Radio ReviewOn radio, where fluency is the currency, it is unusual to hear a stammer, yet according to Stuck for Words (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) 1 per cent of the population, or more than 40,000 people, has the speech defect.
This week's Documentary on One, produced by Michael Carolan, featured a series of men (there was only one woman) telling what it's like having no control over your speech. One man said that he could never go for a job interview because he knew he'd falter at the most basic of all questions, "what is your name".
Not being able to say your own name was a common sticking point. Others sounded like master strategists, constantly thinking of ways of hiding their stammers, avoiding certain words, or even simply not talking, with all the career and social implications that carries. All endured the casual cruelty of the playground and of teachers hauling them up to the top of the class to read aloud. One therapist said that a stammer is like an iceberg: the biggest part of the problem is psychological and below the surface.
But the documentary left a raft of questions unanswered such as why people stammer, why men are four times more likely to stammer than women and what the latest treatments are. Instead of providing a broad picture of the condition it got bogged down with personal stories which in the end sounded, ironically, repetitive.
There's no easy cure for stammering but in some developing countries the expensively bought "cures" can kill, due to the widespread availability of counterfeit drugs. In the west we regularly hear about fake Viagra and other lifestyle drugs, but in Africa fake malaria tablets have caused whole communities to succumb to the illness. A counterfeit malaria drug killed at least 80 children in Haiti in the late 1990s. In File on 4: Fake Drugs (BBC R4, Tuesday), reporter Allan Urrey travelled to Nigeria, the counterfeit drug distribution hub of Africa and where 50 per cent of all drugs on sale are thought to be bogus. The counterfeits are sophisticated: same packaging and batch numbers, but, fatally, not the same ingredients.
The programme questioned the commitment of the World Health Organisation to stamp out a trade that is worth $45 billion - under-resourced developing countries can hardly be expected to tackle the problem themselves. A WHO official sheepishly admitted that it only had one full-time official working in the area. The pharmaceutical companies have a Pharmaceutical Security Institute through which they monitor the situation but there appears to be a lack of communication between it and other agencies. On a human level it's the last link in the chain of supply that is particularly painful, said one doctor. The poverty-stricken parents give up so much to try to cure their children only to end up killing them with fake medicine.
Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) ran way over time; it had to. The stories were so heart-wrenchingly painful that Joe Duffy, his voice quiet and slow, couldn't bear to cut any one of the callers off. They were carers - not, amazingly on the line to complain, but to air their grievances with a carers allowance system that sounds so mendacious it's hard to believe a human being thought it up.
One woman in her seventies looks after her older husband who has Alzheimer's, and is doubly incontinent. She got the carer's allowance this year - but now finds that, because of it, her fuel allowance of €9 a week has been cut. For a reason that must be linked to the fantastic central heating in the office of government ministers who don't seem to realise that it gets cold in the summer too, that paltry allowance only kicks in in September and runs until April. But still, said the caller, her voice cracking with tiredness, she needs it "because he had to have heat on all day and he's afraid to sleep in the dark". For the price of one of those famous Cartier watches, herself and her husband could live in warm comfort for the rest of their days.
And here's where the Government really get lucky. Not only do these carers do what no one else would, at a tiny fraction of the cost of state-provided care, they're simply too exhausted to write a letter, too worn out to kick up a fuss. All the callers sounded grateful simply to have a forum to tell their stories - which is where Liveline lives up to its name. Wednesday's programme had all the hallmarks of the start of a Liveline social justice campaign - and the reluctant minister should know that Duffy is on a roll this year, what with the widows' pension row-back and the change in policy at Aer Lingus over the transportation of coffins. Seamus Brennan may soon find that the wrath of Liveline listeners makes the board of Aer Rianta look like amiable pushovers.