RADIO REVIEW:IT WAS one of those moments that, although you're half asleep, you know you will never forget it. Usually, it's news of a natural disaster or the sudden death of someone very famous. But this time it was only good news. And, as you awake, the radio is the only medium that can bring it to you. In that dream world, you're not quite sure what is real and what isn't. Your senses are heightened and distorted in the quasi-slumber before this new day in your clock-watcher life. Yes, this day would be different from all the rest.
One of the headlines on Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) shook me to my senses just after eight o'clock on Tuesday. Perhaps it was the lack of emotion from the newsreader. The news was given with the usual deadpan delivery, and yet it was such an extraordinary line: "In the United States, hundreds of thousands of people travelled to America today for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the country's first African-American President." And then I woke up.
As much as I love to listen to commercial radio, RTÉ Radio One was the only station for me to listen to the inauguration. Aside from the television, obviously. Radio One is the station I grew up with. It was all those familiar beeps for the news, the music and "It Says In the Papers" with PP O'Reilly, Morning Irelandwith David Hanley and, "Hurry up! Stop dilly-dallying. You'll be late for school . . ." (Wait, that last one wasn't on the radio.) So this is what it's like to live in the future.
There was still a hangover from past and present with odd talk on Monday's Drivetime(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) about whether he would say, "Barack Hussein Obama", and wouldn't it be a great act of bravery if he did, even though presidents-elect always say their full name when they are sworn in. It's just a name. And wasn't his father raised as a Muslim? Even the Dáil debate over Anglo Irish Bank and Charlie Bird's excited, breathless reports – all the way from Washington DC! – couldn't spoil this one for me.
In DC, producer Anne Edwards, who worked with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, told Mary Wilson on Tuesday's Drivetime, "This is a day of showing honour to people," she said. "You build up the entrance, which just happened with President George W Bush . . . It's the last time that Hail to the Chiefwill be played for him." Terry Prone "wept" during Obama's speech and Melanie McAlister from George Washington University cautioned that Carter also came to power with such a high approval rating.
Prof Steven Knowlton from DCU won a trip to hear JFK speak in 1961 by selling newspapers. That was a bitterly cold day. Unlike that day.
Wilson interrupted for Aretha Franklin in her gift bow hat singing My Country 'Tis of Thee. "This is my indulgence," Wilson said, "I want to hear her." But, by God, if she didn't go and strangle the life out of that song, warbling and whining and moaning and screeching like a recording of George W Bush's late cat India slowly choking to death on a pretzel.
On Wednesday's Moncrieff(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays), Henry McKean asked a young woman in Longford if she knew of Barack Obama. "Haven't a clue," she said. Just thought I'd share that with you. "He's very religious," another man told the roving vox-popper. But Bush was religious too.
“I can’t understand why he done them things if he was religious.” But God was behind him, right? “Whoever he used to talk to, it wasn’t God.” Who then? McKean asked. “I dunno,” he replied. “It must have been the other fella.”
Elsewhere, it's better the devil you know. Ivan Yates was filling in on The Right Hook(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) in Dublin on Wednesday. He plodded through an item on the banks. "Now, eh . . ." Yates usually starts his items. "Even if stocks are trading at five cents or 10 cents, doesn't necessarily mean they have to be nationalised," said Davy Stockbrokers economist Rossa White. Yates said, "And, eh, let me tell you we have a political story about the Greens in meltdown." God forgive me, but I want Hookie.
I don't blame you if you're done in by the death-spiral watch of banking share prices, Obambi-ed out by the positive press coverage of Tuesday's inauguration in Washington DC, depressed by endless gangland killings, and driven up the wall by those desperate and ridiculous radio holiday advertisements calling out to all those "recessionistas". But I do recommend a dose of that cheeky monkey on the Ray Foley show(Today FM, weekdays). They tried doing Obama's oath, but screwed it up too. This show got my attention when Foley told tales of Tom Dunne turning the offices of Today FM into a "puppy blood bath" before he defected to Newstalk. His callers are bordering on cranks, but apparently they're just happy . . . imagine that. Patrick rang up on the subject of manbags. He has a yellow one for work, which contains a sewing kit, Paracetamol and concealer. "I'm always losing buttons," he said. Oh, dear. Don't hold out for an upturn just yet.