Daddy Tubridy tut-tuts for Ireland

RadioReview: You'd have to pity the Scottish playwright David Harrower (The Tubridy Show, RTÉ Radio 1, Monday). He was probably told by the publicist for his play Blackbird, which opened in Dublin this week, that he was going on a programme that describes itself on its website as one that examines "Irish culture, society and politics with curiosity and an open mind".

He might even have been looking forward to an interesting discussion on his undeniably challenging and critically acclaimed play, which deals with a sexual relationship between a 12-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man explored from a vantage point 15 years later.

Though maybe when Harrower mentioned The Tubridy Show to the the taxi man on the way out to the studio he was put right, because when it comes to arts matters the show has a narrow focus indeed. Fine when it's about its middle-of-the-road book club, or sometimes particularly good when Ryan Tubridy interviews an author whose work he likes - but that's it. And as the show now handles more and more arts features, in the absence of any other slot to put them in, that's not great.

What Harrower was faced with was an interviewer whose mind was clamped shut, who hadn't even seen his play and who had decided, whether through wilful obstinacy or plain ignorance of the creative process, that Harrower was some sort of grubby voyeur.

"Why did you decide that the subject matter was so intriguing to you," was one of his typically sneery-toned questions, asked after Harrower had explained with great clarity his abhorrence of paedophilia and that to him the challenge was to explore what happened from the point of view of the protagonists through "the screen of time". He should have saved his breath. "Do you have any kids of your own? It might change your perspective on things," asked smug daddy Tubridy, by now so puffed up with his own sense of moral superiority that he couldn't have understood the complete irrelevance of his question.

"Were you looking for something controversial to write about? You could be writing about meadows and flowers." Harrower gently explained that maybe meadows mightn't be the most interesting subject matter.

William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar opened at the Abbey this week and it's fortunate that the Bard wasn't around to do a bit of pre-show publicity. After all, he could hardly get to the end of a play without fratricide, suicide, incest, murder most foul and buckets of blood - the murky swamps deep in the human psyche. Tubridy may have felt he was tut-tutting for Ireland, but listeners, who are well able to make up their own minds if presented with an intelligent interview, deserve more credit. And playwrights deserve more respect.

Given the week that was in it there was more than the usual amount of hearts and flowers on the airwaves. Pat Boran (The Poetry Programme, RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) had love poems submitted by listeners. How could you not warm to Patricia for John, the best cook on the planet - about a woman whose man discovers the joy of cookery, adores feeding her and then dumps her because she isn't the thin woman he fell in love with? Or Mary O'Connell's appropriately corny Valentine To Bertie: "The mattress could be lumpy with all those banknotes poking through, but we'd be so good together, PS I love you."

Heart-warming too were the stories in Just One Look (BBC Radio Ulster, Monday) from couples convinced that theirs was love at first sight, although predictably there were experts on hand to rubbish the idea and to roll out that romance-killing theory that men are hot-wired from birth to fall in love with someone who reminds them of their mother.

Aoife Kavanagh resisted all quips about hot air on Monday and Tuesday (Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio 1) when she brought two energy experts into four politicians' houses to conduct an energy audit.

The home of the Green Party's Eamon Ryan came out best of the four surveyed, though PD Fiona O'Malley's draughty frugality - no central heating and a leaky roof - was impressive.

Sinn Fein's Arthur Morgan and Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd were also game but the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche - who surely should be a shining example of energy efficiency and eco know-how, refused to take part on the grounds that he was too busy - a dog-ate-my-homework excuse if ever there was one.