RadioReview Bernice HarrisonThere was more padding on radio this week than you'd find on a department store Santa. Endless repetitive gift suggestions - most daytime programmes came up with some list or other and there's really only so many times you can bear to hear some enthusiastic reporter or other suggesting that a single share in the Cadbury company is a perfect present for someone with a sweet tooth or that you can't go wrong with a book token - when actually you can. Very.
Plenty of food items, too, and in all the usual places. The Food Programme (BBC Radio 4, Sunday) looked at the business of cooking goose, the posh person's option for Christmas dinner. Part of the reason for its comeback is, apparently, that people like the idea of your typical goose's free-range outdoor lifestyle. Despite the promising subject matter, it was a rather irritating programme - too much information on medieval traditions in Cumbria and far too many chewing sounds from presenter Sheila Dillon as she chomped her way through a goose dinner. Playing the music from the children's nursery rhyme Goosey Goosey Gander in the background wasn't perhaps the most sensitive choice.
Joe Duffy's foodie panel (Liveline, RTÉ Radio 1, Monday) was dominated by outspoken restaurant critic Helen Lucy Burke's top tips for seasonal cooking. She has some long palaver of a recipe for spiced beef that involves installing the meat in the attic for weeks on end and clambering up there daily to minister to it with various ingredients including saltpetre. "Isn't that gunpowder?" asked Duffy, to which Burke rather cheerfully pointed out that yes, it is poisonous in large quantities, illegal to boot and she can only blag some from her local butcher by promising that she's not engaged in a bit of DIY bomb-making.
It's the second time I've heard her mysterious spiced beef recipe - she does a regular food item on Damien Kiberd's show on Newstalk 106 and she was on there last week talking about her spiced beef - and I still can't make head nor tail of it.
Burke made it rather clear how she feels about vegetarians, recalling her parents' favourite saying about total-abstinence pioneers. "There was never a pioneer but was a bastard at heart," was the general feeling chez Burke, "and I feel the same way about vegetarians." Well, seasons greetings to you, too.
The calls from listeners gave a glimpse into what some people will be eating tomorrow. One woman gave her recipe for ham, which was all very Nigella in that the meat is boiled in Coca-Cola and then smothered in treacle. Burke was having none of it, suggesting instead putting some hay in the cooking water - fresh hay that is.
And then, on Wednesday, Liveline once again featured Coca-Cola in a Christmas tip - there really was no escaping unasked-for advice on radio this week. In this case, the caller suggested it was your only man when it came to cleaning the toilet. Now there's a drink that's a bit too versatile for my taste.
When programmes weren't whipping up a shopping and scoffing orgy they were looking back on the year - always a worrying sign. Isn't that the stuff that's supposed to fill next week's programmes? All the pre-Christmas looking back does suggest that there's going to be rather a lot of fillers, repeats and old documentaries in the week before New Year's.
The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show (Today FM) has been my number one breakfast music programme all year and not just because Mario Rosenstock is in top form in the daily comedy slot. It's all Roy Keane these weeks with hilarious versions of Will Young's Leave Right Now (about Roy picking up his P45 at Manchester United) and a version of the Proclaimers' I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) about his move to Glasgow. Well worth a listen at Todayfm.com
On Wednesday, Dempsey did a swift review of the year and gave the results of various listener polls. The fad of the year was plastic wristbands - followed by PSPs and Eddie Hobbs. The list of top five disappointments included The Late Late Toy Show and the death of George Best - which just goes to show, in rather a weird way, how relative these things are.
Damien Kiberd took his lunchtime programme (Newstalk 106, Wednesday) to the Oireachtas studio, which he filled with a representative from each party to talk about Christmassy things. Most of the group sends Christmas cards - up to 1,200 in the case of Labour leader Pat Rabbitte - which is big of them considering that we pay for their postage.
Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins just about admitted to taking Christmas Day off, he doesn't send Christmas cards and was scathing about a practice that has emerged among his fellow parliamentarians - particularly senators - who have taken to sending him letters announcing that instead of sending Christmas cards they're giving the money to charity. "And I'm supposed to be impressed by it; I don't need to be informed about it," he said, with impeccable logic.