One Day At A Whine (Sweet Jesus), Liveline, 10/05/19 and dat

ThePeckerDunne wrote: »

The show is rapidly going downhill.
it is becoming a parody of itself

ButtersSuki wrote: »

I've "helpfully" posted the relevant part of interview below so everyone else can feel queasy too.


Has Joe Duffy ever considered becoming a private detective?
Radio review: The presenter shows off his digging skills over a racist incident on the train

Mick Heaney
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about 15 hours ago

Liveline host Joe Duffy’s investigative skills make for interesting listening

Liveline host Joe Duffy’s investigative skills make for interesting listening
Has Joe Duffy ever considered becoming a private detective? This isn’t meant as a sly hint, à la managers suggesting employees seek new opportunities by way of issuing a P45, but is a genuine question. For one thing, Duffy frequently exudes the world-weary air of a Raymond Chandler character. More crucially, when the presenter takes on a case he cares about, he doggedly tries to crack it.

On Monday, the client who shows up seeking help at Duffy’s chaotic office – better known as Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) – is Prasun Bhattacharjee, an Indian tourist who recounts being racially abused on the Belfast-Dublin train the previous evening. Bhattacharjee describes the hour-long tirade he and his elderly parents endured from an Irish man, contrasting the sympathy of fellow passengers for their plight with the perfunctory response of the train guards, who allowed the abuser to stay on. “Were you happy with the staff?” asks Duffy. “Not absolutely,” replies Bhattacharjee.

Others aren’t so phlegmatic. Duffy talks to Peter, a passenger from the same carriage, who tells of his embarrassment at the insults but admits that he didn’t try to stop the abuser. “Were you afraid of him?” the host asks. “I was, to be quite honest,” Peter replies.

It seems that might be that, but Duffy has other ideas. “We want to find this man,” he says on Tuesday. He talks to Emma, who also witnessed the incident and recorded it. Duffy issues health warnings about the offensive language on the recording before playing the clip of a clearly inebriated Dubliner telling Bhattacharjee’s family to “f**k off back home”. It’s shocking to hear such unalloyed abuse but it also makes for bracing radio, as Duffy knows. “We don’t like repeating this,” he says of the clip, before doing just that.

The next day, more leads emerge. A woman named Carla tells Duffy how she too was on the carriage and approached the abusive man on several occasions to try to dissuade him. The emergence of new details from different accounts lends the whole sorry saga a compelling Rashamon-style quality, but the narrative of vile abuse, passenger concern and official indifference remains consistent.


Duffy may have got to the bottom of this depressing incident of intolerance, but one suspects the Liveline detective agency won’t be lacking similar cases any time soon
The belated appearance of Irish Rail spokesman Barry Kenny on Wednesday’s show only amplifies the latter theme, particularly when he admits the Garda have not been formally involved. Duffy is incredulous: “Racial abuse is a crime.” It also emerges that Irish Rail staff recognise the abuser, who has “misbehaved” before. Duffy speculates that the man may be unwell, though by now he has another target. He wonders why Irish Rail can tweet heavily about missing dogs, as they did recently, but not about attacks on passengers. As with so many whodunnits, the investigator is as curious about the cover-up as the crime.

All in all, it’s terrific listening, full of public interest, human drama, social issues and even daft diversions. The latter when comic actor Rory Cowan* phones in to condemn the abuse as an aberration at a time when the Taoiseach is the gay son of an Indian immigrant. “Ireland is becoming fabulous,” Cowan says. It’s a moot point. Duffy may have got to the bottom of this depressing incident of intolerance, but one suspects the Liveline detective agency won’t be lacking similar cases any time soon.





*no mention of the "vile creature" then I take it....

withless wrote: »

Trouble in Ballyer sure to lead us off tooday...