As if the prospect of the clocks going back this weekend wasn’t enough of a jolt, Joe Duffy confuses matters further on Monday when he decides to push time in the opposite direction. “Everyone in Ireland, we’re all going forward 12 minutes,” he declares on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), apparently proclaiming the kind of unilateral temporal adjustment usually reserved for Renaissance-era popes. Cue a fanfare of barely audible clanging bells.
Anyone worried about the host’s sanity can relax, however. In his exaggeratedly jokey manner, Duffy is merely facilitating Bob, a caller who demonstrates the hourly chimes of his vintage clock by moving its hands forward, though the resulting peals lose their impact over the phone. It’s part of a meandering conversation prompted by the imminent move to winter time; it was sparked by another caller, Eithne, who for many years refused to change the clocks in her house. “I felt I was gaining an extra hour of daylight,” she says, taunting those listeners about to lose an hour of their life to the aimless chat that ensues.
Quixotic attempts to make time stand still notwithstanding, Duffy’s focus is otherwise firmly fixed on the past, as he mines guests for the fond reminiscences about old Ireland that increasingly dominate slow days on Liveline. So Tom remembers gauging the passage of his work day in the 1960s by listening out for the Angelus – “Very few people had watches in those days,” he says – while Jimmy recounts how entire parishes voted against changing the clocks a century ago.
It’s all harmless enough, and occasionally even entertaining. “Are you an expert in time?” Duffy asks Jimmy. “Indeed I’m not, only killing it,” comes the reply, in an impishly immaculate vernacular. But the segment has no point other than filling airtime, underlining how unmoored Liveline can sound when not anchored by weighty subjects.
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But when the host dons his consumer-affairs hat, proceedings really tip into caricature, as Duffy talks to callers outraged at high prices for food. Among them are Mary, who’s incredulous at being charged €9.80 for two sausage rolls at a hospital canteen, and Keith, who’s annoyed that he was asked to pay an additional €2.35 after ordering breakfast from the “extras” section of the menu at a Dublin Airport cafe.
One doesn’t have to be in favour of endemic price-gouging in airports and hospitals, nor be unsympathetic to the irritation felt by captive customers, to wonder whether gripes over such small sums merit coverage on the national airwaves. Even the host seems slightly nonplussed at the irritation at times – “Is the clue in the word ‘extra’?” he gently inquires about Keith’s complaint – but he allows his callers to vent anyway. Duffy may not be able to control time, but when he’s dealing with material like this, 20 minutes can seem like an eternity.
Looking back at times gone by doesn’t always have to involve a veil of gauzy nostalgia. For 14 years now Myles Dungan has brought intelligence and accessibility to episodes from the past on The History Show (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday). And while Dungan, a historian in his own right, is adept at handling big historical events, such as the momentous independence struggles commemorated during Ireland’s Decade of Centenaries, he can also imbue niche areas with wider interest – an important skill for any broadcaster.
Dungan’s interview with the University College Dublin academic Phyllis Gaffney is a case in point. Gaffney has just published a history of language teaching in Victorian Ireland, a subject that might be charitably viewed as specialist, but the discussion that follows is wide-ranging and unexpectedly fascinating.
Among the themes covered are the francophone origins of Blackrock College, the traditional dominance of the classics in British universities – a legacy that has continued down to Boris Johnson, Dungan notes – and how the innovative foreign-language education of 19th-century Ireland has given way to monolinguism as English becomes globally ubiquitous. It’s an object lesson in transforming potentially arid topics into lively radio.
Even still, the nation’s long fight for freedom, that evergreen golden oldie of Irish popular history, also features in the show. Ian Kenneally reports on how the Civil War killing of a Westmeath anti-Treaty IRA man by Free State forces inspired both a modern song and an old ballad, the latter so sentimentally partisan in its republican mythmaking that even the Wolfe Tones might regard it as a tad one-sided.
Dungan also talks to the Australian author Thomas Keneally about the controversial Irish patriot John Mitchel, the subject of his latest historical novel, Fanatic Heart. As well as being proud of his Irish roots, the Booker-winning writer is a genuine literary A-lister, so his presence on the show represents a coup. But it’s no backslapping encounter.
[ Unholy row – An Irishman’s Diary on John Mitchel and Archbishop John HughesOpens in new window ]
Instead Dungan and Keneally robustly dissect the troubling life of Mitchel, the exiled Young Irelander firebrand who escaped from Tasmania to the United States, where he became an ardent defender of slavery, siding with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Asked by the host why he chose to write about a figure “long outed as a white supremacist”, Keneally grapples with Mitchel’s vile prejudice, influenced by prevailing racist theories and his revulsion at US capitalism, while unequivocally condemning it: he describes slavery as “absolute human obscenity”.
It’s a stimulating joust, with Dungan repeatedly asking about Mitchel’s damaged legacy, while Keneally tries to understand his subject’s contrarian nature and extreme temperament. The author also offers self-deprecating asides on how racist Victorian phrenologists would have viewed his own heritage. “I’ve got a weird head from north Cork,” he chuckles. “I’ve got a criminal skull.”
Still, by the end, Mitchel’s reputation is so tarnished that Dungan is surely right to wonder if so many GAA clubs should still bear his name. It’s history at its most compelling, though it wouldn’t make you want to turn back time.
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