FAMINE anniversary programmes seem to have gone by the wayside, as the media of the 1990s follow the example of their 1840s' predecessors by prematurely deciding that the event is over.
Caoineadh an Ghorta (RTE Radio 1, Thursday) was an exception. With music by Peadar O Riada and some brilliant production by Paddy Glackin, this was a often powerful commemorative work, complete with some appropriate polemic, for example Christy Moore's musical reflections on a "single day" when itemised shiploads of food sailed from Cork, people starved in Galway and prominent Dublin citizens danced at the Lady Mayoress's ball.
The BBC decided against running its own humorous reflections on Irish history, 1690 and All That, in the wake of the Lisburn bomb. Instead, it stack with marking its own history, and a pretty proud one at that. BBC Radio 3 has been celebrating its origins in the Third Programme, while over on Radio 4 Woman's Hour (Monday to Friday) spent the week looking back on 50 years of programming.
Ignore the hammering it got from Patricia Redlich, (and Andy O'Mahony) on RTE's Sunday Show - the usual anti PC rubbish about "feminist orthodoxy", on a show that has become the equivalent of the cringe inducing barroom brawl that used to be in every movie about Ireland. Woman's Hour is one of the best things ever to happen on radio. Highlight programmes are not, perhaps, the best showcase for a programme that has always traded, in part, on its currency, but the week was a useful reminder of where we've been.
And as celebrations go, it was nowhere near as smug as most of Off the Shelf RTE Radio 1, Thursday. This was Seamus Hosey's documentary on the Ireland and its Diaspora festival at the Frankfurt Book Fair. As the playwright Marina Carr said, the festival is "already a myth", and this was the official version.
To be fair, it sparked into life a bit after it dispensed with Mary Robinson and Seamus Heaney; though I can't fathom why Hosey felt compelled to go back and finish the programme with Heaney's "hope and history" shtick - now well beyond cliche and into hair tearing territory.
Roddy Doyle played on stereo types about his work when he told a Frankfurt audience about a letter he received, after Family was screened, from a priest, who greeted him thus: "In your own words, Mr Doyle, fuck off!"
Glenn Patterson was the resident sceptic, asking, "Is anyone else fed up talking about Ireland and Irish writing?" He mocked the slightly tragic air that Irish writers must assume at such international events, and even sniffed at the very idea of "the tragedy of Ireland".
Well, I suppose we're due a Famine backlash.
Last week this column derided the absence of new voices on RTE Radio 1's new schedule. I failed to mention Carrie Crowley - disgracefully, given that my daughter is a fan of rising star Crowley's TV vehicle, The Morhegs.
On my beat, Crowley is co hosting Fandango (Tuesday to Thursday) with Ray D'Arcy, and she's a prime example of the sort of talent RTE must cultivate - young, hip and from the obvious testing ground of local radio. So why is she unique?
Perhaps some explanation can be heard in the unsuccessful efforts to force "chemistry" into the studio rapport between herself and the old Montrose hand that is Ray. He sounds stiff, she laughs at his "off the cuff" jokes before he's finished. Painful. Fandango itself is not much better, so far; it's blantly tearing off after a trendy audience - strange, then, to stick it into the old news slot - but with a tired format that just sounds like Arts Show Junior.
While I'm in apologetic mode, and at the risk of making this an interactive column (and why not?), I want to clarify comments made here two weeks ago about the inadequacy - "silly" was one word I used - of liberal replies to racist comments about adoption and immigration on Today with Pat Kenny. I have many disagreements with the approach of these anti racists; I don't believe, for example, that "race" is a meaningful term with which to look at differences within our species (though "racism" is, of course, all too meaningful).
But, more relevantly, I've never had the experience - for example - of raising brown skinned children in a predominantly white skinned society. I gladly accept that these callers are on the side of the angels.
