Radio Review: If you sat in front of the telly on a Saturday evening during the late 1970s you could be guaranteed that at some point during the variety shows which were all the rage at the time, a comedian would bring the house down with some tale of blinding stupidity that began: "There was this Irishman . . ."
Celtic cubs raised during an era when Irish comedians are frequently the funniest voices on British TV must find that hard to believe, but we've gone from being a punchline to having the last laugh.
In the first of a two-part series, Taking the Mick (BBC Radio 4, Saturday), presenter Pauline McLynn - no slouch herself in the comedy stakes - teased out the development of Irish comedy in Britain.
In the early days some Irish comics perpetuated the thick Paddy stereotype, and Frank "it's the way I tell 'em" Carson defended this tendency weakly, saying that there isn't a joke that doesn't have a victim - a guy slipping on a banana skin might be hilarious to everyone except the guy that slips. We all, he suggested, need someone to laugh at. The 1970s might have been the rolled-gold era of the Irish joke but the national way of dealing with it was to take the joke, replace "Irishman" with the word "Kerryman" - and oh how we laughed.
Dave Allen, the first Irish comedian to make a real breakthrough on British television, built his act on "the eccentricities of planet Ireland", particularly the role of the Church, and he was often criticised back home "for inviting foreigners to laugh at us, it's one thing doing it ourselves". In the end it wasn't that our collective IQs were thought to have suddenly gone up a notch or two, it was simply that thick-Paddy jokes went out of fashion.
According to comedian Dara O'Briain, in the 1980s the new, alternative comedians were so keen to distance themselves from sexist, racist working men's club humour that Irish jokes just died out.
"Even giving out about paddywhackery jokes is long gone now," he said, while Father Ted creator Arthur Mathews sounded equally mystified by the phenomenon ("they just seem like such a dumb thing to do").
The volunteers who man the lifeboats around our coastlines have seem some dumb things too, such as windsurfers not factoring the wind into their day's activities and drifting out to sea, or sailors falling asleep at the wheel and ending up on the rocks. That, of course, is the least of it. They also deal with tragedies that are too painful to imagine and, while none of the voices in No Place for the Weak-Hearted (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), a documentary about lifeboat volunteers, dwelt on the sometimes grisly, desperately sad side of the job, there's no doubt that it takes a special person to volunteer to go out in all weather on rescue missions. Indeed, the men (there was only one female volunteer), from lifeboat stations from Ballycotton to Dún Laoghaire, seemed keen to play down the truly heroic nature of their hobby.
"We don't want to present a picture of do-gooders here, we do it because we enjoy it," said one voice, while another spoke of the thrill of going out in such fantastic boats kitted out with world-class equipment.
At a time when not-for-profit agencies are reporting a huge fall-off in volunteering it is heartening to hear such stories of self-sacrifice. For all that, this was a disappointing documentary and the credits gave a clue as to why the programme, in the station's prime documentary slot, didn't work. It was compiled, it was announced, by Yvonne Gordon, and it felt "compiled" as opposed to produced. The voices were simply strung together, like a 45-minute vox pop, so at times things were needlessly repetitive. The lack of an editorial direction was sorely felt and did the subject matter a disservice.
In the end, listeners still wouldn't have had a clue what exactly the RNLI is, how it is funded or other details that might have given the documentary some shape and perspective.
It was a pity too that Joe Duffy was on holiday this week, though Derek Davis is a fine stand-in on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), because he missed out on the chance to crow about the power of his radio show.
Last month he took on - as only he can - the issue of the mendacious cutbacks in social welfare payments to widows, and on Wednesday the Government rowed back. Duffy, presumably, would say that the only thing he did was give voice to the widows and their supporters, who phoned in, day and day out, but it was Duffy's support for people power that did it.
That didn't stop Labour's Willie Penrose, on Thursday's Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), trying to take some of the credit for his party, but Dave McCullough, always a sparky-sounding interviewer, was quick to slap him down and give credit where it was due. Take a bow, Liveline.
