Lots of love but no flux

Familiar, gravelly women's voices held their own in the hours around noon on the second Sunday in January. Listeners now used to Marian's presence for two hours every Saturday and Sunday realise she has mastered (or mistressed) this new gig on a relatively familiar territory (Marian Finucane, Saturday & Sunday 11am-1pm). Her review of the Sunday papers began with a discussion of the newspaper coverage of the Frankie Byrne/Frank Hall documentary to be screened the following night. It also provided Mary O'Rourke with some airtime before her victorious but magnanimous "meeting in the ring that evening", with Kevin 'Boxer' Moran. Mary's dulcet tones are nearly as familiar to radio listeners as Marian's are and Frankie's were.

As Marian tried to curtail Mary O'Rourke's chat – in the interest of fairness to 'Boxer', who was unavailable on his mobile (possibly revisiting houses for the sixteenth time where he had yet to get a voter) – Mary kept reminding Marian "you rang me". Mary managed to stay on long enough to be chuffed by the panelists, with fellow senator Shane Ross describing her as being "flirtatious with the opposition benches", while PR woman, Eileen Gleeson declared that "every parliament needs a feisty, no nonsense woman like Mary O'Rourke".

The run through the Sunday papers also highlighted the ridiculous timing of the Sunday Business Post's print deadline as it ran a story entitled 'LibDem leader considers his position' although Charles Kennedy had resigned by 2pm the day before. Plus a good chat about drink no longer being acceptable nor compatible with politics nor business (ahem); a typical, ideologically-absent dialogue about house prices and Aer Lingus floatation; and of course the big shock of the previous week – George Galloway's to celebrity status when he entered the Big Brother House.

Next, it was classic Marian territory – letting a tragic/difficult/previously unknown human story be told seemingly effortlessly.

For those not old enough to remember Frankie Byrne, the jingle to her compulsory listening lunch agony aunt show, 'Dear Frankie', was played – that sexy voice, talking to a cheerful tune, "from the lives of real people. Compliments of Jacobs, the biscuit makers."

Frankie reads a letter from a woman in a rural area who was keeping the company of one man for ten years, but there was no mention of a wedding date. She responds, "Now I think it must have taken a great deal of courage to face this problem instead of shutting it away. Ten years without making some plans, is it a forbidden topic or what? Now this man is not just shy, he's positively backward. Now this is a very difficult thing to say, but all you've got to show for those ten years is your affection. You say 'I really love him and surely you agree that your love has stood the test of time well' – no one could deny that, but I simply can't help adding, what a pity it did. Had you been less devoted you might well have been happily married, long ago, to somebody else."

The interview that follows with Frankie and Frank Hall's "secret" love child, Valerie McLaughlin, who was immediately put up for adoption once born, shows that the agony of her shows was true to Frankie's life was not just the listeners of Woman's Hour.

Valerie McLaughlin discloses that she is 49, not 53 as the newspapers said, and also how both the Sunday Tribune and Sunday Business Post ran a picture supposedly of Frankie and Frank, but in which they cut out Frankie Byrne and wrongly named another woman as her.

Valerie spoke with ease, pragmatism and dignity about her happy childhood, her luck in life, getting to know her birth mother, of being told by Frankie the tale of her father, and of realising this was not true. She told of the falling in love with her birth mother, the intensity between them that faded with time as her mother's illness developed. She read a prayer at her funeral, having being introduced as Frankie's daughter at her removal, so while her status as daughter was a secret, it was a well-known secret in Dublin at that time.

Marian asked, is it still difficult? "More difficult than I thought but not catastrophic," Valerie replied. These are stories from another Irish era and yet they remain timeless: tales of love and loss – they're the ones that Marian does best.

What do two women on Wexford county council housing list, an artist who composes music, and a group of whales have in common? Nothing. Unless you are Ronan Kelly.

This new show, Flux, produced and presented by Kelly is a programme of "stories, sounds and music". It is meant to be about flux, "flux that flows, that binds people together". Or so listeners are told at the outset of the show, when introduced to Lorraine, Vincent, and Lisa.

Lorraine and Lisa are two single mothers waiting to be housed. Vincent is an artist who won the county council art scheme for new public housing in county Wexford (where Lisa and Lorraine will be housed). Except instead of commissioning a piece of visual art, they commission some music instead. And when the music is being performed in Hook Head, a bunch of whales come to listen, Get it? No! The programme consisted of Vincent's wishes and music interspersed with lightweight interviews with the women and inappropriate comments from the presenter. There was some nice soothing music but next time, lets have the music, or the stories, or at least some flux, please.

Marian Finucane, RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday & Sunday 11am-1pm

Flux, RTÉ Radio 1 Monday 8.02pm