Radio presenter Sean Moncrieff seems finally to have found his voice on Newstalk. He has also written a glossary of popular religions. Bernice Harrison asks him why
Anyone eavesdropping in Wrights restaurant in Howth last Saturday would have heard Sean Moncrieff locked in conversation over a cup of coffee, talking about God. And this wasn't one of those "I don't believe in religion but I'm a reeelly spiritual person" media luvvie chats. It was the real thing.
How Vedic Hinduism influenced Zoroastrianism; how Rastafarians don't believe in death; and why Unitarianism is one of those catch-all religions that suits right-on liberals down to the ground. And that was just for starters. Moncrieff reels off the facts - and having spent six months writing God, A User's Guide, he's got an impressive grasp on even the most arcane facts about what he says are the top 20 most popular religions in the world. His book starts on the smallest, the Rastafari, and ends with Christianity.
"The media - and I suppose people in general - tend to put people in boxes," says Moncrieff, aware that this television-delivered image, honed on less than spiritually searching programmes such as Don't Feed the Gondolas and The Holiday Quiz, doesn't exactly suggest a man prepared to spend half of one of his 45 years researching world religions.
He is by his own description "a bit nerdy", and when he was hunting around for a subject to follow his previous book, Stark Raving Rulers, a guide to 21st-century despots, he hit on religion. "People who are familiar with my radio programme on Newstalk will find it less surprising," he says, adding that on every Tuesday he has a moral philosopher in studio to tease out the issues of the day. "TV tends to be more one dimensional; radio is more of a 360-degrees thing."
His profile as a radio presenter covering everything from current affairs to pop culture in his Moncrieff programme, is set to increase now that Newstalk, once a local station for Dublin, has gone national.
At the start of his career, fresh from his journalism course in the College of Commerce, Rathmines and working in his first job on the Northside News, he enrolled in UCD to do a degree at night in Philosophy and English. He did it, he says, out of pure, simple interest, the same reason he wrote this book. "Also, it struck me that in the world we live in, purely on a functional basis, people might want to find out more about the different religions."
He himself was brought up Catholic, though no longer practises, which makes his decision to bring up his children up as Catholics slightly puzzling. It's not even pressure from his wife. "She's worse than me," he laughs, "she's a rip-roaring atheist." It's down, he says, to giving the four children - who range in age from five to 15 - a way of explaining the world.
"Catholicism is as good a story as any, and perhaps when they're older they might want to explore another story - or not," he says. As animated as he gets talking about the book, he's more so about his job as afternoon presenter on the now national talk radio station. He wrote a novel, Dublin, five years ago which was not critically lauded, and finding a publisher for his second novel, The History of Things, took some time. It's due for publication next year, and he's not afraid to say that novel writing is what he really wants to do.
But Richard Dawkins this book is not. The opening line of the last chapter is: "Say what you like about Christianity, but one fact is undeniable: it's fierce popular." I suggest that the tone in parts of the book is at the very least, flip." It's a bit wry," Moncrieff corrects me sharpish, adding that "the wryness is a way of sugaring the pill a bit. I was quite careful not to offend anyone."
The publishers of his new book, Poolbeg, would appear not to be singing from quite the same hymn sheet. The book's jokey cover with its hand coming down from the sky pointing to the title is a bit reminiscent of Monty Python, and the lurid pink blurb "20 religions to get your soul whiter than white" doesn't match the content, which is more of a nuts and bolts guide to world religions than a self-help voyage of discovery. "It's all marketing," says Moncrieff of the cover, knowing that if a book like this has any chance on the shelves, it's going to have to involve a hard sell.
Surely such an immersion into comparative religions teaching must have prompted a sort of Pauline conversion? Did he emerge from his home office at the very least a Shinto devotee or a Hindu?
"I don't know what I am; I'm non-religious," says Moncrieff. "That probably means agnostic. I'm not entirely sure, and what that effectively means is look, there's a fence. I'll go and sit on it."
• God A User's Guide, by Sean Moncrieff is published by Poolbeg, €14.99. Moncrieff is on Newstalk 106, 2-4.30pm, weekdays