It’s a curious thing, but even as Oliver Callan (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) gains more airtime, he sounds less acerbic. Since his programme was expanded by an hour and moved to a later morning slot, Callan has embraced the role of glintingly charming chatshow host with gusto, but, at least in the absence of his satirical sketch series Callan’s Kicks, his sardonic impulses are confined to the odd droll aside. Sometimes, however, a target proves too tempting to resist.
On Wednesday, the resignation of Mary McAleese, the former president, from a steering group on the integration of the GAA with its female sporting counterparts prompts Callan to deliver the kind of riffing monologue once commonplace on his show.
After mocking the GAA leadership for the foot-dragging that so frustrated McAleese – “It’s a bit hard now; wait five more years” – he contrasts the association’s modern side with its more retrograde characteristics in excoriating fashion.
“At times they just come across with shades of gobshitery,” Callan says, “harking back to fadó, fadó, the bacon-and-cabbage-gut-on-the-ground, combovers-with-gravy-stains-down-the-shirt, dried-edges-on-a-ham-sandwich vibe.”
It’s an open goal that Callan can’t miss, but the point scoring has just begun.
While emphasising the GAA’s recent achievements, be it the rule changes in Gaelic football or Croke Park’s successful hosting of the Katie Taylor boxing extravaganza last weekend, he also mimics a stereotypical association official more interested in concert revenue than parity for women, before finishing with a rousing flourish: “Wake up and smell the scent of the embarrassment in your pants today.”
It’s a grotesquely funny rant, an impressive feat given the labyrinthine, if understandably charged, nature of the subject matter. But the real sting lies in the fact that Callan isn’t some GAA-bashing metropolitan elitist. As regular listeners will attest, the Monaghan-born presenter is an enthusiastic follower of Gaelic games, regularly recapping football and hurling matches with a fan’s keen eye.
He also interviews figures from the game. On Tuesday he speaks to Nicola Brennan, the newly appointed manager of the men’s first team at the Leitrim GAA club Melvin Gaels. “A woman managing men,” Callan remarks. “Sad to say, this is an unusual outcome in today’s world.”
The encounter is more amiable than revealing, but coming the day before the McAleese controversy blows up, its timing is impeccable.
Similarly, when talking to Andrew Scott, an otherwise generic promotional chat about the actor’s new movie only comes to life when Callan asks about the Mayo family connections that saw his guest pictured with the Sam Maguire cup in the wake of the county’s All-Ireland win.
That an interview with a someone as well-known as Scott requires a lift highlights another curious aspect of Callan’s show: despite now being longer in duration, it’s somehow shorter on interest.
True, there are lively items such as his conversation with the Danish-born comedian Sandi Toksvig about her new television show on Irish writers. The host and guest, who met when Toksvig was filming about Patrick Kavanagh in Callan’s native Inniskeen, zing off each other in flighty fashion.
But with Callan’s menu also filled out with lifestyle discussions and chats with contestants from RTÉ One’s reality TV show The Traitors Ireland, the programme sags in places.
Where Callan brought a tighter focus to bear when broadcasting for an hour each morning, the expanded timespan means he has to deal with the sort of light items that were previously the stock in trade of Ray D’Arcy’s axed afternoon slot, with a predictable dilution of impact.
Callan’s show still has much to recommend it, but, as his short sharp shot at the GAA underscores, the host is at his best when in piquant form.
Elsewhere, the way in which the McAleese integration row gains traction over the airwaves, from the former president’s quietly seething interview about her resignation on Inside Sport (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) to GAA president Jarlath Burns’s riposte on News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), underlines the organisation’s singular place in Irish life.
Why the issue warrants this blanket coverage is perhaps best explained by Matt Cooper on The Last Word (Today FM, weekdays).
People who’ve never set foot here can get a passport if they have an Irish-born grandparent. Now there’s a situation that surely deserves some acerbic comment
Discussing the topic with the journalist Colm Keys and the Fine Gael senator Evanne Ní Chuilinn, Cooper hears how the lack of integration between the GAA and its counterparts in ladies’ football (sic) and camogie means that boys often get preference over girls for practice pitches at local level.
“This is an issue that percolates down to club level,” Cooper observes, encapsulating why an ostensibly arcane organisational argument generates so much passion.
Cooper’s ability to get to the heart of a story is surely one of the factors behind his show’s enduring popularity. Despite facing competition from seemingly livelier dual-presenter-format rivals such as Drivetime, on Radio 1, or The Hard Shoulder, on Newstalk, Cooper continues to enjoy impressive and improving listenership numbers.
What his solo turn lacks in banter is made up for by the lightly-worn air of authority and journalistic acuity that lies behind his faintly blokey persona.
Matt Cooper’s acerbic presidential election remark pays off
Such traits are evident when Cooper speaks to Neil Bruton of the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland about the new rules for people seeking Irish citizenship proposed by Jim O’Callaghan, the Minister for Justice.
When Bruton decries the planned changes, which increase the required residency period from five to eight years, as “the latest in extremely cruel policies aimed at making Ireland as unwelcoming as possible”, the host quizzes his guest’s stance: “Why do you say it’s cruel?”
Far from being a gotcha moment, however, Cooper’s question broadens the discussion, with Bruton condemning what he sees as the Government’s attitude to migrants: “We want you to come and be a unit of labour to support our economy and our society, but you’re not a real member of society.”
As is his wont, Cooper doesn’t proffer overt opinions, but he still makes some quietly damning points. Referring to the joyous citizenship ceremonies of recent years, he suggests that “this is essentially a backhanded way of trying to reduce those numbers”.
Cooper also notes that even as migrants who’ve worked in Ireland for years face greater hurdles to citizenship, people who’ve never set foot here can get a passport if they have an Irish-born grandparent.
Tempers rise over immigration debate as Matt Cooper scolds warring politicians
Now there’s a situation that surely deserves some acerbic comment.
Moment of the week
On Tuesday’s Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays), Seán Moncrieff has a suitably sober discussion of the phenomenon of drunk online shopping, a practice described by the financial planner Eoin McGee as “hic and click”.
McGee offers advice on avoiding such purchases – “Just put the phone away” – while admitting to tipsy buys of his own, such as GPS-enabled golf balls.
But such retail folly pales beside the text that Moncrieff (who is also an Irish Times columnist) receives from a listener who recalls watching a Clint Eastwood western while imbibing beer.
“The next day I woke up with a notification from Amazon,” the host reads out, chuckling, “saying that my Mexican-style alpaca wool poncho had been dispatched.”
It could have been worse. Who knows what might have been bought for a few dollars more?