RadioReview/Bernice Harrison:Charities who rope in a celebrity for a bit of publicity must look in awe and a little envy at the column inches and radio minutes that Roy Keane delivers every time he sets foot here for the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. They don't just get a couple of cheesy pictures in the papers, they get mass coverage, because when Keane opens his mouth, controversy and choice lines spill out.
In Dublin on Wednesday to promote the Blind Shades 2007 campaign, Keane gave a press conference, much of which made it on to the airwaves because of his forthright - what else? - opinions on the shortcomings of the FAI and Steve Staunton. His "there's a fine line between loyalty and stupidity" is one of those lines ripe for overuse by all manner of corporate types who need a replacement for his previous "fail to prepare, prepare to fail" gem.
The entire press conference was cleverly used on Off the Ball (Newstalk, Wednesday) where presenters Eoin McDevitt and Ken Early played each line and discussed Keane's pronouncements about Steve Staunton's team much as any footie fan in the pub would. No prizes, they felt, for guessing who Keane was talking about when he rubbished Staunton's team-picking skills.
"You have to be loyal to the lads who have done okay but then to keep playing them on reputations they have built up through the media or because they do lots of interviews, then it's wrong."
The lads, the presenters opined, would be Robbie Keane and Damien Duff. There were listeners' texts, including the inevitable ones from people who still can't get over Saipan - Judas and muppet being the top insults.
And who knew some Cork people considered themselves such a persecuted minority? Leesiders aren't getting enough of a look in on the team, Keane revealed in a very put-upon tone of voice, because of a Dublin bias.
McDevitt and Early couldn't have disagreed more, backing up their opinions by piling on the pub-quiz trivia about where players and officials were born and the current form of certain Cork-born players. It's this sense of blokeish fandom that makes Off the Ball such a good listen, even for sports tourists like myself who only fetch up when there's a green jersey involved.
So while you'd be quite happy to find yourself in the pub eavesdropping on the Off the Ball crowd, if you found yourself trapped in the snug with Roger Greene and Ulick O'Connor you'd be stuffing shredded beer mats in your ears. They are presenting Newstalk's new arts show The Snug on Sunday nights, though why the station got rid of Sophie Gorman's perfectly good, newsy and upbeat arts show in the altogether better Saturday morning time slot is anyone's guess.
Greene and (mostly) O'Connor spent 45 tedious minutes talking about Brendan Behan - for no apparent reason other than, I suppose, O'Connor is a Behan expert. What on earth are they going to talk about next week? It's not an anniversary and there's no Behan play on at the moment to hang the discussion on.
For the general arts listener in search of a bit of up-to-date news and views, it all seemed a bit dusty and pointless - no matter how many times O'Connor reassured us all of Behan's greatness and told stories of drunkenness and fisticuffs that sounded thin and worn through overuse.
The programme finished with a cursory look at current arts events including the Belfast Film Festival and the Wexford Book Festival (O'Connor sounded cranky and dismissive with the festival director - not, perhaps, the best tack for a presenter to take), signalling that this is a programme that wants to be in touch with what is actually going on in the arts. However, if it's to do that, it's going to have to sound a lot less like two old guys boring the pants off each other and let a bit of fresh air into that snug.
The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show (Today FM, Friday) got a bit of extra and very entertaining mileage out of the Roy Keane press conference with the inspired lark of sending its "Roy Keane" (brilliantly voiced by Mario Rosenstock for the Gift Grub Radio Roy comedy sketches) along to interview the real Roy Keane.
The football manager admitted to hearing his mimic and some of the sketches, ("I don't think I laugh like he laughs"), and when he was playing for Ireland his team-mates used to tease him about them. Yes, he deadpanned, they are "quite funny". "Quite", in taskmaster Keane's lexicon, probably being just about as good as it gets.