Does Eamonn Lawlor miss the buzz? What was Irish broadcasting's most prominent down-shifter thinking on Wednesday afternoon? Was he recalling the atmosphere of his Prime Time days when he and his colleagues prepared to cover a big story like the jailing of the Liam who shares his surname? As Lyric FM's Into the Evening came on-the-air at 4.30 p.m., did Lawlor envy rivals Ryan Tubridy at 5-7 Live (RTE Radio 1) and Eamon Dunphy on The Last Word (Today FM), girding their loins for just the right intonation to deliver the Big Story (and hoping to God their packages would go smoother than poor Sean O'Rourke's technically scuppered live inserts on Radio 1's News at One)?
No sign of it. A half-hour before Tubridy's alliterative "Behind Bars" opener, and as Liam entered his midwinter nightmare, Eamonn was happily leading us through some of the contrasting musical interpretations of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hmmm, here's how Grieg did Puck, whereas check out Purcell. Then there's Britten. And of course the English love Mendelssohn, let's hear how he went about it. There you are now. Isn't that lovely?
In other words: escapism, and a little learning worn lightly. And while, on the day that was in it, even some of Lawlor's regular listeners must have been itching to switch over to the 5 p.m. shows for a chance to hear the clang of the Mountjoy doors, there was more harmony in the sweet sound of Eamonn Lawlor doing what he has chosen to do.
But enough of that! The couldn't-happen-to-a-nicer-fella conversations that swept the nation on Wednesday ("What, no Bubba roommate?" "No, but he'll have to slop out." "Oh, well, that's all right then.") demanded their own regular media inserts. Eamon Dunphy seemed particularly keen to assure listeners that Liam Lawlor could end up doing far more time.
After Dark (RTE Radio 1), home of the tribunal addict, told us all about some other junkies - the de-toxing kind to be found in Lawlor's unit of the "chokie" (Rodney Rice's word). The chairwoman of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, Valerie Bresnihan, asked gently but pointedly about the privileges extended to this privileged person - he doesn't have to slop out after all - and spoke of the lost opportunity for someone like Lawlor ("not a quiet person") to see and speak of the conditions facing most prisoners in the 'Joy.
Even then, the conversation (on the air anyway) was more along the lines of "everyone should have it so good" rather than "lock him up properly where he'll suffer". In public, at least, we try to respect the proper inverse relationship between a person's current elevation and the precise placement of the telling boot; in other words, there was little kicking him while he's down.
Such were the charms, in fact, of the completely kickless listening to Eamonn Lawlor's Lyric FM on Wednesday that, when evening rolled around, this soccer fanatic spurned the flying boots of FA Cup replays on BBC Radio 5 Live in favour of a flying bow. Performance on 3 (BBC Radio 3, Wednesday) featured, live from Birmingham, not Aston Villa v Newcastle but the extraordinary east-European eloquence of young violinist Elisabeth Batiashvili performing Sibelius's Violin Concerto.
IN contrast to these flamboyant gifts, then, was the interval act, the first in a series of readings of short stories by Czech writer Ivan Klima. Uranus in the House of Death, in spite of the otherworldly title, was deliberately down-to-earth. Pedestrian even, with a tone less like music, more like water-cooler conversation.
Read by James Fleet to sound like a sitcom of middle-class relationships and mores - but without even Frasier's grandeur - this was the story of a Prague theatre director encouraged, by his vanity and aspiration to see the southern sky's constellations, to take a free trip to speak at a drama festival in Australia.
His trip is discouraged, however, by his somewhat loopy actress girlfriend, Leona, once she has established that she can't go along.
"And they didn't invite me?"
"I don't think they even invited wives," replies the divorced Mikhail.
Leona's first response is in the threatening tradition: "I'm sure I'll find something to do while you're away". But soon she's telling him that the journey is ill-fated: her astrologer tells her so - "you have Uranus in your eighth house".
Rationalist Mikhail argues with her about this "depressing constellation". They argue, "then they made love, as usual", Klima tells us with this story's characteristic contourless prose.
Departure time approaches. "She started to weep helplessly, the way actresses know how to." Her fellow actors all take what he senses is their pitying last look at him. In spite of himself, Mikhail boards the plane with more-than-usual speculation about its fate: "What would happen to a stewardess who refused to get on a flight because Uranus was entering her house of death?"
His musings turn darker, as he reflects on how the maxim "pride comes before a fall" has taken on new import in the era of air travel. He wonders to himself: "How many of the people here really needed to travel from one side of the world to the other?"
While Klima's story was about a man whose vanity took him, perhaps unwisely, up off the ground, Wednesday's documentary was about men whom necessity drove in the other direction. From the Miners to Posterity (RTE Radio 1) was a classic documentary, first broadcast in 1972, in which Kieran Sheedy heard from a number of miners in different parts of Ireland.
From the perspective of 2001, this was an interesting exploration of the Old Economy - and of old economies. Sheedy sounded judgmental about one young interviewee in Arigna who wasn't managing to save anything from a take-home wage of £25 a week. "Well, I have an old bicycle and I have to keep it going. Then there's dancing and clothes and stuff like that."
Sheedy's deliberately prophetic and self-descriptive title was taken from a small curiosity mounted in Kenny's Bar in Castlecomer: a blackthorn stick, a lump of anthracite, "darkly gleaming", and the inscription, "from the miners to posterity". The men, though laden with tales to tell, were not inclined to this sort of romanticisation - particularly about the pre-union days when an unlucky miner could be beggared by a contract based only on what he could get out of the ground.
This simple, effective documentary was itself something of a throwback: Sheedy's voice, unconcealed, offered clear links, and there were no sound effects or musical interludes, apart from one miner's sad parody, A Pit with No Coal. Like mining in Ireland, it represented an honourable, work-a-day tradition that continues its inconspicuous service.
Harry Browne can be contacted at hbrowne@irish-times.ie