Loathing and loving

There was a hilarious moment on radio on Sunday 18 June. Gerald Barry was about to present his definitive analysis of the career of Charles Haughey when suddenly he was replaced by someone singing a jazz number. Charlie had done it once more to RTÉ, silenced them at a crucial moment. When they got back on air after the computer problems had been sorted, they played a self-regarding tape of Charlie saying how wonderful This Week was, how it was his favourite programme.

That bit of self-promotion meant that tapes of other interviews to do with the partnership agreement were cut off in mid sentence. Not that it mattered, for it was woefully dull.

RTÉ got into gear in fine fettle on the day Charlie died. Ryan Tubridy had the first faltering stab at the story of the great man's demise but then Sean O'Rourke was wheeled in at 11.30am, and he put zillions of guests through their paces. And, at times, it was irritating how O'Rourke prodded guests along, instead of allowing them tell their stories of Haughey at their own pace.

Over on Today FM, Matt Cooper came on air in the late morning and stayed on for hours with another assembly-line of guests. On some station or other, Fintan O'Toole was on from China telling us Charlie Haughey was the leader of an organised criminal gang because he had an Ansbacher account, as did several others. How that made him leader of an organised criminal gang was not clear.

Vincent Browne had three programmes celebrating Charlie. Hardly a critical word spoken in three hours of hagiographic radio. Browne explained at one stage that as his programme had featured the doings of the Moriarty Tribunal more prominently than did any other programme on radio over the years, it was now time to redress the balance somewhat. Seemed to me a thin excuse for idolatry. Some of his guests were funny, especially Sam Stephenson, Noel Pearson and, oddly, Michael O'Kennedy, usually a dry old stick but he reacted well to teasing by Browne and used the occasion to deny categorically he was paid for his vote in favour of Charlie in a leadership vote some time in the last century.

Incidentally, the assumption in so many of the programmes that we were all familiar with every twist and turn of Charlie's career was a bit irksome. Some of us aren't around that long and some of us have had something better to do with our lives.

I missed Frank Dunlop's excursion onto the airwaves to talk about Haughey – was it one of Marian Finucane's programmes over the weekend? Some neck that fellow has, something akin to part of a jockey's anatomy.

By far the most magic moment of the whole coverage of the Charles Haughey funeral was the playing of the 'Lonesome Boatman' by Finbar Furey at the church in Donnycarney on Friday afternoon. Some talent. His only rival being Brendan Kennelly (no relation, note the spelling), that gentle, shy, smiling, twinkling, adorable Kerryman.p