Declan Lynch: Words matter, whether you’re a gorgeous genius from Meath or a man with a cap from Kerry | Irish Independent
Flor Lynch
4 Jun 2026 5:30 AM
Radio reviews: Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1); Kerry Today (Radio Kerry)
CMAT must have been wondering if she had made the right call, responding so strongly to the trolls who were body-shaming her online. But since a whole episode of Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays, 1.45pm) emerged from it, the Dunboyne woman probably decided she’d got it just about right.
She had just won an Ivor Novello Award, after all, and many who had heard her performing on BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend would have agreed with her own perfectly correct assessment that she is “a gorgeous genius”.
Yet, such was the level of online body-shaming directed at footage of her at that gig, she felt obliged to write on Instagram about the “deep sadness” this had caused her, how this horrible treatment “keeps happening at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous”.
Even people who are not famous at all can identify with the difficulty of the choice she had to make here. On social media there comes a point in the lives of many people where they have to decide whether to ignore some ignoramus who is trying to drag them into some hideous dispute, or to engage with them.
The smart money says that 99.99pc of the time you’ll have a happier life ignoring them. Anonymous trolls are damaged people who believe that the main problem with the world is that there’s not enough hate in it, and who want to change that in some small way.
The worst result for them is to be howling into the void: they so desperately want to think they have at least wasted someone’s time.
But .01pc of the time, going after them and taking them down may be the right thing to do. And CMAT being indeed a gorgeous genius, is already a member of a tiny minority. So she went there.
This, after all, is an artist with enough independence of spirit to do the radio launch of her latest album on Marty in the Morning, just because she loves the show. The corporate wisdom would no doubt advise against having world premieres of anything on Lyric FM, but CMAT called that one right too.
She didn’t make it to Liveline herself, but you could say that the show was held in honour of her fortitude. There was a major contribution from TV’s Elaine Crowley, who has spent much of her adult life dealing with phenomenal levels of eejitry on the part of those who can only imagine television as a medium for extremely thin people.
Mostly, the body-shaming is directed at women, though there was also the testimony of Rob, describing how difficult his life had been before bariatric surgery. Apart from the casual cruelties uttered by all and sundry, this Liverpool fan recalled that his obesity had ruined his first visit to Anfield: feeling hemmed in, he’d had to leave his seat on the Kop and watch the match on a TV screen. These days, for Liverpool fans, that’s usually a downer too.
If CMAT made a good decision to speak out, Michael Healy-Rae was regretting words said in a state of high emotion – by his brother Danny. He was speaking to Jerry O’Sullivan on Kerry Today (Radio Kerry, weekdays 9am), the same programme on Radio Kerry on which Danny had originally said the wrong thing.
Michael was explaining to O’Sullivan that when Danny called for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to get rid of their leaders during the fuel protests, it made Michael’s position as a minister of state untenable. It lit a fire and “started something I couldn’t stop”.
Asked by O’Sullivan if he had been effectively sacked by the Government, Michael said that “first of all you could say I was sacked on Radio Kerry”. There was something honest and strangely sad about all of this.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard such a thing before: a politician on the radio describing how he did not jump overboard, but was “pulled overboard” by his own brother. Confirming an impression that he had seemed “a bit shook” of late, Michael said, “sure of course I’m upset”, and it “did knock me for six”.
He urged listeners to seek help for their own troubles – “if there’s a thing worrying you, talk to people”. He spoke wistfully of how long it had taken for a Healy-Rae to be representing Kerry at the highest level, only to lose it. Whether you’re a gorgeous genius from Dunboyne or the man with the cap from Kilgarvan, words matter.