Sounds like love

Radio Review: Basques, Berets and Bows; Late Night Smooth and Sexy; Book of the Week

The fashion and style of famous consorts, abroad and at home, was the focus of Basques, Bérets and Bows: Jackie in her pink Chanel for the assassination; the Princess of Wales emerging from frumpdom to perfect her shift dress style, making it to fashion icon status just in time to die. Phew! Otherwise, like, she wouldn't have been in the programme. More than one of Maeve Hillery's caped numbers was found in the National Museum. Who knows why they're there? Maybe it was Paddy's way of getting them out of the house.

Rita Childers was sneered at a bit for thinking her inauguration dress was Elizabethan when "you'd immediately presume Spanish flamenco dancer when you'd see the shape of the skirt". Máirín Lynch's tiny bodice top with spaghetti straps by Mary O'Donnell, also in the National Museum, was deemed to "be extraordinarily revealing" and "you don't think of Máirín Lynch in that way". Oh, I don't know. Jack always had that old Cheshire cat smile thing going on, so maybe he did think of her that way.

But then I guess I missed the point. This was a programme about style, not substance and did not concern itself with the flesh and blood women underneath the clothes. Don't they have any bit of Sinéad Bean de Valera's kit over at the National Museum then? Or did her story writing disqualify her from consideration?

I wasn't expecting much from Late Nite Smooth and Sexy on Clare FM on Saturday night, familiar as we are to the "weary of threesomes and foursomes" tone that Dublin talk radio would broadcast under such a programme title. There was lots of "the smoothest R & B and sexy love songs as chosen by you" presented with some style by Dave O'Connor, who is blessedly devoid of the regulation fake American accent that seems to be a prerequisite for local radio presenters these days.

While there was a bit of "Hi to Sandra and Darren who are two years together tomorrow, but are celebrating tonight, if you know what I mean", there were plenty of requests for those who were alone and those whose relationships had just ended. A bit of Samaritans radio going on there with Usher and Jennifer Lopez and Coldplay and Shania Twain. The caring tone of the programme sat well with the hourly news bulletins which were revealing the enormity of the devastation in the wake of the Asian earthquake and the heartbreak that had, once again, spread out from the Inishowen peninsula at the death of the five young people there. A sixth youngster would die in the hours that followed.

A listener who pointed out that the programme was not featuring requests for same sex couples was reassured that the programme was open to all. The featured "love letter" from the woman with the serially unfaithful husband who was now about to move herself and her kids to live with her foreign lover received responses varying from "Go for it" to "Don't be an eejit", with most concern voiced for the kids.

Clare FM might want to give a bit of thought to following local death announcements with a bit of a suitable instrumental music rather than the cheesy dramatics of repeating the name of the programme seven times. Otherwise, full marks for the good music, the sense and the kindness.

Book on Four this week was Alan Bennett's reading from his new book Untold Stories. On Monday he took us to the mental hospital ward where his Mum, a few hours after admission for depression, is unrecognisable to him because they have washed her hair and, uncombed and uncurled, it has become "a mad halo". She asks his Dad, "What have you done to me Walt?" and he takes her hand, kisses it and replies "Nay, Lil, nay love." The book came my way this week, it being my birthday and the husband being Yorkshire born, though I nearly had it taken off me when I was caught doing the usual and reading the last page first. It ends with the words "Take heart", which are pretty appropriate really because Bennett, above all else, gives us heart.