IT'S the sort of thing that gets a certain class of letter writer highly exercised. You know the one: can our media friends across the water explain why it is that when Seamus Heaney wins the Nobel Prize he's British, but when Alex Higgins gets in trouble he's Irish, etc?

Last week the Beeb launched a new series called Irish Icons (BBC Radio 4, Monday), which will take in such weekly topics as the harp, the pub, the BVM etc. So what did they start with? Go on, guess.

Yes, lying as it does on the Atlantic floor, the Titanic is suitably Irish. Okay, now put the moan aside and listen to Owen McFadden's excellent documentary, which put the great ship back in the Belfast shipyards, where it was born, and conjured up the atmosphere of its creation. Picture this: 20 horses pull an anchor, along rails, through the streets that ran from the foundry to the place where the mountain of a vessel was rising. Then imagine what such a behemoth represented in 1912, as Carson organised resistance to the drive for Home Rule. And think about the mixed up sentiments of Belfast nationalists, largely shutout of Harland and Wolff, when they heard the awful news about this symbol of the industrial might of Unionist Ulster.

The Titanic is always dragged out as a symbol of humanity's overreaching pride. Irish Icons recognised the currency of such drivel - first heard, in sermons the world over, on the Sunday after the ship sank - but gave priority to its symbolism for the community that built it and sent people to die with the unsinkable boat. East Belfast's loyalty to "her" can be heard to this day.

Meanwhile, our friends across the water sit in judgment on another Irish icon. Reynolds v The Sunday Times is an extraordinary spectacle, which most newspapers have recognised by sending top colour writers to cover it. But none is as colourful as Joe Duffy on Daily Record (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), with the added attraction of being the first to report.

The programme sensibly gave him roughly the same slot most days, so commuters tuning in at 5.15 or 5.20 p.m. could hear Duffy bursting to tell us about Albert's strange situation, as a jury "straight off the top of the Clapham omnibus" peer at their maps of Ireland, and a judge who's "pure Alastair Sim" comments on possible reporting restrictions by doubting that anyone could understand the evidence anyway.

Stayed tuned; as the song says, things can only get better.

THINGS have been looking up for the granny who survived cancer and lupus, climbed Kilimanjaro last month and told Pat about it (Today with Pat Kenny, RTE' Radio 1, Monday to Friday). Fair play to her, but the most sadly telling comment about her Tanzanian escapade was when she revealed that a climbing party of 14 tourists (of whom most were far younger than herself) was accompanied by 35 native guides to carry luggage etc.

Fair play to her again, at the interview's end she put out a plea for second hand boots for four of the guides, who climbed the rugged mountain in rubber flip flops. Pat didn't appear to find this remarkable, and said unironically that he was sure getting boots from listeners would pose no problem.

It's the sort of issue Web of Life (RTE Radio 1, Thursday) might do well to include, a real example of the planetary web and its irregularities. Last month I heard the first few episodes of producer Sarah MacDonald's green series, and - apart from some strong stuff about Chernobyl from the ubiquitous Adi Roche - there seemed to be a preponderance of waffling about "ecospirituality" and various unsupported assertions. Add lots of Sting's music, and you have a programme that - on aesthetic grounds alone - could fight the good fight without me.

I happened on it again last week, when a programme on "green economics" had lots more substance, with Richard Douthwaite and Sean McDonagh talking about the need for "natural resource accounting" and "community economics". But it's disappointing when such spokesmen leave themselves open to attack: Sean McDonagh, for example, asserted that a 10 per cent increase in our GDP is no cause for joy, since it might have been achieved by higher imports of "cheap products" made by "slave labour in Third World countries".

While such imports might well increase with Irish prosperity, they wouldn't affect GDP unless they were being processed here.

Handicapped children and autobiographical documentaries are a bit of radio mainstay these days. However, David (RTE Radio 1, Thursday) certainly transcended the familiar. Anne Marie Power's work was a creative evocation of growing up with a brother who is only 11 months younger but whose mental abilities seem to leave him worlds apart.

Most powerfully, it conveyed the denial of David's adolescence - a daunting prospect even in this loving family.