Charlie Bird

my friend

My criticisms out weigh my compliments on these threads, however I am compelled to congratulate Charlie on his radio format and host technique, how refreshing to listen to radio where the guests are allowed to speak and explain themselves .

He's also capable of interjecting with the questions the listeners actually consider.

Lapin

I'm inclined to agree but I'm still not 100% sure.

Let's see how he gets on with what seems to be the 100th presidential debate on air now.

IvyTheTerrible

Lapin wrote: »

I'm inclined to agree but I'm still not 100% sure.

Let's see how he gets on with what seems to be the 100th presidential debate on air now.

He's doing well I think.

That Delorous one is getting more airtime than some of the candidates though (she must have a hotline to RTE she is on it so much).

Lapin

Whats with the pumpkins? Norris seems upset by them.

Lapin

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

He's doing well I think.

He just cut right across Gallagher there mid sentence and cut to the next question.

Norris is doing quite well here. He just made an idiot out of Mitchell.

IvyTheTerrible

Lapin wrote: »

He just cut right across Gallagher there mid sentence and cut to the next question.

Norris is doing quite well here. He just made an idiot out of Mitchell.

Yeah I was surprised when I heard him cutting off Gallagher.

constitutionus

jesus first tom dunne gives a better interview of martin McGuinness than practicaly anyone else and now charlie bird is conducting one of the better debates of the presidential election campaign.

mad stuff.

this is towering over the crap marion foisted upon us two hours previous to it.

fair play.

one of the few debates not screwed up by hysterics.

this question about priory hall is coming from left field to the candidates.

ok its a bit of a mad one but its clearly showing how they react on their feet.

JonathanAnon

He's really overdoing the interrupting..

Norris was embarrassing .. shouting and roaring out of him..

Lapin

The Priory Hall question did silence them all for a moment and the listener could picture the candidates staring at the floor for that one.

Although I don't see the relavance of such a question. If I was a resident of Priory Hall, the last people I'd want to see this week would be any of the presidential hopefuls gaining publicity from my misfortune.

It was a silly question really, of the -tug at heartserings- type that Charlie Bird is known for.

Apart from that, his main input was "Briefly" and "Very briefly please", as he rushed through the questions. It got very annoying towards the end.

GSF

They didnt offer to put up any of the Priory Hall residents in the Aras I presume?

TimmyTarmac

The Priory Hall question was buttock clenchingly embarrassing. Could you imagine the late Gerald Barry or John Bowman asking that in a Presidential Election debate?
Bird should eff off somewhere else and leave hosting current affairs shows to others who are well prepared and are happy not to let their emotions or ego get in the way.

jimmyw

One of the most painful shows I had to listen,(well it was raining:rolleyes:).He asked them, or rather he had the audience do his job for him,without his pay:p.Halfway through their sentence, he would ask someone else or go to the audience.Vey bad and ignorant:(.Bring back Rachael, for Gods sake)

headmaster

My goodness, i listened to Bird yesterday and his programme was ridiculous, it had no function, no meaning and his interuptions and stupidity must have gotten on the nations nerves. A question i would like to ask is, what if any function has he at all, is there any need for him in any capacity on the airwaves? I think not, in fact anyone i talk to says he's surplus to requirements and the younger age group have no idea who the hell he is.

jimmyw

GSF wrote: »

They didnt offer to put up any of the Priory Hall residents in the Aras I presume?

They did actually:p

HugoBradyBrown

I think that we need to be very careful in relation to Charlie Bird, in case something with the appearance of snobbery obtrudes into the discussion.

Charlie is a role model for people with no education who got very far in competition with college types, especially in here. He also brings the common touch to bear in his programming, and is like Paddy O'Gorman in that respect (or, indeed, Marian Finucane before she became successful).

Charlie has depth, roots, hinterland. He has interviewed them all. Remember in the 1980's, when he was out in the Phillipines for months on end, reporting each evening into the 9 o'clock on the case of Fr Niall O'Brien. He qualified for the vote in the Phillipines towards the end of his stay, but he kept the people up to the minute on a story of great national consequence.

Or see him sternly tackle evasive politicians, where he will ask the same question over and over again until he gets the answer he wants. This model is credited to Jeremy Paxman O.B.E., yet Charlie perfected the technique here years before.

It is vital that the station should connect with the viewers and listeners, and that it turn to the public a face that is identical with their own. Charlie's is the one that fills that gap, that ticks that box, that covers that base.


Hugo Brady Brown

Poly

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

It is vital that the station should connect with the viewers and listeners, and that it turn to the public a face that is identical with their own. Charlie's is the one that fills that gap, that ticks that box, that covers that base.

No he doesn't Hugo, he's another egotistical RTE lifer who can't hack it in the real world, his tour of duty in DC accompanying documentary about his "struggles " in the USA is an example how out of touch these divas are.
He was carried to south pole at our expense in an effort to celebrate the life of the legendary Tom Crean, as a license fee payer I would have preferred to see some genuine Irish explorers or members of the PDF been given the chance to recreate his epic trek, not Bird whining because he has a blister!
RTE make the same mistake over and over, thinking that we want to hear about Charlie Bird or some other overpaid twit like Dermot Gavin,George Lee or Tubridy.

HugoBradyBrown

Ah now, Poly, we need to think this through calmly, and not drift into pejorative language. I see what you say, and I have some sense of why you may feel it, but I urge you to reconsider it in the light of another and more favourable interpretation.

This is a small broadcaster, smack up against both the best PSB broadcaster and the best commercial TV in the world, and competing against satellite, cable and internet TV. We simply cannot expect to have the same resources to compete in terms of quality with them; the option is to provide what is possible, to the highest possible standards.

Charlie Bird, whatever he can't do, certainly can connect with people. (E.M. Forster's ideal for human and social life was "only connect.") Charlie can convey emotion, both his own and that of others, and render them accessible and tangible to the viewer and, sometimes by volume alone, to the listener.

Some of us might well see BBC Four (TV) and BBC Radio 3 as the perfect model to which all broadcasting should aspire, but our audience has different tastes. They are, in one sense, pleased with honest if modest efforts.

Even to take the South Pole odyssey, yes, perhaps Army Rangers or Mountain Rescue Men might have performed better in physical terms. However, commissioned officers apart, they would be unlikely to have had the fluency necessary, or the mental drafting ability that Charlie was able to mobilise at will before the unrelenting camera lens in the sharp antarctic sunshine on the snowfields.

And, despite the brave face that others have put on it previously, a stint Stateside as the bureau chief for a small European station has to have been tough going. Whereas here and in Britain all doors will have been open to Charlie, in the US, outside certain Senate and White House circles, he might have barely registered on the PR radar. Consider, then, the brutal honesty of the man in opening his heart to the viewers and listeners; he did what he has the talent for, he emoted feelingly for the public, and that public resonated like a funeral bell for his pain.

Where it is possible to see a man as, for example, a 'diva', I tend to see him as a paradoxically vulnerable heldentenor, roaring at the camera about his pain, and taking us all in.


With my compliments,


Hugo Brady Brown

Poly wrote: »

No he doesn't Hugo, he's another egotistical RTE lifer who can't hack it in the real world, his tour of duty in DC accompanying documentary about his "struggles " in the USA is an example how out of touch these divas are.
He was carried to south pole at our expense in an effort to celebrate the life of the legendary Tom Crean, as a license fee payer I would have preferred to see some genuine Irish explorers or members of the PDF been given the chance to recreate his epic trek, not Bird whining because he has a blister!
RTE make the same mistake over and over, thinking that we want to hear about Charlie Bird or some other overpaid twit like Dermot Gavin,George Lee or Tubridy.

Poly

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

However, commissioned officers apart, they would be unlikely to have had the fluency necessary, or the mental drafting ability that Charlie was able to mobilise at will before the unrelenting camera lens in the sharp antarctic sunshine on the snowfields.

And, despite the brave face that others have put on it previously, a stint Stateside as the bureau chief for a small European station has to have been tough going. Whereas here and in Britain all doors will have been open to Charlie, in the US, outside certain Senate and White House circles, he might have barely registered on the PR radar. Consider, then, the brutal honesty of the man in opening his heart to the viewers and listeners; he did what he has the talent for, he emoted feelingly for the public, and that public resonated like a funeral bell for his pain.

I presume you are drafting this from an officers mess somewhere, while some poor shellshocked private prepares your table and brandy for you and the other ruperts;)
The other correspondents RTE have stationed on the frontline in DC never seemed to suffer such turmoil in performing their job, Carol Coleman being one.

HugoBradyBrown

Poly wrote: »

I presume you are drafting this from an officers mess somewhere, while some poor shellshocked private prepares your table and brandy for you and the other ruperts;)
The other correspondents RTE have stationed on the frontline in DC never seemed to suffer such turmoil in performing their job, Carol Coleman being one.

Poly, if you only knew! I believe that in some cases the only therapeutic response that yields any measurable results is biblio-therapy: writing a stockingfiller about one's time as a stranger in a strange land. These works tend to be mopped up by undemanding folk coming up to the festive season, and the financial fillip the writer receives soothes the pain of the memory of psychic destitution across the herring pond.

And another three gins, there, batman!


Hugo Brady Brown

FlutterinBantam

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Poly, if you only knew! I believe that in some cases the only therapeutic response that yields any measurable results is biblio-therapy: writing a stockingfiller about one's time as a stranger in a strange land. These works tend to be mopped up by undemanding folk coming up to the festive season, and the financial fillip the writer receives soothes the pain of the memory of psychic destitution across the herring pond.

And another three gins, there, batman!


Hugo Brady Brown

Good man 'Ugo, another leather elbowed product of Montrose, like the male bee, makes a lot of noise, produces nothing, and costs as much to keep as it's profligate females.;)

Poly

Found this, I forgot he braved the Amazon and Ganges on my behalf also:


http://www.wiredwithwhelan.com/?p=936

HugoBradyBrown

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Good man 'Ugo, another leather elbowed product of Montrose, like the male bee, makes a lot of noise, produces nothing, and costs as much to keep as it's profligate females.;)

But the male bee does produce something, much as the male of most species, including ourselves, does, and something most important, too. Not that I would wish to suggest that anyone in here is a 'drone', in either the apicultural or the Bertie Wooster sense!

But more seriously, Charlie Bird is clearly a utility broadcaster, able to turn his hand to anything, whether on the senior service, or on Teilifis. And if you have on staff a man who knows how to look into a camera lens without goggling at it, and who can string together an interesting impromptu script of some competence and emotional content, would you not be foolish not to use him? What, in other words, would the Accountant or the Public Accounts Committee say?

It should be clear that we must leverage the talent that we have on the payroll, rather than going outside for free-lancers. And there is, I, at least, would argue, far too much reality TV and 'ordinary person' TV already. Professionalism from the likes of Mr Bird should trump pretty amateur faces and voices every day, while simultaneously allowing corners to be cut financially. Indeed, we should also shy away from an unconscious age-ism in critical commentary on Mr Bird's work.

By the way, since I am still a novice in this world, what means 'leather-elbowed' in this context?

Very sincerely yours,

Hugo Brady Brown

FlutterinBantam

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

But the male bee does produce something, much as the male of most species, including ourselves, does, and something most important, too. Not that I would wish to suggest that anyone in here is a 'drone', in either the apicultural or the Bertie Wooster sense!

But more seriously, Charlie Bird is clearly a utility broadcaster, able to turn his hand to anything, whether on the senior service, or on Teilifis. And if you have on staff a man who knows how to look into a camera lens without goggling at it, and who can string together an interesting impromptu script of some competence and emotional content, would you not be foolish not to use him? What, in other words, would the Accountant or the Public Accounts Committee say?

It should be clear that we must leverage the talent that we have on the payroll, rather than going outside for free-lancers. And there is, I, at least, would argue, far too much reality TV and 'ordinary person' TV already. Professionalism from the likes of Mr Bird should trump pretty amateur faces and voices every day, while simultaneously allowing corners to be cut financially. Indeed, we should also shy away from an unconscious age-ism in critical commentary on Mr Bird's work.

By the way, since I am still a novice in this world, what means 'leather-elbowed' in this context?

Very sincerely yours,

Hugo Brady Brown

Would serve to typify the typical incumbent of a senior producers job out in Montrose, as seen by the taxpayer.

Ergo, scrawny thinning hair, straggley bearded dude, living in Monkstown, Arts degree in UCD or trinners in the late 60s, bit of a rebel back then,fond of appearing at work in a houndstooth jacket with leather trim at the cuffs and elbows.
Seen in the NCH of a Friday night with a well upholstered haughty spouse, making the spanks work hard;)


Probably way off the mark there 'Ugo, but that's the perception.

HugoBradyBrown

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Would serve to typify the typical incumbent of a senior producers job out in Montrose, as seen by the taxpayer.

Ergo, scrawny thinning hair, straggley bearded dude, living in Monkstown, Arts degree in UCD or trinners in the late 60s, bit of a rebel back then,fond of appearing at work in a houndstooth jacket with leather trim at the cuffs and elbows.
Seen in the NCH of a Friday night with a well upholstered haughty spouse, making the spanks work hard;)


Probably way off the mark there 'Ugo, but that's the perception.

Thanks for the clarification, FlutterinBantam. I don't quite live in Monkstown, and I've been to Cambridge, but I think I get the picture! (I would love to ask what 'the spanks' are, but I presume they are the rank & file violins down at the Hall. We need to get more productivity out of them, I could agree.) And houndstooth can be so ageing on a man.


Hugo Brady Brown

headmaster

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I think that we need to be very careful in relation to Charlie Bird, in case something with the appearance of snobbery obtrudes into the discussion.

Charlie is a role model for people with no education who got very far in competition with college types, especially in here. He also brings the common touch to bear in his programming, and is like Paddy O'Gorman in that respect (or, indeed, Marian Finucane before she became successful).

Charlie has depth, roots, hinterland. He has interviewed them all. Remember in the 1980's, when he was out in the Phillipines for months on end, reporting each evening into the 9 o'clock on the case of Fr Niall O'Brien. He qualified for the vote in the Phillipines towards the end of his stay, but he kept the people up to the minute on a story of great national consequence.

What in the bloody name of crhist are you waffeling about? He's the most useless piece of excess baggage in RTE at the moment.

Or see him sternly tackle evasive politicians, where he will ask the same question over and over again until he gets the answer he wants. This model is credited to Jeremy Paxman O.B.E., yet Charlie perfected the technique here years before.

It is vital that the station should connect with the viewers and listeners, and that it turn to the public a face that is identical with their own. Charlie's is the one that fills that gap, that ticks that box, that covers that base.


Hugo Brady Brown

Please tell me you're taking the piss, please. Charlie is the most useless piece of garbage RTE have on their books at the moment. I mean, really waste of space.

HugoBradyBrown

headmaster wrote: »

Please tell me you're taking the piss, please. Charlie is the most useless piece of garbage RTE have on their books at the moment. I mean, really waste of space.

Dear Headmaster,

In your quote of one of my posts to this thread, a sentence not by me has appeared within the quote, I presume in error:

"What in the bloody name of crhist are you waffeling about? He's the most useless piece of excess baggage in RTE at the moment."

This embedding of extraneous material subverts the meaning and tone of my post.

And no, I am not being facetious in my post. I realise that as an educationalist you may give a special weighting of respect to people who have formal education. However, I believe that those (the majority of our people) who, like Charlie Bird, have no education, save that picked up at the University of Hard Knocks, deserve their place in the sun. As he said himself somewhere, if he had an auld pass BA in English and Politics from UCD, he would have been presenting Today Tonight. As it was, he was treated as a kind of groundsman or outdoor worker, a pariah, roaring at the camera from street corners, rather than probing the leaders of our society in upholstered comfort at 28 degrees Celsius in Studio 5B. He competed hard against those whose path through life was lubricated by wealth, privilege and intellect, and he won. Not wholly, or in full measure, but very substantially. They too have their story to tell, as we know.

And we ought to avoid such extreme denunciations of a craftsman of the broadcasting world, or of any of our fellow men.



Hugo Brady Brown

FlutterinBantam

Take a little issue with your discourse 'Ugo,Charlie had the same opportunity as most and decided on an alternative path.

I happen to kind of like the lad when reporting from the mean streets of Ireland, however slotting him into the rarefied temperatures of the unforgiving environment of studio 5B, tends to expose one's shortcomings in that particular sphere of competency.

To put is bluntly 'Ugo, Chas. is not a 'stoodio' man.

Can't figure why the intellegensia in Montrose persist in shoehorning these square pegs into round holes.

These little babies is what your well -upholstered senior producer's wife will almost always give a good testing to of an evening in the long gown at the NCH

As they say in the Sports dept. can be sometimes a bit of a cliffhanger.

headmaster

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Dear Headmaster,

In your quote of one of my posts to this thread, a sentence not by me has appeared within the quote, I presume in error:

"What in the bloody name of crhist are you waffeling about? He's the most useless piece of excess baggage in RTE at the moment."

This embedding of extraneous material subverts the meaning and tone of my post.

And no, I am not being facetious in my post. I realise that as an educationalist you may give a special weighting of respect to people who have formal education. However, I believe that those (the majority of our people) who, like Charlie Bird, have no education, save that picked up at the University of Hard Knocks, deserve their place in the sun. As he said himself somewhere, if he had an auld pass BA in English and Politics from UCD, he would have been presenting Today Tonight. As it was, he was treated as a kind of groundsman or outdoor worker, a pariah, roaring at the camera from street corners, rather than probing the leaders of our society in upholstered comfort at 28 degrees Celsius in Studio 5B. He competed hard against those whose path through life was lubricated by wealth, privilege and intellect, and he won. Not wholly, or in full measure, but very substantially. They too have their story to tell, as we know.

And we ought to avoid such extreme denunciations of a craftsman of the broadcasting world, or of any of our fellow men.



Hugo Brady Brown

Hugo,

I actually agree and disagree with some of your points, but as regards Charlie B, I take no pleasure in thinking he's a complete waste of time. He never followed up the Beverly Flynn investigation and went after the "REAL" culprits behind the hot money hidden here and there in set up a/c's. Big, big, big, people were behind all this. If he was a real journalist, not an intelligent one, he would have gone after this story, he didn't. That story is still there, the culprits are still there, they are some of the biggest and well known people in world banking today, most are irishmen, who, now and again, tell us what's good for us in the austerity sense. Some are former commisioners, some with the world banks, all in privelaged positions on the world and european stage. If he's any bloody good, he should run with this, then, when they're brought to justice, i'll agree with you. Oh no, he found the hanging branch easy prey, but the tree kept growing. In my opinion, he's nothing more than a twa ?

HugoBradyBrown

Thanks, Headmaster! (I haven't said that since I left Oundle! I'm getting nostalgic for a fag.)

I am travelling significantly at present, and am separated from my files, but I seem to remember that Charlie Bird was the brains and motive force behind the uncovering of the NIB scandal all those years ago. (For those too young to recall, it was Ireland's first banking scandal, and never going to happen again. ...)

Investigative journalism is a time-consuming practice (the Irish Times, for example, got out of it years ago for the very reason that it takes too long to feed into useable fully-legalled copy at affordable cost), so there is a limit to what one gifted investigative practitioner can achieve. Mike Milotte was another man in the same vein here, and, again, in terms of TX hours, his output seems modest, but in terms of intensity of effect, his work is on a par with the otherwise peerless Charlie (in terms of Irish journalism that is).



Hugo Brady Brown

headmaster wrote: »

Hugo,

I actually agree and disagree with some of your points, but as regards Charlie B, I take no pleasure in thinking he's a complete waste of time. He never followed up the Beverly Flynn investigation and went after the "REAL" culprits behind the hot money hidden here and there in set up a/c's. Big, big, big, people were behind all this. If he was a real journalist, not an intelligent one, he would have gone after this story, he didn't. That story is still there, the culprits are still there, they are some of the biggest and well known people in world banking today, most are irishmen, who, now and again, tell us what's good for us in the austerity sense. Some are former commisioners, some with the world banks, all in privelaged positions on the world and european stage. If he's any bloody good, he should run with this, then, when they're brought to justice, i'll agree with you. Oh no, he found the hanging branch easy prey, but the tree kept growing. In my opinion, he's nothing more than a twa ?

HugoBradyBrown

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Take a little issue with your discourse '


Can't figure why the intellegensia in Montrose persist in shoehorning these square pegs into round holes.

These little babies is what your well -upholstered senior producer's wife will almost always give a good testing to of an evening in the long gown at the NCH

As they say in the Sports dept. can be sometimes a bit of a cliffhanger.

Aha, I see the spanx now. Never felt the need, myself, but each to his own, I would say.

As to Sports, I find that when they're not giving a Manuel from Barcelona impersonation of 'Valencia' or 'Ibiza', they confine themselves to telling me that such-and-such is 'the crucial game in our group', or something like that. I often think they're angling for more foreign travel. They would need to get up earlier in the morning to impress me, I can assure you!

BTW, have I seen you in the Hall, FlutterinBantam? (I was at Don Giovanni from the Met in the Swan Cinema in Rathmines this evening, and am going back down with a subsidised ticket to the Wexford Festival this week, so it's actually been a couple of weeks since I was in the Hall. They were 'papering the house' for the Our Lady's Choral Society performance of the Verdi Requiem with the RTECO a few weeks ago and I was shoved a couple of tickets, but I haven't been there since.)

All the best,


Hugo Brady Brown