Now we stand at the gate of the new year, and what better time to look back on such a wealth of radio and podcasts – a box of delights with the occasional ear worm.
Awards for the best laugh-out-line go to Broadcasting House on Radio 4 – served up by Paddy O’Connell who’s good at wry and irreverent.
Guest Kevin McCloud is known as the presenter of Grand Designs – where people make their dream house a reality.
Or as Paddy put it in his intro, “people always end up pregnant and living in a caravan on your programme”.
Looking back at the world of radio and podcasts over the year, I’m forever drawn to the magic that is RTE’s Sunday Miscellany – essays, poetry and music that’s true balm to the soul of a Sunday. A shout out to Lyric FM too.
Also Desert Island Discs because people’s life stories are deeply fascinating.
Film-maker Baz Luhrmann had a bizarre childhood growing up in the middle of nowhere in Australia with a two-hour bus journey to school.
The first verdict on his film debut – Strictly Ballroom – was savage.
He went to a trailer park to get over it; a guy got killed by a falling coconut and some French fella rang – it was the Cannes film festival and they wanted to show his film.
The rest is history.
Closer to home, journalist Laura McDaid and producer Kerry Jamison told a moving story.
For Laura, the making of this podcast – Assume Nothing: The Last Request - was personal.
She had held her ex-partner, journalist Martin Barry’s, hand as he died at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. The night before, he asked her to find his birth mother – he had been born in a mother and baby home – and to pass on a message.
Twenty years later, Laura and Kerry began a search that took them all over Ireland and across the Irish Sea.
This was no easy undertaking. It took courage and determination to get to the truth of who Martin’s mother was and then to find her.
It’s a must-listen.
And finally, for the best of innovative and imaginative radio, look no further than Falling Tree productions – head over to the website and explore.
Anything that Eleanor Dowdall touches is truly magical.
Happy listening.
