RADIO REVIEW: While a radio reviewer is meant to be above these things, it was difficult not to be distracted by the handsome salaries drawn down by RTÉ's top (and some not so top) presenters, as revealed this week, writes Bernice Harrison.
There was the temptation to whip out the calculator and a manual on cost benefit analysis and spend the week trying to figure out whether one Gerry Ryan is really worth three Joe Duffys, or if half a Marian Finucane is equal to one David Hanly.
The most puzzling item on the list was that in 2002 the State broadcaster paid Gay Byrne more than the State paid the Taoiseach. All of this wouldn't matter one little bit to diehard radio fans if some programme strands, such as the station's documentary output, weren't starting to sound thin and woefully underfunded.
Gerry Ryan was quoted as saying that the station wouldn't pay what it does unless it had to and Marian Finucane proved his point magnificently by taking the week off. Yet again the powers-that-be couldn't find a credible replacement.
You could almost imagine her tossing her hair and saying "because I'm worth it" as her show limped along without her, the audio version of watching paint dry. It's just as grim when Pat Kenny is on holiday.
Still, big as these salaries seem, they're lunch money for chat-show presenter Graham Norton, thanks to his multi-million-pound deal with the BBC. His first official gig for the station was as Sue Lawley's guest on Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4, Sunday) and he was unashamedly shallow - a pleasant relief from celebrities desperate to imply hidden depths.
Growing up in Bandon, Co Cork, Norton knew he was somehow different, but he put it down to being a Protestant. It wasn't until he dropped out of college, headed for San Fransisco, slept with a man and figured out he was gay that it clicked. What would have happened if you had discovered your sexuality earlier, asked Lawley, in top schoolmarm form.
"Oh, there would have been no point. There was no one to be gay with in Bandon." He thinks the town is delighted to have a famous son, "they're just not delighted that it's me", said Norton, who really does talk in italics. In between songs from Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross (there's a surprise), he said he always wanted to be famous and he loves it.
"There are very few problems you can't throw money at," he suggested. But there were signs that his relentless self- obsession may in future become one of those problems. The disc he'd bring to the island is a duet he sang with Dolly Parton. And his one luxury object? A mirror.
Playwright Conor McPherson's self-obsession is far more productive, as he revealed in Snapshots (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday). The reason why he writes - and McPherson's successes include The Weir and Dublin Carol - is to try to understand himself, he said. "As any philosopher can tell you, you can only try to excavate things you can know."
His school years in Raheny were miserable, standing in the yard all alone, hating classwork.
"All my experiences of education," said McPherson, his voice a near-whisper, "I hated it, hated it."
Psychotherapy is helping him and now he thinks his school terrors were prompted by a fear of separation, of abandonment, of worrying that when he got home his parents would have moved.
When Crowley gets the right interviewee, her sympathetic, quiet style really works, and this was a deeply thoughtful hour of radio. Just as McPherson was getting his first taste of serious international fame - a play on Broadway, another one in the West End, a movie script in production - his body finally collapsed through excessive drinking and he ended up on a life-support machine for weeks in a London hospital. He worked at such a pace and drank so much to cope with a "feeling of doom". His Catholic upbringing, he said, was a fundamental reason for his misery: "That Catholic stuff is not good for you."
Lyric fm celebrated five years on air on Saturday, which was a piece of unfortunate timing given that a much bigger celebration was getting all the attention. Oddly, barring monotonously regular mentions of the five-year landmark, it didn't do anything interesting in the way of celebratory programming. However, Donald Helme's two-part special on Grammy-award-winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves, Jazz Alley (Lyric fm, Saturday) - an interview followed by a recording of her recent Dublin concert - made tuning in worthwhile.
Matt Cooper, on Today FM, and Vincent Browne, on RTÉ Radio 1, both played and replayed Michael Smith's unparliamentary language in the Dáil on Wednesday, though it was difficult to pick out the offending word above the chaos.
"Did he say muck or luck or suck," laughed Browne, barely able to contain himself. "Who does he think he is, James Gogarty?"