Getting into a spin with the men in Lycra

RADIO REVIEW:WE NEED to talk about Gavin. Summer on One(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), the 9am filler show before the new autumn schedule, presented by Gavin Duffy, has the same identity problem as Ryan Tubridy's show, which has just left that slot. Duffy has that similar thought-for-the-dayness as Derek Mooney, dishing out his thruppenceworth like shiny

gold pieces; the rather unpredictable nature of Paddy O’Gorman; and the forced happy-clappy vibe of Ryan Tubridy. It wasn’t pretty.

On Monday Duffy unveiled three Mamils – middle-aged men in Lycra. Get it? Older men who buy fancy racing bikes and cycle by when you’re stuffing your face with Tayto crisps and ham sandwiches on a picnic table in the country. “Are they eye candy or an eyesore?” he asked. He introduced three such geezers: Bart Glover, Alan Heary and PJ Nolan. We didn’t get to know much more about them – except that they race bikes in Lycra shorts.

“What’s the verdict from a fashionista like yourself?” he asked Nicky Harris, a female blogger, on the phone. (The word “fashionista” should be banned in the RTÉ style book, along with “recessionista”.)

Harris told Duffy, “I put a tweet out last night, Gavin, to ask a few of my Twitter friends what they thought, and the consensus was completely 50-50: the men said it was purely for performance and the women all said it wasn’t a great look.”

At this point I wanted to fashion a Lycra muzzle and courier it to RTÉ.

Harris added, “I was out in Dalkey and I was out in Killiney yesterday, and they were whizzing past me at various speeds, and my verdict on the fashion thing was, if you’re going fast, guys, it looks okay.” An alarm kept going off in the background. Perhaps the fashion – or, better still, broadcast – police were already on their way.

If the ghost of Tubridy shows past was haunting Radio 1, Coleman at Large(Newstalk 106-108, Tuesdays and Wednesdays) was hoping to drag Tubridy into the studio over an erroneous tabloid-generated story about whether The Late Late Showshould interview the convicted rapist Larry Murphy. Marc Coleman opined: "You're listening to a programme that has a fundamental clear and consistent position on the idea of interviewing convicted rapists on air. We don't do it and we think it should be banned." It sounded like he was doing a bad Bill O'Reilly impression.

Tubridy had released a statement saying he never requested Murphy and has no interest in meeting Murphy. Coleman had Fine Gael's Charlie Flanagan on the phone to discuss it, but Coleman first asked him about Ivor Callely's resignation from Fianna Fáil over his expenses. "If every politician in Dáil Éireann and the Oireachtas [told the truth], sure half of you would be resigning, wouldn't you?" Coleman said. "I certainly wouldn't dare judge anyone in the manner in which you have just said, Marc," Flanagan responded. He added, "In the cold light of tomorrow morning just play back what you've said, the flippant tone by which you have said it . . . In actual fact, Marc, I'm just going back to watch The Rose of Tralee,if you don't mind. Bye, bye." Click.

The presenter's pompous tone was becoming increasingly difficult to bear for his studio guests too. Seamus Dooley, the national secretary of the NUJ, read more from the RTÉ statement: " The Late Late Showproduction team has not made any approach to Larry Murphy nor has it any intention in doing so." Dooley told Coleman, "I'm going to do a Charlie Flanagan if you keep interrupting." Former senator Deirdre de Búrca called the attempt to impugn Tubridy a "witch hunt".

Afterwards Coleman said, “We did invite and welcomed the idea of Ryan Tubridy on the show, not that I have any delusions of grandeur that a man of that stature would bother himself coming on.” It sounded like an old-fashioned case of the green-eyed monster to me.

On Wednesday Tubridy(2FM, weekdays) did a solid interview with Josephine Pender, mother of Fiona Pender, who went missing in August 1996 from her home in Tullamore, Co Offaly, aged 25; she was seven months pregnant. She spoke of her husband's suicide after the disappearance. Mrs Pender said her children used to say, "'Daddy, can you fix this; Daddy, can you fix that?' He couldn't fix this." She said there was a chief suspect in the case and didn't believe there was any connection to Murphy (who was also convicted of attempted murder). Mrs Pender spoke eloquently and, in a time of national grief about the state of the economy, reminded most of us that we have many, many reasons to be thankful.