Lyric fm's Breakfast show presenter - Marty Whelan.

jmcc wrote: »

So more Ennio Morricone each day then?

No Tesco ads though?

Regards...jmcc

Actually Mart has distanced himself from Tesco and they've been forced to find someone else.

I didn't catch the number but the lady this morning from the Travel Department mentioned a number to call. They have two girls on the phones dedicated to booking the gardens trips.

Mart was mentioning that the Berlin trip is going to squeeze out some great radio when it comes and there are still a few remaining seats left.

If you look on the site you can see that Karen Canning won the Verona prize.
http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/marty-in-the-morning/

In Berlin there will be opportunities to mingle with Mart and the team, as well as avail of shopping opportunities in Berlin where a branch of Hollinger is opening. And the show is going cross platform for the duration with inputs into national TV from the opera there. The Night of the Valkyries is one of the items to be done.

Getting us into the mood for Verona today was Santa Lucia by Bocelli - or "Just One Cornetto" as Marty calls it.

We had the bit of Hancock's Half Hour. Though not a full half-hour of it.

And Badenerie by Bach for the classical buffs in the audience coming up to the AA.

jmcc wrote: »

Does he actually play an Opera on a daily basis?

Still 8 places left. Hardly sold out but then you have to keep pushing that line.

So with 8 places remaining, there will be four sets of tickets to win?

Interestingly there are other Opera and Music tours but Marty isn't included.

Regards...jmcc

Do you have details of the others? I suppose it's not possible to Mart to get enough sabbattical leave to go on them all.

But yes Mart was giving advice on the show on Tuesday to someone like us who was just feeling his way in the classical stuff. He was asking about how to dip his toe into opera. Mart suggested that you can't go wrong with a bit of Puccini like Tosca or something. This is part of the service of the programme giving up spoonfuls of opera in a smorgasboard of more palatable music. Spoonfeeding the listener. But as Mary Poppins sang - give me a Spoonful of Sugar to help the Medicine go Down.

jmcc wrote: »

Just follow the link you posted. Apparently your beloved Marty is only doing one but there are many more available. Curiously Marty was the only one photographed with a book on the subject on which he is supposed to be an expert. Are we to take that as a sign of insecurity or perhaps someone who is an aficionado trying to enforce the idea of being an expert because he reads a book or two on the subject?

A real listener?

But has he actually played any Puccini on the show? Would he consider replacing the MOTR stuff with Opera?

Regards...jmcc

Actually I can't see any photo of Mart on that site. Can you direct me to it? I imagine Mart would be holding the tome for posing purposes not to read out because he's extremely polished.

I wish I could go to hear his Berlin lecture because he brings a great informality to opera and softens us up for it. He knows Puccini from his earliest days. Most people here really only got to know it at the time of Italia 90, so Mart has been miles ahead of us. And in fact he did play a bit of Puccini on the Show this morning. O soave fanciula, which Marty often says means My suave something or other. But soave is actually a kind of Italian wine. Which Mart knows because he has chatted with Neven about it.

A piece of Puccini is a sweet way to get the day started and he often does. Like the other one O Mia Bambino Caro. Marty said there was a car one called a Fit Bambino and that the song could be about that. :rolleyes: Hayley Westenra has a good cover of that that Marty often has in his briefcase for us of a morning.

jmcc wrote: »

Well you were the one posting the link to the site. Look at the "meet our experts" page.

Opera was very much a popular form of entertainment in its day. It is only with the advent of electronic entertainment that it largely became the preserve of those who could afford the high prices. And they are far removed from the intended audience and for many, they are just songs in a different language and a social occasion to be seen at rather than a pleasure to hear.

Well Marty does look a bit old but we would never have guessed he was that old.

So would Marty care to drop the MOTR stuff in favour of some Opera and some commentary on the pieces that he plays?

Regards...jmcc

Thanks. What an extraordinary photograph! I found that eventually. It's an unexpecetd photograph. I've seen that book around, so I might get my own copy.
http://www.traveldepartment.ie/about-us/meet-our-experts/

Mart has just had an email in to him from a dog. It was written by the dog with his nose. (Or maybe it's a girl dog.) But it was gas. And that was after Harry Secombe who's birthday is today was on singing a song and then in a excerpt from one of the better Goon Shows. Linking again you see.

And someone in Co Kildare has now just one a Marty Moustache.

The whole show is just a smorgasboard of delights. Like a buffet wedding for the ears.

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

Newsflash! !!

Just turned over to Lyric and there was music playing! Wonders will never cease!

And in other news, Yvonne, you'll give us all diabetes with your saccharine-sweet posts, go easy please, for all our sakes :eek:

Marty played the Beethoven Chorale Symphony this morning! :cool:

But enough of that!

Not only that but he had in the head of the ESB Feis Ceol thats been running in the RDS with generous support from ESB and the involvement of RTE and the girl who won most of the prizes with her cups. She's getting a chance to conduct our own RTE Concert Orchestra who can play anything from Bach to Bacharach. And Marty gave her some useful hints about TV appearances because there is going to be a major TV documentary on her on RTE on 11 May. Which is the day after Ireland wins the Eurovision Mart said.

Huge interest this morning too in Myrtle & Daphne who were spouting poetry which is a first. :eek:

And finally all I have to say is to be kind to each other here. Marty signed off today with Morecambe & Wise singing Bring Me Sunshine and it really and truly sets the tone for what's going to be a lovely, lovely, sunny, day.

I can't bear to listen to Marty Whelan on the radio.

As I watch Eurovision I can't avoid him doing the commentary for the semi-finals.

My God, he's the most torturous person ever to be let near a micophone. He's deluded into thinking that if he uses a funny voice he'll be humourous and entertaining. In fact he couldn't be more cringeworthy and banal.

Thank goodness for the BBC for tomorrow's coverage of the Eurovision final.

Radio by Mick Heaney in the Irish Times.

Hare-brained gags and musical diversity, together at last on ‘Marty in the Morning’

Marty Whelan is an odd fit on Lyric FM, but even his wacky style is a good deal more inspirational than daytime on 2FM.

One doesn’t normally associate the patter of Marty Whelan with the classics of high modernism. But such is the ceaseless cavalcade of funny accents and headspinning nonsequiturs that make up Marty in the Morning (Lyric FM, weekdays) that it calls to mind the line from Charles Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend, about the newspaper-reading Sloppy, later used as the working title for TS Eliot’s The Waste Land: “He do the police in different voices.”

Whelan’s show is obviously not a long-form poem of shifting perspectives and challenging verse structure; nor does the presenter have a penchant for reading Victorian police reports out loud. (Well, not yet.) He is, however, seemingly unable to talk for more than five seconds without changing the pitch of his voice for dramatic or, more usually, comic effect.
Whether he is seamlessly weaving listeners’ texts into his ever-modulating spiel or piling one zany aside on top of another, the effect is of a stream-of-consciousness opus as channeled through a Smashie and Nicey-style daytime radio jock.

After a while this headlong verbal rush exerts a curiously mesmeric power. Trying to capture it accurately, however, is akin to trying to note down every passing number plate from a motorway flyover.

“Thanks to Majella – really? Yes – and the marvellous Carlow College of Music. They had a great concert yesterday, you know. My son was on the trombone, Eoin. More power to your elbow, your mouth, fair play to you. That’s Monica, wishing them all well today, which is fantastic.”

And that’s just one random 15-second passage from a show that lasts three hours. Little wonder there are times when he sounds hoarse.

To maintain this pace, no trope is too obvious nor joke too corny. Broadcasting from Berlin on Wednesday – he’s there for a performance of Tosca – he opens the show with, yes, Song of Germany (its refrain of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” familiar to many).
He enthuses at length about the city and German music, but he also declares that the weather is so warm that it’s “a mankini for Marty”, an image that is paradoxically chilling.

It is, on the face of things, perverse that someone like this should be one of the marquee names on a music station with such knowledgeable and committed presenters as John Kelly, Gerry Godley and Ellen Cranitch. But that is to do a mild disservice to the music on the show: his greatest asset.

Within his “tucker bag” is a playlist ranging from John Barry spy themes to rootsy Americana and wry Noël Coward ditties, making it the most musically adventurous morning show on Irish radio. That such an accolade should be bestowed on a man with the speech patterns of a frustrated ventriloquist and the wit of a naff, slightly batty uncle is, however, a faintly depressing comment on the state of the airwaves.

He's going to be in Bloom in the Phoenix Park tomorrow and I think I'd like to go up there and see what he's like in person. He said that Mary Kennedy from television would be there too with Neven Maguire and some of the people from the "Travel Department." They offering lawnmowers and hedge strimmers as well as tastings from Neven. It's an early start for 8.30 for Bloom but there will be the Full Irish available at Neven Maguire's tent from opening time. That would be a good bit of ballast for the day. And then look at a few plants afterwards.

They're also going to have live music up there with the RTE Big Band and the Concert Orchestra and some other celebs from Lyric and other channels. I hope it keeps fine for them.