For a long time it was the love that dare not speak its name, but these days it is a ubiquitous lifestyle, and elements of its distinctive culture are seeping into every corner of Irish media, with RTÉ – yes, RTÉ – fearlessly leading the charge against ingrained prejudices and sneering mockery. Long derided for its swooshily sentimental music, embarrassing dance moves and garishly glittery garb, country music is now celebrated and even promoted on the national broadcaster.
It’s not just that Garth Brooks, the genre’s biggest star of recent times, has seemingly taken up residence on The John Murray Show (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), turning up for the second time in two weeks to plug his Croke Park shows on Monday’s programme. Even amid the relatively staid surroundings of Today With Seán O’Rourke (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), country’s virtues are excitedly sung, with Marie-Louise O’Donnell’s item on the rising star Nathan Carter less a report than a gushing paean.
In her account of gigs seen the previous weekend, O’Donnell can barely contain her excitement, imbuing her description of the Liverpool-Irish singer with a near-messianic zeal. “He’s a phenomenon,” says O’Donnell, adding that the “young and handsome” Carter “has brought music and dancing back to life”.
O’Donnell may be prone to the overly sweeping statement – “I think young people are sick of the disco and electronic music,” she asserts, displaying a hitherto hidden knowledge of youthful clubbing habits – but her enthusiastic delivery reflects the joyful mood of the fans she encountered at Carter’s concerts. O’Donnell is so gleeful about the jiving and music she witnessed that even the unflappable O’Rourke is thrown off balance, cutting across her rapturous descriptions: “It’s real send-them-home-sweating stuff,” he remarks. But with its cast of melancholy fiftysomething bachelors and homely local-hotel receptionists, the item is not just a heartfelt appreciation of country and western but also a salute to the rituals and rhythms of rural Irish life.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it is hard to imagine the show featuring such an uncritically exuberant report on, say, a gay club. True, O’Rourke also introduces a report recorded when “Paddy O’Gorman stood outside a gay bar in Dublin last night”, though the item turns out to be a sober vox pop with gay men on the issue of homophobia, “a topic in the air”, to quote O’Gorman’s description.
The report yields some salient points, not least a general consensus that Ireland is more tolerant than before, although the fact that some of the gay men O’Gorman meets – a GAA referee among them – do not want to be interviewed on air suggests that the country is not as open minded as it might be.
Also of note is the man who says that just because people are against gay marriage doesn’t make them homophobic. It seems a particularly pointed inclusion in a week when RTÉ revealed it paid out €85,000 to journalists and others thusly described on television by the drag artist Rory O’Neill. Just as conspicuous is O’Rourke’s failure to mention the O’Neill controversy in his preamble to O’Gorman’s report. Such an omission from the usually meticulous presenter is disappointing, to say the least.
On Wednesday, Ryan Tubridy (2FM, weekdays) is slightly less reticent on the matter. After he recounts a faux pas he made by accidentally signing a text to an RTÉ executive with an "x" – "I hope he didn't think I was trying to sugar him up with a kiss," he frets – a listener's text jokily refers to the presenter as "my little old spring pansy". Tubridy giggles that this term "is in itself homophobic" before pulling himself up: "You're not allowed to say that in RTÉ any more. Oh no." It's a sly and funny reference to the current kerfuffle, but that's as far as it goes.
Tubridy instead turns his attention to another apparently marginalised group, talking to the athlete Derval O’Rourke about the skewed coverage of women in sport. It’s a lively exchange, with O’Rourke making a good case that female sporting stars are overlooked, and valued for their looks as much as for their ability, while Tubridy argues that the public’s preference for the likes of Gaelic football over camogie is “democracy”. “You can’t force a sense of equality,” he says, suggesting a disregard for liberal pieties, if nothing else. But it’s to Tubridy’s credit that he engages with these issues openly.
It would be a brave soul who would sideline the Riverdance producer Moya Doherty, going by her interview on Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday and Sunday). Doherty talks about her career but does not give a great deal away about herself. Her language, however, is more revealing than her anecdotes. She approvingly uses the adjective "tough" about several people, and her view on labour relations is captured by her precis of a union dispute at ITV: "They went to the pub across the way on strike and they never got back in again." Er, hurrah.
But she also possesses a refreshing streak of self-reliance. Dismissing the impact of negative reviews, she says pithily: “You can’t bob like a cork in the ocean on the whim of everyone else’s view of you.”
For those who dare to be different, it’s not a bad philosophy.
radioreview@irishtimes.com
