The Weekend On One With Brendan O'Connor

Why does Brendan never stop the Trump-bashing with a “Donald Trump isn’t here to defend himself”? Genuine question.

One of the Johns (I’m not sure which) just mentioned “today’s New York Times” and “Le Monde” (delivered in French accent and a mention that its “the French newspaper”) in rapid succession - the newspaper equivalent of name-dropping. Does anyone listening to this show not know Le Monde is French?

Catherine Martin can add this Arts Council disaster to the RTÉ one.

Brendan nearly came out with "Yeats isn't here to defend himself" just now when John said he was terrible at reading his own poetry 🤣🤣. He definitely hesitated for a second while he thought about it.

All these listeners' texts - all the usual "wow", "national treasure", "I'm in tears" blah, blah, blah. Where were they for our other 'national treasure' Francis Brennan last week? He definitely gave us a wow moment…

Ah I know, but the daytime sessions are fast moving, and although they occasionally cover similar topics, that's often when there's some breaking news. I get the feeling that during the day they alternate (for want of better words) presenters of different hues, left, right, middle, none etc. Anyway, it's a toss up between Shelagh Fogarty and James O'Brien for me, often both. O'B can be an onerous pr"ck sometimes but the topics are interesting. Fogarty is well balanced, well to me anyway!

Often though it's just background noise, and then something of interest catches my ear.

Justice minister getting a bit close to the bone on the news.

watch this space……. the narrative is changing. It could be to do with our new Minister for Justice (O'Callaghan) or the JD Vance speech at Munich security conference, or Trump's first few weeks of presidency, or the killing of a mother and toddler in Munich, a teenager in Austria and a man in Dublin, all in the last week (and all by migrants) …… but the tide is turning and so will the narrative.

Ireland is late to wake up, late to see the shift in Europe. RTE (and in particular Brendan O Connor) are in their own echo chamber, same guests, same words , blaming the "far right" for everything. Wake up RTE, you're asleep at the wheel.

What did Francis Brennan say that has been edited out? Can someone hint even, note I’m a bit dopey so a good hint please.

Just listening back to it now. Good to hear different panelists than the usual shower. Hazel Chu is definitely my favourite green, which isn't saying much, but I like to hear her views anyway.

All the references to John Fitzgerald's wife eventually got Brendan to suggest bringing her in 😀

Lovely interview with John Spillane. As noted above, the "Yeats isn't here to defend himself" moment was funny, or it would be if it didn't highlight the chronic difficulty in saying anything remotely controversial on this show, or RTE generally.

You say different panelists but all of today’s panel have been on previously, and more than once too. O’Connor mentioned this with Chu at one stage.

Granted they’re on less frequently than others, but they’re by no means fresh and new voices.

You need to have some sense of regular guests though. Having a bunch of people who've not been on before doesn't make for good radio like.

Demi Isaac does indeed sound like a really nice grounded young woman, but I wish BOC would stop reading out those 'wow', 'inspirational' (and especially 'I'm dancing around the kitchen') texts from listener, especially when they're so selective to just read out the positive ones.

I just can't believe that they didn't receive negative texts from a few listeners that had a 'wow' response to that awful piece about women dating/slagging off men last week, or Francis Brennan not being able to tell people of the same colour apart.

Was going to say there seemed like a lot of Cork representation there today.