Oliver Callan's radio show navigates the contrasting realities of rural and urban Ireland during a recent snowstorm. It features heartwarming human-interest stories and insightful conversations about the challenges facing rural communities, including depopulation and economic hardship.
Radio : ‘I can tell you Dublin is getting off very lightly in the cold snap so far,’ Oliver Callan notes on Tuesday’s show, ‘much to our relief here’ As if enough divisions weren’t already roiling urban and rural Ireland , it seems that we can now add this getting off very lightly in the cold snap so far,” he notes on Tuesday’s show, “much to our relief here.
” Lest anyone think he’s some smug metropolitan type, however, the hits neatly on the contrasting situations in the city – where the low temperature is merely an inconvenience for most – and in much of the countryside, where everyday life has been paralysed. It’s a thread he unpicks, affably casually, when talking to Ger Harkins, who recounts how there was so much snow in her Co Cork village that she was unable to bring her son Kieran to regular dialysis in Cork city. Happily, the problem was solved by dispatching an Army jeep to collect mother and son, though even then the trip wasn’t without its hazards. “The first 20 minutes was no fun at all. It was like going through the Alps,” says Harkins. It’s an unabashedly feelgood item, with Callan palpably buoyed by his guest’s indefatigable personality, even when she mischievously pegs him as a jackeen. Recalling how her son suffered total kidney failure as a healthy 15-year-old (he’s awaiting a transplant), Harkins tells the host that she spent nine months in Dublin – “your part of the country” – as Kieran got treatment at. “I’m not a huge fan of Dublin, but I have to say they were amazing up there,” says Harkins with a chuckle. “Phew, they redeemed themselves, the Dubs,” the host replies, conspicuously deploying the third-person plural. You can take the boy out of the country, and all that. Increasingly, such everyday vignettes provide the more absorbing material on Callan’s show. Despite his satirical roots, the host’s daily introductory monologue is more likely to consist of gently mocking observations rather than the merciless strafing one might expect. (Tellingly, he bemoans the current political scene in Ireland as the dullest since the rainbow coalition of the 1990s.) The rest of the show follows the same easy-going lead, from the host’s breezy opening catchphrase – “It’s Oliver on the air” – to the human-interest stories he hears.
RADIO IRELAND RURAL URBAN SNOW HUMAN INTEREST DEPOPULATION ECONOMICS
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