Declan Lynch: Is ‘Today With David McCullagh’ really the place to debate dishwasher etiquette? | Irish Independent
Flor Lynch
Declan Lynch: Is ‘Today With David McCullagh’ really the place to debate dishwasher etiquette?
Radio reviews
It’s the big one, isn’t it? It’s the one that puts all our other problems into perspective. It’s the issue that is probably not talked about enough, but is perhaps the single greatest cause of private grief in our society – and in every other society.
But at least in this country we’re grappling with it now, in a meaningful sense. I’m referring of course to the Dishwasher Wars, the latest dispatches from which were given suitable prominence on RTÉ1’s Today with David McCullagh (weekdays, 9am).
It’s a show that must routinely deal with wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine, so it is ideally positioned to cover the never-ending conflict in every Irish home that has a dishwasher – these bitter disputes over whether to scrape the plates or not to bother scraping them, whether the knives should be up or down, and those irreconcilable differences which have tormented generations on the key issues of placement and overloading.
Still, there is another way of looking at it. There’s this theory which I’ve just made up that our broadcasters are increasingly afraid we’ll simply lose the will to live if we hear of any more catastrophes coming out of the wireless of a morning.
So they’re putting tremendous energy into dreaming up ways to distract and even to sedate us while we await the inevitability of Armageddon.
In this vision, a Dishwasher War is ideal, because it sounds like a War without actually being one, but it involves enough domestic disagreement to require an appearance on the show by the Counselling Psychologist Niamh Delmar. With some amusing aides by another guest, retail expert Barry Savage. And indeed by McCullagh himself.
Three people it took to, eh, unpack this one, with Delmar noting that in some relationships, these arguments about dishwasher techniques can become so intractable they are evidence of a deeper malaise.
To which one might add, that running such an item on a major current affairs show, is also evidence of a deeper malaise. If anything, it makes us more anxious, as we worry we might be missing some ongoing disaster while we’re listening to these people bantering about plate-stacking etiquette.
Soon another psychologist, David Coleman, was in McCullagh’s studio answering questions about parenting. David is a top man in his field, but even he was making me wearily ask the existential question: “What’s it all about, eh?”
Given the state of the world, I see an opening for a more irresponsible style of parenting advice. Most young couples these days seem extremely vigilant about children watching too much TV, to which I’d say: “And what exactly is so bad about Bear in the Big Blue House raising your kids? Just try it for a few years and come back to me, if we’re all lucky enough still to be here...”
Meanwhile, the radio counsellor I swear by is Joe Heffernan, who has been doing it every Tuesday for the last 20 years at 12.30 on Cork Today (weekdays, 10am) with Patricia Messinger on C103. There’s something about Joe’s emotional intelligence that sounds even more reassuring in the Cork accent.
RTÉ's 'Sunday Miscellany' theme is part of the fabric of Irish life. Photo: Gerry
Joe needs to be brought to the national radio stage right now, to deal with some of the trauma that could be heard in the voices on Monday’s Liveline. Of the RTÉ1 shows whose perfectly distinctive signature tunes have been replaced by generic slop, perhaps Sunday Miscellany (RTÉ1, Sundays, 9.10am) is the most startling case.
Several callers described it as akin to a personal loss, the destruction of their own memories as well as an act of corporate vandalism in itself.
Of all the things in this world that weren’t broken, the Sunday Miscellany theme was probably the least broken of all, but they fixed it anyway, to the bewilderment of listeners.
Interestingly Galliard Battaglia, that tune which has been intrinsic to the experience of Sunday morning in Ireland for almost 60 years, was written by one Samuel Scheidt. So in one sense there has been very little change – they’ve gone from Scheidt, to what can only be described in a family newspaper as scheidt.
Kieran Cuddihy did his best to console the Liveline community at this difficult time – and let it be said that in the best traditions of public service radio, this atrocious RTÉ decision was being called out on RTÉ itself. But not even the Dishwasher Wars will distract us from this one.