Men's room

In the same way as the excerpts from John McGahern's Memoir in two Saturday newspapers surely refreshed eyes and spirits tired of summer silliness, the author's reading on Book on One restored appreciation of the power of radio to make us listen and be moved and stunned and to emerge feeling a little bit kinder about the human race.

It also restored Leitrim to our consciousness because it does, you know, tend to sort of fall out. It's also such a relief to be in something other than the hopping-mad, spitting-fire state to which much of the summer radio fare has reduced us. The things come with off switches you know. Of course, McGahern didn't hold back from the sharper side of things – you'd wonder how the relatives on his father's side feel about his describing the clan as having "set great store on looks and maleness and position. There was a threat of violence in them all and some were not a little mad and none had tact."

This week we said goodbye to a programme which also set great store on maleness. Tom McGurk's The Sunday Show. The prevailing atmosphere of it was what you'd expect among a group of men having a few pints before lunch after kicking the rugby ball around for a while and McGurk was the one who would be talking the loudest. And wearing the white jumper. He jollies everyone along through their stories with lots of "what's", "rights", "oh no's" and "where did you find that out", like they were ten years old and he was a busy dad. He did his best to be nice to the less than alpha males and to be fair, he did have women on, usually for the lighter side of things – Angela Phelan on the second coming ie, Harvey Nicks arriving in Dundrum – but when they got down to the serious talking in the last part of the programme, the girls were usually gone. Spoiled a good show for some of us. Still Marian's back at the weekend. Who'd envy her?

Someone who used to be in up there in the scrum of male journalists was Harold Evans, former editor of The Times and The Sunday Times and Robert Murdoch survivor. He's older now, and mellow. He was on BBC One's This Week recently being nice to Lady Isabella Harvey, while fellow panellist Michael Portillo ignored her and MP Diane Abbott looked like she'd like to jump over the desk and squash her. Very winning that.

Evans is now well into his 13 programme stint on A Point of View taking up the baton of Alastair Cooke's Letter from America. This week Evans shared his love of his holiday place in The Hamptons at the other tip of Long Island. "In the bright skies there are gulls, ospreys and hawks. In the salt marshes thousands of ducks, geese, swans, otters and beavers and on the seashore, horseshoe crabs whose families have been around for two hundred million years." He told of his family's first summer in their new home "among the WASP-y literary folk rather than the high rollers of East Hampton and South Hampton" and how "the ancient radio wafted in a narrative of baseball from somewhere." Radio as background to a life. Now there's a concept worth bearing in mind.