Two ways to apply the populist touch

RADIO REVIEW:SAY WHAT you like about Joe Duffy, his interest in other people's misfortune is genuine. Returning after a fortnight's break, Duffy opened Monday's Liveline(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) by revealing his holiday listening had been 800 Voices,the singer-songwriter Danny Ellis's autobiographical album about his harrowing boyhood in St Joseph's Industrial School, Artane. Not an obvious chill-out vacation soundtrack, maybe, but it provided a peg for the show: one of the songs revealed that last Monday was Ellis's birthday, so the presenter placed a call to congratulate him on the occasion.

After the initial pleasantries, Duffy got down to the business at hand, asking his guest to reminisce about the dark years before his 16th birthday in 1963, the day he finally left Artane. Ellis recounted how, with his widowed mother unable to look after him or his siblings, he ended up in the custody of the Christian Brothers at age eight. It was an ordeal that entailed regular beatings and, on his final day there, the discovery that young twins he had known as fellow inmates were in fact his brothers. Unbelievably, this depressing tale was the feel-good story of the show.

Having played with the school band, Ellis later carved out a musical career. The former inmates of church institutions who subsequently spoke to Duffy were not, for the most part, so lucky. As he marshalled the disturbing flood of testimony that followed over the coming days, Duffy’s empathy for his callers and his knowledge of the subject were evident. He spoke of recently rereading the Ryan report on church abuse – “It doesn’t get any easier,” he noted – and hence was able to detail the number of sexual abusers operating in Artane down the years.

Duffy had also spoken to several of his guests before, a tribute to his pedigree in this area, notably the role played by Livelineafter the Ryan and Murphy reports were published in 2009, when it provided a searing public platform for abuse survivors. But while he avoided prurience, the presenter did not approach his difficult subject with a forensic eye, instead drawing out his callers to create a dramatic arc.

One woman, Maureen, started off her account on Tuesday’s show with a poignant detail. When she was sent into church “care” in Wexford at the age of 12, she brought along her books in the expectation of continuing her schooling. Instead she was set to work, unpaid, in a Magdalene laundry, where physical punishment was a constant. But this was nothing compared to what befell her elder brother at Artane. “He was rented out to a bank manager for weekends,” she said, her voice cracking.

Another caller, Anthony, told of being photographed while being sexually abused in Ferryhouse industrial school in Clonmel. Unsurprisingly, many of the victims sounded scarred by their suffering: a large proportion of the men, in particular, remained unmarried, with drink or depression dogging them.

But far from being gratuitous or numbing, the relentless succession of tragic tales was compelling, a visceral indictment of the church – and indeed state – that allowed such horrors. Duffy used his emotive broadcasting instincts to wring maximum impact from his callers’ experiences, but, much like Enda Kenny’s Dáil speech on Wednesday, it captured the wider mood.

A less edifying example of a host using his populist skills to full effect could be heard on Wednesday night's FM104 Phoneshow(FM104, weekdays). In the light of the deportation of the asylum seeker Pamela Izevbekhai, Adrian Kennedy invited his Dublin listeners to opine on the veracity of other Nigerians' claims for residency, with predictably heated results.

Almost before Kennedy had finished posing his question, his first caller, Mark, was stating that “they’re all scammers” and claiming that only the rich could leave such countries, in order to claim welfare in Ireland. It was not all one-way traffic, as both Irish and Nigerians phoned in to rebut such incoherent theories.

Before long, the debate had descended into nasty racial politics, with one caller, Padraig, saying parts of Dublin had been “colonised” by “welfare tourists”. Those Irish who defended them were “do-gooders” while the Nigerians, inevitably, should be deported. By this stage Kennedy, who normally plays the honest broker no matter how unhinged his callers sound, felt impelled to tone things down. Soon the programme moved on to less contentious subjects, such as whether Dublin had too many betting shops. But a sour taste remained.

It was a dispiriting item, particularly as Kennedy is a seasoned enough broadcaster to know he was stirring up a hornets’ nest. He said that the topic had nothing to do with racism, but, with his reputation for controversy – an earlier caller joked that the show was nicknamed “Skanger FM” – he could hardly have expected otherwise.

radioreview@irishtimes.com

Radio moment of the week

Classical music has a forbidding image at the best of times, so one can understand why Lyric FM has taken a more accessible approach for its breakfast slot. Even so, Marty in the Morning(Lyric FM, weekdays) makes wacky daybreak shows such as the Strawberry Alarm Clock (FM104, weekdays) sound like the BBC Third Programme in its highbrow pomp. Marty Whelan makes silly cracks and zany observations in a variety of funny voices while playing a selection of light classics, film themes and easy listening. His closing remarks on Monday's show took his inane patter to surreal levels. "Remember," he said, "even though the weather is not great, a day without sunshine is like . . . night."

Alan Partridge would be proud.