`Aengus Fanning . . . you're the editor of the Sunday In- dependent, and you got it wrong." That's how Today with Pat Kenny (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) kicked off on Wednesday morning, ushering in yet another half-hour's free advertising for a paper that, frankly, doesn't need it.
This was the section of the ad campaign headed "Apology", and Fanning certainly projects enough common decency to make that heading credible. However, along with the apology for Mary Ellen Synon's disgusting comments about the Paralympics in last Sunday's paper came the apologetics ("full, free and open discussion . . . some good has come of it"); the shifting of blame ("Joe Duffy makes a living from winding these things up"); and the teasers for tomorrow's paper, where, he promised, Synon would resurface.
Even some of the terms of the apology itself were puzzling and patronising. Repeatedly Fanning cited "human error" (as opposed to . . .?) and the need among people with disabilities for "hope and inspiration" (as if they'd look in a Sunday newspaper for that, or could somehow be denied it by 250 bigoted words). And it was either a worrying lapse in English from a newspaper editor or a Freudian slip when he assured Pat Kenny that his apology was "fulsome".
Kenny was only moderately tough on Fanning - I would have preferred windupmeister Joe Duffy, who was master of this story all week. It was Tuesday's Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), toward the end of a wide-ranging series of attacks on Synon's article, that gave the lie, sadly, to the line about the Sunday Indo being a "broad church". It's not so broad, apparently, that the likes of Gene Kerrigan and Declan Lynch - scarcely Synon's ideological bedfellows - can go on the radio and say straight out how awful the article was. Kerrigan came close, but insisted on talking about hype and the far worse things that happen to people with disabilities.
Lynch was worse. Liveline and the like were, he said, making a "she-devil" of Synon when we should be looking at "our attitudes" to the disabled, as revealed by our responses to the Paralympics. It was an extraordinarily off-the-point intervention in a programme that, until he came on, was peopled almost exclusively by people with disabilities.
Lynch was out of line and definitely abusing "we" in that context, but he wasn't wholly wrong. Des Cahill's snippets on the Paralympics on Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) have been models of clarity and would have made great starting points for discussion of "our attitudes" - right back to the start of the games when he reported a Sydney row about an official who was sacked for praising Paralympian "bravehearts", (Des thought the term was all right). He's explained the difficulties of drug-testing athletes who may use several drugs to manage their disabilities. And Cahill hasn't pussyfooted around the games' "handicapping" system: when a rival athlete was disqualified from the discus this week, Des made it clear it was because, on appeal, it was determined he wasn't disabled enough for the category he'd thrown in; later RTE reports simply referred to "a technical fault".
There's nothing wrong or embarrassing about such categories: we've all heard of welterweight boxers, lightweight sculls, indeed women's soccer. Not everywhere is as mercilessly meritocratic as the Sunday Independent . . .
So, did you hear that live satirical space comedy last Saturday, Invasion from Planet Vampire (RTE Radio 1)? Not me. Me, I saw it - and what a thrill.
Oh, I've seen radio programmes being made before. By heck, I even got to marvel at the master himself, Garrison Keillor, when Prairie Home Companion came to town early this year. But Invasion from Planet Vampire was special: an unedited, uninterrupted 43 minutes of rollicking adventures across the universe, all delivered by five actors, a violinist and a special-effects guy, live from a science-fiction convention in a Dublin hotel.
Tim Lehane deserves huge credit for supporting and producing this effort from Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, but Roger Gregg is clearly the spirit behind the operation. I think Gregg's Planet Vampire script was really good: I can recall chuckling a bit at some of the political allusions, and positively guffawing, along with the audience's Trekkies at the wit and wisdom with which genre formulae were skewered. This included the citation, near the end, of the "Prime Narrative Directive", by dint of which the arch-villain must be allowed to escape into potential sequeldom.
But, under the circumstances, I admit I could be totally wrong about the script. What I can say with certainty, however, is that sitting a few feet from FX man Peter O'Kennedy - as he opened and closed a brolly so vampires could fly; crumpled a plastic container so a faulty robot could messily "download" all over the starship deck; all that stuff - was as exciting and entertaining a theatrical experience as I've had in a long time.
Gregg and his company have a flair for this and no doubt. He himself was a wonderful narrator; David Murray was a hilarious first officer Hoax Minstrel, the self-regarding, doggerel-spouting romantic male lead obsessed with his frilly shirt; Morgan Jones, Danna Davis and Michele Read were equally good and even more versatile; and Cliodhna Quinlan played a mean "intergalactic violin".
If RTE decides to do more of this sort of thing - and it oughtta, it really ought - it could make real hot-ticket events of these performances. How many of us new millennium types have ever seen this sort of thing outside Woody Allen's Radio Days? I told you last week this should be good. It was good. I'm telling you now - some more of it would be even better.
Harry Browne can be contacted at hbrowne@irish-times.ie