Radio programmes are like parties: so much depends on the guests. A broadcaster’s skill in dealing with contributors and eliciting information from interviewees is one of the yardsticks by which they are judged, but they can do only so much with what they are given. Finding lively guests with plenty to say is the challenge for all radio researchers.
On Tuesday, a seven-year-old by the name of Jamie texted into Moncrieff (Newstalk, Mon-Fri) to ask where the show got its guests. “Do they all just ring you up and then you invite them into studio?” he wondered. Moncrieff kindly explained to his young listener how radio show schedules are put together, how researchers trawl for ideas and spend hours on the phone trying to find willing contributors.
It seemed strange, then, that later in the same programme, David Quinn of the Iona Institute was given free rein to expound his theories on the value of marriage, for no apparent news-related reason whatsoever. It would not have been surprising to learn Quinn had called the station and asked to be on the show.
However he ended up there, Quinn wasn’t going to waste a half-hour soapbox. He talked on, with the accustomed ease of someone who had made the same arguments many times. Marriage between a man and a woman is the only decent start for a child, he said, over and over again, in various ways.
Even those who disagree with Quinn’s conservative viewpoint would have to be impressed at his marshalling of facts and figures. The item mainly consisted of a torrent of statistics as he unleashed dozens of figures relating to marriage breakdown, divorce and the number of children raised by unmarried parents. Moncrieff’s initial reaction was scarcely to respond at all, allowing Quinn to talk on, though he interrupted more with questions as the item went on.
Advertisement
Society, according to Quinn, must try to “ensure as many as possible kids have the best start in life from day one which, once again, thus I repeat ad nauseam, means encouraging the most pro-child of all social institutions”.
His drum-banging had become so repetitive that Quinn himself had the grace to half-laugh as Moncrieff snorted derisively.
The Catholic campaigner has a surprising bedfellow where support for marriage is concerned in Russell Brand, who turned up on various radio programmes on Tuesday to plug his new film. Brand is another love-him-or-loathe-him character, but his lightning mind, overactive imagination and willingness to say more or less anything make him a far more entertaining guest.
Rick O’Shea (2FM, Mon-Fri) just about managed to keep Brand in hand and steered their interview along nicely. Towards the end, he asked Brand about his engagement to singer Katy Perry. The star may once have been a notorious womaniser, but he told O’Shea he was deeply in love and may even get married in Ireland, rather than America or England.
“Them countries have got a lot of hoopla and intrusion,” he explained. “A wedding is meant to be a solemn oath before God of the union between man and woman. You can’t have a helicopter there.”
Advertisement
Brand went on to deflate the notion of sexually promiscuous groupies. “You’ll find actually most women just want autographs. They don’t really want seminal fluid,” he said, in a rather po-voiced way. Unlikely as it might seem, David Quinn would surely approve.