McGurk and the aunt

I phoned the aunt just now and asked about Tom McGurk. She laughed awkwardly and said it was "nothing". I asked had the memory of McGurk caused her three divorces and she laughed even more awkwardly. She remembered McGurk had very big feet. The last time she saw him he was making a collection after a civil rights demonstration/riot in Newry, to pay for damage to police tenders that had been thrown in the canal. She thought this was sweet. Rodney Rice was there the same day, she says. She didn't fancy Rodney, she says. My aunt begged me not to reveal her name. I forebear, for now.

My only other experience of McGurk is seeing him on a rugby panel with two other very ugly men on Saturday afternoons. The Señor de la Casa (who, by the way, is the husband – who thinks he is Señor de la Casa) and his pot-bellied, beer-soaked buddies think they are great. Actually they think one of them, Popeye (I could have got this wrong), is great and the others "wankers", to use their elegant term. Whatever, none of them strike me as impressive. Hence the mixed feeling about Tom McGurk.

I keep hoping he will burst into poetry, even his own, on radio. Instead, like the two he replaces, he just talks and talks and talks. A booming voice and a booming laugh which is triggered only by his own jokes or what he considers jokes, none of which prompt even a thin smile with anybody else.

He made a complete hames of a quiz, the prize for which was an exciting trip to a greyhound race in Uzbekistan. Contestants vied with each other to lose. McGurk seemed the biggest loser (and that's not because he jilted my aunt 40 years ago).

(I wonder did she ever meet Donnacha Ó Dualing? Or Vincent Browne? Or Brendan O'Dowda. Must enquire.)

It occurred to me listening to my aunt's old boyfriend what is wrong with the Radio One schedule. No humour. No fun. Deadly seriousness or deadly tediousness. No laughter, except at one's own non-funny jokes. No levity. No music, no poetry. Just endless serious, tedious talk. It doesn't have to be like that. Isn't the trick to mix important issues with laughter and fun? Isn't that what life's about?

There's hell to pay in the RTÉ Radio centre. Apparently there is outrage that the staff of the Ryan Tubridy Show is being moved en bloc. Is that any surprise? Did the staff not know the programme was awful? Someone or something had to go and, for now, it's them.

Presenters lose the run of themselves, it seems. Not only must they be paid huge salaries but they must be mollycoddled by their loved ones. Go for it Ana Leddy. p