Tubridy Show Archive - May 2007

Click on a date to listen to the show.

Thursday 31st May
Details to follow...

Wednesday 30th May
Anton Savage presents this week.

The Vikings are coming.  A replica of a Viking warship that was originally built in Dublin in 1042 has been built using traditional methods in Roskilde in Denmark.  It will leave Denmark on July 1st with a crew of 65 volunteers.  Dr. Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum, Carsten Hvid, captain of The Sea Stallion of Glendalough and Preben Rather Sorensen, Project Director give Anton a taste of the voyage to come.  More details can be found on www.seastallion.dk

The Tubridy Show will be following the progress of the Sea Stallion in July and August.

Former RTÉ Security correspondent Tom Mc Caughren is well-known also as an author of children's books.  His hugely popular Fox series has been re-issued by Merlin publishing, including Run With the Wind which won the Bisto book of the decade.  He speaks to Anton about his work as a journalist and as a writer.

Tuesday 29th May
Anton Savage presents the programme this week.

Carol Coleman, former RTÉ Washington correspondent, Bill Mc Sweeney, School of Ecumenics and Siobhán O'Connell, Business Plus Magazine discuss TV evangelists in the States and whether their particular brand of preaching would have a market in Irish broadcasting.

Anton reads some correspondence from listeners who heard the item on letter-writing on Monday's show.

The Tubridy Show book club with Barry's Tea featured A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo for the month of May.  Chinese woman Vivienne Mackey and her Irish husband Raymond Mackey met in China and now live in Donegal, and Sophie Gorman is the arts editor with the Irish Independent and has visited China.  Vivienne liked the portrayal of a young Chinese woman coming to London to learn English, but Sophie and Raymond found the book more exasperating than edifying.

Monday 28th May
Anton Savage is sitting in for Ryan all this week on TTS.

30 TDs lost their jobs in Election 2007.  Jason Kennedy, the MD of Manpower, offers some career advice to those outgoing TDs.

Paul Howard is the creative mind behind Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's Guide to South Dublin (Penguin).  He gives Anton a tour of the place and its people.

84 Charing Cross Road tells the story of a 20-year correspondence between two people who've never met.  It's the last production at Andrews Lane Theatre in Dublin.  Anton talks to Jane Ruffino and Carrie Crowley about the art of letter-writing.

Friday 25th May
Emily O'Reilly is Ireland's Ombudsman and Information Commissioner.  She talks to Ryan about her office, her previous life as a journalist, and her reaction to the election campaign.  You can get further information about the work of the Ombudsman online at www.ombudsman.ie.

Iran has been in the headlines a lot recently.  But what do we actually know about the country and its culture?  Journalist Niall Stanage has just returned from a visit to Iran, while author Emer Martin is married to an Iranian.  They tell Ryan about their experiences of Iran.  Emer's book, Baby Zero, is published by Brandon and explores the so-called "clash of civilisations" between East and West.

Shaffee Kanian is an Iranian who lives in Ireland.  We hear his take on how Iran is portrayed in Ireland.

Thursday 24th May
The Tubridy Show/Gill and Macmillan true story competition finishes today! Listen to the people on the shortlist and hear the winner announced.

Wednesday 23rd May
Ryan discusses the increase in prostitution in Ireland and examines the motivations of the men who use them  with Anton McCabe from SIPTU; psychotherapist Trish Murphy; RTE's Keelin Shanley and crime reporter John Mooney.
 
And former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter tells Ryan about his work in Iraq and why he is worried about the Bush administration's motives in Iran.

Tuesday 22nd May
Has Ireland become an angrier place?  Broadcaster and writer Eamon Dunphy; life coach Shalini Sinha and psychologist Stephen O Neill join Ryan with their points of view.  Stephen's new RTE TV series Bury the Hatchet airs in the Autumn and Midas Productions in Dublin welcomes enquiries from those who would like their conflicts resolved this way.
 
Simon Sebag Montefiore tells Ryan to about his latest book  Young Stalin (Weidenfeld and Nicholson £25stg) and his experiences of researching history in Russia.
 
And film maker Mark Mahon tells Ryan that he hopes Leonardo Di Caprio will play Brian Boru in his next movie about the Vikings called Freedom in the Heart.

Monday 21st May
Sunniva O'Flynn of the Irish Film Archive and Clifford Harkness of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum talk about Archiving the Ordinary - how do we gauge what is valuable in our personal collections, and whose job is it to create an archive of the little things that may disappear from common use?  Seoirse Mac Craith of the Foxrock Local History Society tells Ryan about his photographic archive of his local area.

Canadian Peter Behrens drew on his own family history to create a novel based on the Great Famine.  His book is called The Law of Dreams (Canongate).

Friday 18th May
We in Ireland are obsessed with our houses.  A conference in Cork next week called desIRE: designing houses for contemporary Ireland will look at how we design our homes and the impact of housing on the way we live. Ryan talks to sociologist Mary Corcoran, architect Mick McDonagh and designer Wayne Hemingway.  The desIRE conference takes place on the 24th and 25th of May.  Further details online at www.nationalsculpturefactory.ie.

Ryan reads some reaction to yesterday's item on the working week.  He also invites listeners to review the Barry's Tea Book Club choice for May, which is A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (Chatto & Windus).  All comments by email to tts@rte.ie.

Meav Ni Mhaolchatha is a member of musical phenomenon Celtic Woman.  She tells Ryan about how she escaped a legal career, life on the road with her 2 year old daughter, and the international appeal of the Celtic Woman sounds. Further details online at www.celticwoman.com.

Thursday 17th May
Have we become a work-obsessed long hours culture?  What is the future of the 40 hour week?  James Wickham of Trinity College, Dublin; Jim Power, economist with Friends First and Anne Grogan reveal their working habits and reflect on the trends in our working hours.
 
With the TV debate between the alternative Taoisigh scheduled for this evening, historian Diarmaid Ferriter, presenter of RTE Radio One's What If..... outlines the history of the television debate while Shane Kenny and Noel Whelan tell their stories from the backroom.

Wednesday 16th May
As the search for missing girl Madeleine McCann continues in Portugal, we look at how such events shake our trust in others, why people who naturally trust others are happier, and how trust is formed, preserved, damaged and rebuilt. Eileen Humphreys, sociologist at the University of Limerick, Gerard O'Neill of Amárach Consulting, and Sarah Carey, columnist with the Sunday Times, discuss.

Journalist turned novelist Sebastian Faulks talks about why he thinks Tony Blair has barely left a "fingerprint" on the past decade, reminisces about researching his war novel Birdsong and how he got interested in psychosis as the theme of his new novel Engleby.

Tuesday 15th May
Today's the last day for entries to our competition for a new, non-fiction work in association with Gill and Macmillan.  Sarah Liddy gives Ryan an update on the more than 1,000 entries received to date.

Iconic children's television show Sesame Street is developing a new, Northern Ireland-based version.  Ryan talks to Miranda Barry and Shari Rosenfeld of the Sesame Street Workshop and to Jane Cassidy of BBC Northern Ireland.

Jane Hawking was married to Stephen Hawking, the world's most famous scientist.  She tells Ryan about life with a wheelchair-bound genius.  Jane's book is entitled Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen and is published by Alma Books.

Monday 14th May
Former Eurovision-winning songwriter Shay Healy gives his verdict on the Irish performance in the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday night.  With Dervish coming last, Shay explains what has to be done to avoid a repeat performance.

Theatre director Patrick Mason, anthropologist Lawrence Taylor, NUI Maynooth and Angela Bourke, Associate Professor, UCD School of Irish discuss witch hunts.  Mason is directing the upcoming production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible in The Abbey theatre.  The play opens on May 26th.  www.abbeytheatre.ie 

Mary Shine Thompson, St. Patrick's Drumcondra, Sarah Webb, book buyer and author and Gabriel Fitzmaurice, poet and teacher, talk about children's books.  The choice in children's literature, especially by Irish authors and illustrators is huge and the standard is evident in the shortlist for the Bisto book awards, to be announced at lunchtime today.  Gabriel read from his new book Really Rotten Rhymes (Mercier).  Details of the Bisto awards can be found on: http://www.childrensbooksireland.com

Friday 11th May
Yesterday Tony Blair announced his retirement as leader of the Labour Party in Great Britain.  Cartoonist Steve Bell, whose work is published in The Guardian talks about satirising Blair and what he will do when Gordon Brown succeeds him.

Morning Ireland presenter Richard Downes lived in South Africa for several years in the late nineties.  He previews Goodbye Bafana, a film based on the book of the same name.  It tells the story of Nelson Mandela's prison guard James Gregory.  The film stars Joseph Fiennes and Dennis Haysbert. 

David Crystal lives in Holyhead in Wales and his new book is a journey around Wales, collecting linguistic curiosities along the way.  He talks to Ryan about accents, catch phrases, talking parrots and words ending in -ril.  He mentioned four: April, Avril, nostril and peril, but listeners have added several more to the list: tumbril, tendril, fibril, imperil.  The title of the book is By Hook or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English (Harper Press)

Thursday 10th May
As one child families become the most popular type of new family in Western Europe, Ryan discusses the outlook for only children with psychologist David Coleman (RTE TV's Families in Trouble) and  some only children: Mary Coll, writer and broadcaster; Robert Ballagh, artist and Miranda Greene, journalist.
 
Lionel Shriver talks to Ryan about her new book The Post-birthday World and her time in Belfast and her reactions to the recent shootings at Virginia.

Wednesday 9th May
Finland gets to host its first ever Eurovision on Saturday, after forty years of unsuccessful entries. Commentator Twomass Loondean talks about the excitement in Helsinki and how the Finns rate Ireland's chances. 

Self-help books: where did they start, and how do you separate the good ones from the snake oil? Siobhan O'Connell, marketing director, Business Plus magazine, and Dr Patricia Neville, who teaches in the Mallow College of Further Education, discuss; Elaine Martin, psychologist, who is involved in a pilot scheme in Dublin prescribing self-help books to people with mild and moderate depression, phones in. With much contribution from listeners.  

Dr Neville will deliver a paper on the subject at the Sociological Association of Ireland Conference, 11-13th May 2007, at the University of Limerick.   

And Desmond Fitzgerald, Knight of Glin, talks about conservation campaigns, the renewed respect in Ireland for our Georgian heritage, the place of 'belted earls' in modern society, and how you address a knight. His new book, Irish Furniture, co-written with James Peill and published by Yale University Press.  A one day conference, Limerick City: Heritage and Regeneration, organised by the Irish Georgian Society, takes place on Thursday 10 May at City Hall, Limerick.

Tuesday 8th May
Ryan tackles the last great taboo of Irish life when he talks about.... MONEY!  Columnist Patricia Redlich (Sunday Independent); TV presenter John Maguire (I'm an adult, get me out of here) and author Merryn Somerset Webb (Love is not Enough - a smart woman's guide to making and keeping money, Harper Collins, hbk £12.99) ask who holds the purse strings in relationships? Sarah Liddy updates Ryan on the Gill and Macmillan £10,000 Memoir competition, closing date is May 15, 2007. And writer Anne Enright joins Ryan in studio to mark the publication of her fourth novel, "The Gathering" (Jonathan Cape. hbk £12.99) and talks about memory, families and motherhood.

Monday 7th May
A Bank Holiday 'Decades' special on the 1930s.

Poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi is our eyewitness to the thirties.  She speaks to Ryan about being a teenager in the 1930s, about attending the Eucharistic Congress in 1932 and about her parents arguing about the drafting of the 1937 Constitution.

Mike Milotte, reporter with Prime Time and defence analyst Declan Power discuss the Spanish Civil War and the nature of volunteers in warfare.

Shane O'Toole and Mary Colette Sheehan on the architecture of the 1930s - Art Deco housing, the building of primary schools, cinemas and social housing and the building of Dublin Airport.

Music from the 1930s included It Don't Mean a Thing from Duke Ellington and Do Re Mi by Woody Guthrie.

Archive included Eamon De Valera and W.T. Cosgrave on the campaign trail for the 1933 election and Lord Mayor Alfie Byrne welcoming the Papal legate in 1932.  We also heard Franklin D. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhardt, King Edward VIII and Adolf Hitler. 

Friday 4th May
Anton Carroll is the principal of Greendale Community School which is due to close at the end of this school year.  Paul Mercier is a former teacher in the school.  They speak to Ryan about the population decline in the area and also the reasons why parents are choosing fee-paying schools instead of local non fee-paying schools.

Vincent Browne talks to Ryan about his questioning of the Taoiseach at yesterday's Fianna Fáil manifesto launch.

Paula Flynn perfoms 'Let's Dance' live in studio - her version of the David Bowie song features on the current Ballygowan ad campaign.

As Spiderman 3 opens in cinemas, Paul Whittington, Michael Carroll and Derek O'Keeffe discuss super heroes - where they came from and why recent incarnations have been dark and intense.

Thursday 3rd May
As Bertie Ahern gives reporters the silent treatment over questions about his financial affairs, Dr Ian Gargan gives the Taoiseach advice on anger management.

Bibi Baskin, late of this parish, joins Ryan in studio to talk about her new life in India. Her hotel in Kerala is called the Raheem Residency.

And model turned singer-songwriter Carla Bruni of the ultra-sexy voice talks to Ryan about setting the poetry of WB Yeats and others to music, which she has done on her album, No Promises.

Wednesday 2nd May
Is Ireland a good country in which to grow old?  Professor Des O'Neill; Professor Tony Scott; Anne Henning Jocelyn and Young Carer of the Year Brigid Cahill join Ryan for a conversation.  And who decides what countries host major international sporting events like the Olympics?  Jonathan Irwin and Johnny Watterson talk champagne, caviar and sporting diplomacy.  Anne Henning Joyce's book is called Keylines for Living - words to inspire and sustain you and is published by O Books.

Tuesday 1st May
The Tubridy Show, in association with Gill and Macmillan, launches its true story competition, with a prize of €10,000 plus publication for the winning entrant. Kevin Myers, author of Watching the Door: A Memoir 1971-1978 (Lilliput), John MacKenna, author of Things You Should Know: A Memoir (New Island), and Nuala O'Faolain, whose first memoir was Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (New Island) discuss what is involved in committing aspects of your life to print. Sarah Liddy, commissioning editor of Gill and Macmillan, explains what we are looking for with this competition, and how to enter. . For full details, click here.