Finally keeping tabs on the 'tabs'

Radio Review: Slight fright on Tuesday morning to tune in to Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1) and hear "what it says in the papers…

Radio Review: Slight fright on Tuesday morning to tune in to Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1) and hear "what it says in the papers" reviewer Paddy Clancy, in that wonderful sardonic voice of his, talking about some z-list celebrity's boob job and some guff about Davina McCall moving from Big Brother to the BBC.

Not the sort of headlines normally covered in the serious, broadsheet-dominated format, but this week it's been shaken up. In another context that would be a wild exaggeration, but in such a conservative newspaper review format any change is a big step.

Two "tabs" (as Eamon Dunphy calls them), the Irish editions of the Sun and the Mirror, have been added to the roster of newspapers - the Daily Star was always there.

It's a more accurate reflection of what people are reading and for listeners it gives the potential for some light relief - although how Niall Kiely, another regular reviewer with a voice best suited to covering state funerals, is going to handle the opportunity to inject some fun into the proceedings should be interesting to hear.

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Dunphy's own newspaper review (Breakfast with Eamon Dunphy, Newstalk 106, daily) is dished up at the same time of the morning and is usually a much livelier alternative. It's longer for a start, and he rows in with his opinions (obviously) although its listenability depends heavily on the guest reviewer.

On Wednesday, Siobhán O'Connell from Business Plus magazine clearly realised that for the slot to work it has to move at a brisk pace and be comprehensive and amusing - the same went for Damien Kiberd's round-up on Thursday - and when Dunphy has a guest in that he likes and finds entertaining it lifts the whole programme.

It being the first week of July, it was the start of several new programmes on RTÉ with Brenda Power, back in the mid-afternoon slot she had last summer. It's a daily programme and the idea is that each interviewee will have experienced a turning point in their lives.

It's a broad brief - just about everyone can come up with some turning point or other, which should help the producers hunt down guests in the dog days of summer, not an easy task in a small country where every half-prominent person has told their life story 10 times over.

The first guest, Garret FitzGerald, seemed a bit mystified to find himself talking so much about his late wife, Joan, although he did so with great tenderness and admiration.

Meeting her was put forward as his "turning point", but you got the feeling he was waiting for an entirely different line of questioning to emerge, so the theme sounded a bit forced.

Rogue trader Nick Leeson and Eileen (I Gave My Wedding Dress Away) Reid were two of the other guests and it's a fair bet that every regular radio listener will already be as well-versed in these people's lives as they want to be.

A new voice on radio is Caroline Casey And In My Suitcase (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday). She's the visually impaired woman who travelled across India on an elephant in an effort to raise awareness of the abilities of people with disabilities.

So a travel programme is a good fit for her - although this is a particular form of armchair travelling, where guests talk about a place they've never been to but know a lot about. It has to be the cheapest way to do a travel programme - nobody actually goes anywhere.

Again it's an idea that will live or die on the guests, and the opening programme featured theatre director Bairbre Ní Cuiv, who was so enthusiastic and knowledgeable about South Africa and its culture that the tourist board there should snap her up as their spokeswoman.

Paddy O'Gorman's programme Smokers (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday) is like a leaking aquatic centre - if it didn't exist you couldn't make it up. As if nicotine addicts didn't have enough to contend with, now there's O'Gorman stalking the beer gardens and doorways of bars the length and breadth of the country talking to people whose only common denominator is that they smoke.

It's such a completely bonkers idea for a programme that it should be slightly madcap and surreal. Instead it's boring and vaguely depressing. He's a great man for turning the conversation around to people's love lives.

This week in Limerick he came across a woman who had lost a leg in a motorbike accident in the 1970s when she was 19. "Do you understand," said O'Gorman, "that from a man's point of view, a woman with one leg is not the same sort of sexual object, at least initially, as a woman with two legs?" What a sweet-talker.