Radio: Even modern radio has its ‘stop and listen’ moments

This is what I know about the spontaneity of Irish radio. When we were kids we walked from room to room after our granny as she went about her day, and along with the ashtray came the radio: heavy and black, swinging on its handle. Sometimes she would sit down to listen carefully to something, and you’d have to be quiet.

On air the presenter would be gentle. You’d sense schedules being frantically reshuffled. “Stay on the line there. No, you’re all right, you’re all right.” People stayed in their cars in the driveway to hear the end of it.

Maybe it’s harder now to engender that sense of national interest. But there are unique moments. Ray D’Arcy’s interview last week with Joe Flynn, a terminally ill father from Tralee, was one. Another is the segment on Monday’s Today with Sean O’Rourke (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) in which Orla Ryan speaks with raw emotion about losing her father, three years ago.

“We are grateful that we got to tell him we loved him . . . It was a very beautiful time in many ways, so we’re grateful for that,” she says.

Ryan is candid about her grief and about the unhelpful things that people can say, such as “Time is a great healer.” “Show up and shut up,” advises Susan Delaney of the Irish Hospice Foundation. “Be there and simply acknowledge the loss.”

Texts come in from listeners with sympathy and advice. It’s a beautiful piece of stop-and-listen radio.

It’s 12 months since Jonathan Corry was found dead in a doorway within sight of Leinster House. On Monday, for a two-part special on homelessness, The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, weekdays) takes to the streets on a bitterly cold night. What transpires is truthful, effective radio.

Kenny is accompanied by Richie Williams, a volunteer with Night Cafe. Sometimes Kenny’s reactions make you cringe with familiarity: it’s the privileged reaction you might have yourself. Williams counters with a more sympathetic understanding.

When they are approached by a man asking, with droning repetition, for spare change for a hostel, Kenny says: “He’s got his spiel.”

“That’s a survival mechanism for him,” Williams says. “We’re just waiting for that man to put his hand out, so we can help him.”

Another man is on the street because he is afraid of hostels: “I was robbed one night in a hostel with a syringe.” Kenny asks if he could turn it around: he’s a young man. But he is hopeless and doesn’t think people will give him a chance.

Then he says to Kenny: “You’re a good man. I’ve watched all your shows. My mother watches all your shows, and she’s a big fan of you.” It makes you think of warm rooms with the telly on, the same voices on the radio in all our houses.

Shay has been homeless for seven years. “I lost my job and my flat went with it, and I ended up on the street. Remember the recession, like?”

“You seem remarkably not sorry for yourself,” Kenny says.

“It makes you strong. People always say, ‘Why are you always smiling?’ What do you expect me to do? Cry? And I believe in God. God is good. Great to meet you, Pat.”

As the night goes on Kenny moves away from offering solutions and just listens. He is despondent by the end. “You’re talking to people and you wonder, Why are you on the street with a lively intelligence and an appetite for life? How do you turn back the clock? Or how do you make a change? I don’t know.”

Documentary on One: Sand Sea and Smugglers (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) brings us the story of two Syrian brothers, Ammar and Anas, as they make their journey from Damascus to Ballyhaunis. The men recall their desperate dealings with human traffickers in Libya and Italy, choking on engine smoke on a rickety boat, the wonder of finding some money their father had sewn into their jeans before they left. In a moment of quiet desperation at sea Ammar sees nothing but black before him, hears only the waves, and thinks, I’m not a bad guy – why did this happen to me?

The documentary is full of humanity and insight, hampered only by the slightly flat way in which it is pulled together by the narrator, who resists allowing any sense of herself in the telling. Perhaps a certain style of American podcast – brilliantly packaged documentaries that don’t just tell you the story but also show the investigation behind it – has influenced me.

Earbud FM launched this week. This new US site, from National Public Radio, curates podcasts from around the world. Podcasts deserve “the kind of editorial attention our cultural news department gives to books, movies and music”, says Michael Oreskes of NPR. But they are an entirely different animal from Irish radio. They do not rely on personality, or beautiful moments of spontaneity, or the kindness of an army of listeners texting in with sympathy and advice.

Moment of the Week: Real real gone

“That man Van Morrison has no personality or etiquette. He’s a lovely, good singer, but he’s just not very nice with his audience.” June, a caller to Liveline, is telling Joe Duffy about their concert experience last week. She has no time for his rock-star nonsense. “Tom Jones was very good and chatty and smiley with the audience . . . I wouldn’t be used to Van Morrison.” Not only was he lacking in charm, she says, but he only did 90 minutes. “Did you get home in time to see the Late Late?” asks Duffy, full of the sympathetic goading he has perfected. The taxi men didn’t expect anyone out so early, so concert-goers were left standing in the cold. “I was waiting for Brown Eyed Girl, and my husband was waiting for Warm Love, and none of those . . .” “And then the two of you were left waiting for a warm taxi,” Duffy quips, delighted with himself.

Mick Heaney is away