Some months before sitting my Leaving Cert in June 1999 Alan Desmond attended a presentation for a new university course that would be on offer from that October.
The talk was given by a professor who commented that the first year at university was all about losing your virginity and learning to down multiple pints in record time. This seemed a little tactless given that a fair number of his audience were the middle-aged mothers of prospective students.
No surprise, then, that what might have seemed to the professor to be a knowing and witty quip elicited a chorus of inverted smiles.
Anyway, as far as I was concerned the professor was well wide of the mark. My first year at university was (almost) all about discovering RTÉ Radio 1. Instead of free pints of Miller I imbibed over 70 years of sound archives through the good offices of what was to become my favourite radio programme, Bowman Saturday 8.30.
This 30-minute show opened up a whole new world to me. It introduced a range of 20th-century cultural figures of whom I had never heard, such as Paul Vincent Carroll, Oliver St John Gogarty and Maurice Moynihan, and brought to life figures who until then had been confined solely to the yellowed pages of dusty bookshelves - people like Daniel Corkery, León Ó Broin, Lennox Robinson and James Stephens.
Of course 8.30 on a Saturday morning is prime sleeping time for even the most sober student. This status quo was maintained - save for a brief interruption - through combined use of an alarm clock and tape recorder. The former would sound around 8.20, a hand would fall from beneath the bedclothes to hit the record button on a strategically placed tape-recorder. Serious slumber would then resume.
With a recording time of 45 minutes the cassette tape would catch the main feature, some of the preceding programme, World Report, as well as the nine o'clock news, It Says in the Papers and the beginning of Playback. Sufficiently rested, I would emerge from bed some time post meridiem. A hastily made cup of tea to hand, I was back in the warmth of the bedroom, pressing
"rewind", then "play", then waiting with something
short of bated breath.
Of course there were some disappointments, primarily those programmes marking sporting events, but on the whole Bowman Saturday 8.30 was a show worth setting the alarm for. And on the off-chance that the bell would fail to ring at 8.20, ensuring a straight snooze through till noon, there was always the repeat. For some time re-broadcast at 4am on Sunday, this could usually be heard on the way home after a Saturday night out if one was lucky enough to have a Radio 1-loyal taxi driver.
Such devotion to an archive-based show is, I know, the exception among the early-20s age group so for some time I kept this simple pleasure to myself. I was emboldened though, and far outdone, when I read that in the not too distant past the writer John Waters would think nothing of driving 18 miles to Roscommon to pick up the latest edition of current affairs magazine Magill when it wasn't available in his local shop in Castlerea. Now there's dedication.
The show's appeal lies not just in the content but in the presenter, sexagenarian John Bowman, who brings an air of gravitas to proceedings with his ultra-refined voice, use of the royal "we" and stress-perfect pronunciation. And you just know he's a historian when he says things like: "This morning's programme was to mark the birth of León Ó Broin who was born just one hundred years ago".
I'm sure I'll be forgiven the sense of panicky disappointment I felt in September when Bowman Saturday 8.30 seemed to disappear without trace from the airwaves. The broadcast of Saturday September 3rd, was preceded by the continuity announcer's remark that this was the last in the current series. I erroneously thought this referred to the two-part series marking the 30th anniversary of the death of Eamon de Valera. I was wrong.
For almost four months now there has been a half-hour in my week when I just don't know what to do with myself. Cold comfort that I have countless past programmes stored on countless cassettes. Perhaps Dr Bowman was being phased off RTÉ's radio schedule, I thought. Maybe Bowman Saturday 8.30 was to suffer the same fate as Any Other Business, Bowman's 15-minute Sunday evening gem, which was broadcast while the Dáil was in recess until RTÉ, with a disregard for explaining its decisions worthy of the DPP, ceased airing the show. Maybe, I thought, it was all the fault of high-ratings Marian Finucane and her move from a weekday to a weekend show.
But such worries have been dispelled, and Marian Finucane, if she had anything to do with it, has been forgiven. Bowman will be back in the New Year, this time on Sunday mornings, but at the same inconvenient time of 8.30.
To mark his return our august presenter will deliver five special programmes at 11am from next Monday, St Stephen's Day, to Friday, December 30th, during which, we are promised, he will play some of his favourite recordings from the RTÉ Sound Archives. I, and thousands like me, have been given the perfect Christmas present.
Welcome back, John.