aren’t worth fretting over.

George Hook could never be accused of shying away from controversial opinions, with David Norris's withdrawal from the presidential race bringing out his most bumptious characteristics. On Tuesday's The Right Hook(Newstalk, weekdays), he hosted a scattergun discussion on the matter.

The PR guru Terry Prone spoke about the naivety of Norris’s campaign, while the broadcaster Tom McGurk went seriously off-piste, yammering on about the presidential election being an “absurd beauty contest”. McGurk may have had a valid point, but it was undermined by his boorishness.

He asked Prone if she would put a dress on the Fine Gael candidate Gay Mitchell, whose campaign she works for, and huffed that she had “no sense of humour” when she rightly took offence. Even the host sounded taken aback his old rugby-presenting buddy’s manner, declaring his guest was wrong about the importance of the presidency.

If McGurk was uninterested in the specific issue that had undone Norris – his Seanad letter seeking clemency in his former lover’s sentence for statutory rape of 15-year-old boy in Israel – Hook jumped right in. The presenter opined that Norris was “iffy on the issue of homosexual sex with minors”, before taking a wider view. “It’s come to the point where it’s okay to be a homosexual, a lesbian, a black or a Jew,” Hook said, “but it’s bad to be a Catholic.” Fearing accusations of homophobia, journalists had “pussyfooted” when it came to asking questions about Norris’s past. It was a tedious slice of angry white male rhetoric, which, far from tackling the troubling aspects of the matter, only muddied the waters.

Hook's indignant lather contrasted with The Last Word(Today FM, weekdays), where stand-in host Anton Savage conducted an interview with Norris which was inquisitive yet dignified. The discussion showed up the failed candidate's weaknesses – he conflated his Israeli plea with his appeals for jailed Tibetan monks – while highlighting his lack of resentment and acceptance of responsibility: he did not believe there was a conspiracy against him. If only everyone on the radio was so sensible.

Radio moment of the week

On Wednesday's News At One(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), Gavin Jennings was speaking to Alan Dukes about attempts to reclaim an €11,000 watch given as a parting gift to Michael Fingleton, the former head of Irish Nationwide, when the anchor's outrage apparently got the better of him.

“You’re appealing, essentially, to his [Fingleton’s] better nature,” Jennings said. “What evidence do you have that he has a better nature?”

He was only saying what most people are thinking.

radioreview@irishtimes.com