As a broadcaster, Tom Dunne comes across as the personification of natural good humour. In his various incarnations on Newstalk he projects an air of amused affability, whether presenting his nocturnal music programme, The Tom Dunne Show (Monday-Thursday), or discussing pop matters on The Hard Shoulder (weekdays).
Tuesday, however, seems to mark a change in his demeanour. As he stands in on Seán Moncrieff’s afternoon show, Dunne becomes uncharacteristically sniffy.
Why is soon clear. “We’ll be talking very strong cheeses,” he says, prefacing his conversation with the cheesemonger Kevin Sheridan, who’s there to discuss the apparent loss of appetite among young French people for the country’s famously ripe dairy products.
Dunne frames this trend as an “existential cheesy crisis”, though it also provides him with an opportunity to sample his guest’s pungent wares: “You’ve come armed, I see,” the host notes. Sheridan uses the unappealing term “God’s feet” to describe the aromas emanating from his more robust cheeses, and the host agrees: “There’s definitely the feet thing there.”
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‘God’s feet’ bring a pungent odour to Tom Dunne’s Newstalk studio
But if Dunne’s olfactory senses are twitching, it’s not in disapproval. “Absolutely beautiful,” he declares. And while Sheridan puts the totemic French foodstuff’s fall in popularity down to changing eating habits across the world – “If you keep putting processed or bland food in front of people, that’s what they’re going to be used to” – he claims that, in contrast, Irish tastes are growing more adventurous, albeit from a low base. (By way of proving the latter statement, host and guest recall their childhood cheeses of choice, Calvita and EasiSingles.)
Far from turning his nose up at odorous cheese, Dunne is as enthusiastic as ever: it’s the only whey he knows. (Sorry.) He maintains this appealing mien throughout his guest stint on the programme, helming proceedings at a leisurely, good-natured pace that makes Moncrieff sound like a Stasi interrogator in comparison.
During Wednesday’s item on the introduction of height filters by the dating app Tinder, which seemingly may limit choice for shorter men or taller women, the host chuckles away as he talks to the matchmaker Sharon Kenny. “I’ll give you a list of short men while you’re here,” he says. “Bono, Tom Cruise, Mick Jagger, myself.”
Even when discussing the dependably downbeat subject of children’s online safety with Alex Cooney of CyberSafeKids, he eschews the apocalyptic tenor that so often accompanies such discussions in favour of a more pragmatically concerned tone.
Dunne’s easygoing approach shouldn’t be confused with flippancy: anyone who heard him candidly reflect on his heart surgery some years ago can attest to his thoughtful side. But it’s nonetheless telling that the presenter, who first made his name as the singer with the rock band Something Happens, sounds most engaged when talking about music.
Speaking to Stan Erraught, who teaches at the University of Leeds, about his book on the intersection between Irish music and republicanism, Dunne sounds at his happiest, and not just because he knows his guest as a former member of the 1980s Dublin indie group The Stars of Heaven: “If I wasn’t meeting you on a stage, I was playing five-a-side football against you.”
The ensuing interview is casual in mood, but detailed in knowledge and insightful in observation, as Erraught assesses Kneecap, The Wolfe Tones and The Cranberries. Dunne, meanwhile, quizzes his fellow musician with rare alacrity: whatever about his nose, his ear remains attuned to music.
The connection between words and music is explored on Routes (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday), as the novelist Kevin Barry looks back on the songs that have soundtracked his life and work. The Limerick-born author is the latest contributor to this occasional but quietly absorbing series (transmitted on bank-holiday Mondays), in which its presenter, Saibh Downes, invites guests to discuss the music that shaped them.
Previous participants have included music-industry figures such as the writer and promoter Leagues O’Toole, but Barry – who, in Downes’s description, “lives on his own planet of sound” – is the highest-profile personality to appear on the programme, with an entertaining manner to match.
He cautions that people who appear on such shows make their younger selves seem cooler than they were, before mischievously adding, “But I was always into very cool stuff.” Sure enough, Barry’s overview of his musical youth ticks the boxes of musical cred, from seeing The Smiths at the age of 14 and getting into acid house in late-1980s London to being a habitue of the cult Cork nightclub Sir Henry’s in the early 1990s.
It’s not just an I-was-there checklist of hip references, however. As befits his literary pedigree, Barry also evokes a grimy nostalgia as recalls his life at the time. “I used to love the parties after the clubs,” he says. “Moves would be made in all sorts of romantic ways.”
He also reveals the way music has permeated his novels, be it the rhythms of dub reggae shaping the prose of City of Bohane or the multiple allusions to lyrics by the Pixies, the alternative rock band, lurking in Night Boat to Tangier. If anyone can spot all the latter references, he adds conspiratorially, “They’re getting a special prize.” For others, however, Barry’s invigorating flip through his musical back pages will be reward enough.
There are more memories of the Irish music world on Sunday with Miriam (RTÉ Radio 1), when Miriam O’Callaghan talks to Eamon Carr and Jim Lockhart about the early days of the Celtic rock group Horslips. (I should mention that my uncle Barry Devlin was the band’s bassist.) It’s a brief item, featuring O’Callaghan at her most effervescently flattering – “You both look so healthy” – while yielding some witty snapshots of the group in their 1970s heyday.
O’Callaghan’s guests recall their ad-hoc origins (“We formed the band on a corridor,” says Carr) and share memories of the late guitarist Johnny Fean, as well as musing on the postcolonial ramifications of performing rock versions of Irish airs while wearing “Lurex and platform heels”: “Our natty gear was a bit of us saying there’s nothing to apologise for here,” says Lockhart. Clearly they weren’t afraid of putting people’s noses out of joint.
Moment of the week
Having spent a lifetime interviewing politicians, Pat Kenny (Newstalk, weekdays) knows meaningless spin when he hears it, as Minister of State for Environment Alan Dillon discovers when announcing a €27 million initiative for “transition to the circular economy”.
Asked by the host to explain what this actually entails, the Minister says that “the idea is very simple” before reciting a complicated, jargon-heavy list of vague-sounding projects, culminating in talk of a public-private partnership focused on “innovation system change” and “industrial collaboration around ecodesign”.
It’s at this point that Kenny interrupts his hapless guest. “I don’t understand a word of that, Minister. I don’t understand a word,” the host says sharply, but mercifully. He’s only saying what the rest of us are thinking.
