It's a clash of the volcanic ash as everyone jostles to tell their tale

RADIO REVIEW:IT WAS hard to know if the presenters of The Breakfast Show(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) were speaking in riddles. On Tuesday, while discussing the volcanic ash clouds, Ivan Yates said, "I haven't been on a plane in 10 years." Claire Byrne asked, "Is the fear of flying a control issue? You don't have control over your own destiny." It was a question and sentiment worth remembering.

Tom Dunne(Newstalk, weekdays) was on the case too. "Daniel O'Donnell is stuck in the Canaries and may not be able to make it home for his gigs. Oh. My. God." For someone who takes pride in playing vinyl records and ironic-depressive 1980s songs about girlfriends in comas, he's the last person who should slag off a post-modern Perry Como . . . or PomoComo.

God too got a bad rap this week. But nobody died. It wasn't an earthquake or a tsunami. It was a volcanic ash cloud grounding flights. Joe Duffy was playing God and fulfilling the duties of a state broadcaster on Tuesday's Liveline(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) by helping people get to their destinations by road, rail and sea. He could not part the red cloud like Moses, but you wouldn't know that to listen to the frantic amateur dramatics of some self-entitled holidaymakers.

Iris was stranded in Madrid. “Luckily we have a bed,” she said, “but we have to pay for it of course.” As opposed to getting it for free? Iris said she and her friend Bernadette were “mugged” by a group of kids wanting them to sign a fake petition. “Silly women, we opened our purses. I handed €3 and Bernadette handed €2.” Then the kids ran away. “Vigilante police came back with one by the scruff of the neck and Bernadette was quite irate at that point so she gave him a good slap across the jaw.” Listeners must have been agog, waiting for Duffy to pounce. Yet . . . he said nothing.

Not all stories shamelessly tried plucking the strings of our bleeding hearts. On Business Daily(BBC World Service, weekdays) one man turned the ash to his advantage. Pedro Beitra, a CEO from London, was stuck in Madrid and had to get a bus home. It took over 24 hours. "My God, that was terrible," he told Steve Evans. And his business?

Video conferencing. “That’s what happens when you don’t stick to your own principles,” Beitra lamented. But his client wanted to meet him face-to-face.

Beitra has seen business pick up. “We’re getting a little bit stressed with the demand that we’re seeing,” he said. Better still, spending time in Madrid allowed Beitra to shop. “I could buy some Spanish ham,” he said. “We haven’t been able to solve that with the virtual meeting.”

Chicago Public Radio's This American Life(RTÉ Choice, Monday) gifted us a collection of short stories about babysitting presented by Ira Glass. In The Event Of An Emergency, Put Your Sister In An Upright Positiontold the heartwarming tale of planes grounded in Chicago's O'Hare Airport on December 26th, 1988 due to snow. Susan Burton and her little sister Betsy were on a stopover in Chicago from Denver to Grand Rapids. They were like two tiny figures in a snow globe: encased amidst the shiny surfaces of the airport concourse and surrounded by a blizzard.

"There were two types of unaccompanied minors on flights out of Denver: divorced kids and skier kids," Burton said. "Because today was December 26th we suspected that even the boy with the raccoon-faced tan, the kind you get from ski goggles, was, like us, a divorced kid too." The airport staff hollered over the microphone when Susan and Betsy showed up. "I have two UMs at the service desk!" They were ushered into a room full of divorced kids. Her sister got her baby blanket out of her bag and began to sniff it. "It seemed we'd never been around so many divorced kids at once," Burton said. Susan's favourite video to rent was Kramer Vs Kramer; Betsy's was The Parent Trap.

The kids soon got competitive. “They exchanged a series of anecdotes about stepmothers and took a poll over who was the subject of a custody battle,” Burton said. “It felt like we were part of something on a grand scale: all these kids, here in Chicago, at the transfer point between mom and dad.” These were the kind of stories I longed for: those small, precious moments when everything is beyond your control, when you don’t look for someone to blame – or slap – but merely experience the shock and awe of what it’s like when life stands still.