Midway through his interview with Brendan O’Connor (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday and Sunday), Bono confesses to a failing that has been evident to listeners since he’s been on air. “I’m not very succinct,” the U2 frontman says by way of explaining his convoluted answers to O’Connor’s questions. The host seems happy enough to let his guest speak at his own pace, possibly viewing any verbal rambling as a small price to pay for having one of the most famous people in the world on his show for an hour.
But O’Connor’s indulgence extends only so far, and eventually he asks, tactfully but firmly, about the criticism Bono faced for accepting the US Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden in the light of American support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza: “When you look back on that now, do you think maybe was it wrong at this time to take that from America?” For once the response seems pretty clear. “Being a conscientious objector with somebody else’s conscience is quite a stretch,” the singer replies with a weary chuckle.
He speaks of his “real relationship” with Biden, built on work together on aid projects, while noting that United States arms shipments to Ukraine and Israel were tied up together: “These are complex affairs.”
Softening the mood, O’Connor highlights Bono’s own expressions of compassion for the suffering in Gaza, but his guest still appears more concerned with the brickbats aimed at him. “It’s strange, this competitive empathy that’s going around: ‘I feel this wound more than you’,” he says, just a touch sourly.
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It’s a revealing, unflattering moment, though it says more about the singer’s all-too-human sensitivities than about his views on Gaza. But for O’Connor it vindicates his approach of allowing proceedings to unfold at a relaxed pace before venturing into contentious territory.
Not that the conversation has been particularly dull beforehand. His meandering aside, Bono is in a loquaciously reflective mood as he’s quizzed about his relationship with his late father (“I became close friends with my father after he passed, which is not so smart”) and with his bandmates, particularly since the absence of Larry Mullen, the group’s drummer, from U2’s much-hyped Las Vegas residency: “That was a real challenge for us.”
He’s also more self-deprecating than his prickly take on the Biden medal kerfuffle might otherwise suggest. “When you get a certain level of recognition, it’s inevitable you turn into a bit of a caricature,” he says.
The encounter underlines O’Connor’s ever greater prominence in Radio 1’s roster, coming as it does after the JNLR listenership survey placed his show as the station’s second most popular programme. (He’s surpassed only by the seemingly unsinkable dreadnought that is Morning Ireland.)
After five years in his slot, he knows how to strike the balance between probing celebrity chats, candid human-interest interviews and more offbeat items, such as his larky conversation with the former Pogues member Cait O’Riordan about the often fractious dynamics within a band. “I do remember me and Shane [MacGowan] throwing stuff at each other on stage,” O’Riordan says by way of empirical case study.
And while there’s the odd flash of sly humour or jaded realism familiar from his newspaper-columnist persona, the host easily blends sympathy with curiosity when talking to the academic Mary Ann Kenny about her memoir on the breakdown she suffered following the death of her husband. “Our lives and our grip on reality can spiral out of control so quickly,” O’Connor says, with tangible sincerity. For now, however, he’s steering a steady course.
Indeed, O’Connor’s profile within RTÉ seems only likely to rise now that Joe Duffy is entering the home straight as host of Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays).
Having taken a two-week break after announcing his retirement, Duffy proves that his fabled broadcasting antennae are still twitching as he returns for his final stint. On Tuesday he keeps a debate about the mandatory wearing of school uniforms bubbling along, hearing out both sides while injecting some welcome levity, as when one caller traces the origins of such attire to educational traditions in Britain.
“Not only did the British give us The Fields of Athenry, the Famine, TB and everything else we blame them for, you’re saying they gave us uniforms?” the host exclaims with mock outrage.
Duffy’s emotions are all too raw and real, however, when he speaks to Ali al-Najjar, a Sligo-based doctor, about the sickening violence the Israeli military has inflicted on his family in Gaza. With remarkable composure, Najjar recounts how nine of his sister Alaa’s 10 children were killed by an Israeli missile strike on their home on Friday, May 23rd.
He only learned of the terrible news through social media: “I saw the horrible pictures of charred bodies being pulled out of the rubble, and those were her kids.” He also recalls recent conversations with Alaa, a paediatrician, in which she described the hellish experience of life in Gaza in terms that now sound like an atrocity foretold: “We believe we are already experiencing what doomsday is.”
When Duffy describes the slaughter of Alaa’s family as unspeakable beyond words, he’s being truthful in several ways: while his voice is hushed, it’s as if he’s unable to find the right words for what he’s hearing rather than for dramatic effect. But he keeps talking to Najjar, who despite his grief and anger avoids blind hatred, praising Israelis who have sympathised with his family’s unimaginable loss.
It all makes for harrowing listening, and sometimes awkward listening too: Duffy raises the issue of Hamas’s seizure of Israeli hostages only to pull back, conscious that he’s adding to his guest’s shocking burden.
Above all, Najjar’s testimony is a damning condemnation of Israel’s obscene actions in Gaza, his humane restraint only adding to the power of his indictment. Duffy makes pointed reference to Bono’s line about “competitive empathy” but largely acts as witness rather than host, letting Najjar have the succinct, searing last words: the names of his nephews and nieces.
Moment of the Week
On Wednesday Oliver Callan (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) enjoys the company of the actor Sorcha Cusack, one of the Irish thespian dynasty. Cusack is in gloriously unguarded form as she recalls her actor parents, Cyril (“He was tricky”) and Mary (“She wasn’t very good on film”).
Things become slightly unstuck, however, when Callan plays a clip of Cusack in the movie Snatch, playing the mother of Brad Pitt’s Traveller boxer. Asked about her accent in the film, Cusack replies: “I think it’s a pikey accent, they said.”
Suddenly alarmed at the pejorative term for Travellers, Callan tries to exculpate his guest by noting that it was in the script, only for her to repeat it: “I’d never heard the word.” “No, it’s a slur,” Callan states definitively, snatching Cusack from the jaws of more embarrassment.
