With its rush-hour time slot and motorway-adjacent title, The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays) has always given off a certain petrolhead energy, while the programme’s iconoclastic ethos has sometimes seemed designed to stir up frustrated commuters listening on the car radio.
So when Shane Coleman, who anchors the show with Ciara Kelly, asks whether cyclists serially disobey the law, one braces for a four-wheels-good, two-wheels-bad jeremiad pitched at drivers stuck in evening traffic.
Far from going full Jeremy Clarkson, however, Coleman confesses that he’s not only a cyclist but a sinner too. “I’m going to put my hands up and say, yes, I do break the rules of the road,” he admits, while insisting that any transgressions are minor: he might go through a red light or a pedestrian crossing, but it’s never at full speed. “I’m not justifying it. Well, maybe I am,” he says. “I’m in the wrong.”
Such self-excoriating reflection might seem suspiciously right-on to anyone pining for the days when Ivan Yates presided over the show in flamboyantly politically incorrect style, but Coleman doesn’t stop there. “All drivers break the rules of the road as well, I would argue,” he says, further risking the irritation of car-bound listeners.
Kelly is normally primed to push back against her colleague’s positions (and vice versa), but in this instance she sounds an indulgent note towards bad behaviour on bikes. “In the main cyclists do less harm, and I think that’s why they take the rules less seriously,” she says. What kind of automobile apostasy is this?
In truth, it’s in keeping with Coleman and Kelly’s approach since they switched lanes from Newstalk’s breakfast show to The Hard Shoulder, in February. The duo haven’t suddenly become woke warriors, but neither are they dogmatic anti-PC crusaders. While their commonsense personas can chime with the exasperated concerns of the squeezed middle, that same sensibility also feeds into a clear-eyed view of cyclists’ conduct.
Not that they’re afraid to wade into controversial waters. With RTÉ boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest in protest at Israel’s participation and replacing it with an episode of Father Ted, Coleman speaks to the sitcom’s co-creator – and anti-transgender activist – Graham Linehan, who says the boycott decision is “like a completely ineffectual teenagerish strop … to give aid to homicidal rapist lunatics”.
The interview continues in this measured fashion, with Linehan stridently expressing his disgust at RTÉ’s move – “The current fad in Ireland for anti-Semitism is a global embarrassment” – while venturing that the atrocities committed by Hamas during the October 7th attacks justify Israel’s subsequent actions in Gaza: “Every single death in Gaza is on Hamas’s head.”
Coleman isn’t convinced: “That’s a cop-out for Israel, is it not?” Maintaining his habitually civil manner, the host suggests one can agree that Hamas committed war crimes – he calls its attack an abomination – while also regarding Israel’s response as disproportionate and criminal.
Graham Linehan aired his views on Israel. Photograph: Lucy North/PA Wire
Linehan, predictably, strongly disagrees, as he does when Coleman ventures that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment aren’t the same thing: “Yes they are.”
Even by the charged standards of discussions about Gaza, it’s a spirit-sapping encounter. But while Coleman robustly challenges his guest’s uncompromising stance, Linehan can’t talk about being silenced. If nothing else, the interview speaks to Coleman’s (and Kelly’s) willingness to engage with a wide range of voices, no matter how discomfiting.
The two presenters, on the other hand, sound comfortable in their drivetime roles. Their partnership, honed during five years of morning duty, has been reinvigorated by their new setting. Both hosts are assured and buoyant as they cover health issues – there’s a candid conversation with the podcaster Laura Guckian about struggling with new motherhood – and cultural items, such as their chat with the author Andrea Mara.
The pair still roll their eyes at contemporary shibboleths – Kelly shares her pet peeve that children are overprotected – but, overall, they have found a balance that would do any cyclist proud.
There are missed opportunities. Interviewing Bertie Ahern on Tuesday about the centenary of Fianna Fáil’s foundation, Coleman talks at length to the former Taoiseach about the party’s legacy, but he asks only in passing about social media posts of his guest canvassing in Dublin. It’s unclear whether Coleman at that stage has seen footage in which Ahern says there are too many migrants from “the Congo and all these places”, but either way the issue is quickly passed over.
Kieran Cuddihy is determined that won’t be the case on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), with the host inviting listeners to share their thoughts on Ahern’s comments. He may wish he hadn’t asked, however: only one caller responds, and even then ambivalently. The caller, Michael, is surprised that Ahern has made the remarks, though not in the way one might expect.
“You’ve got to be very careful what you say,” he says. “We don’t know when we’re being photographed or recorded.”
Cuddihy’s antennae start to twitch nervously: “Is your issue with the content or that he was foolish enough to get caught saying it?”
The host’s incipient alarm is misplaced, however. Michael, a retiree who recalls his working life in multicultural London, ultimately sounds favourably disposed to migrants: “While we’re here we should help each other.”
But the meandering nature of the segment highlights the bind that Cuddihy can find himself in: conversing with callers still attuned to the nostalgic air that prevailed during Joe Duffy’s long tenure but lacking the former host’s instinctive bond with older listeners.
Cuddihy sounds more at home when dealing with a case of unambiguous racism. On Monday he hears from Suad Mooge, who describes the racist abuse she’s endured online since winning the title of Dublin Rose. It’s a depressingly familiar story, not least to the Sligo-born medical scientist. “It’s nothing that I haven’t heard before,” she says, noting that such insults were part of her experience as a person of colour growing up in Ireland. She is, however, taken aback by the level of invective.
Dublin Rose of Tralee Saud Mooge has said the racial abuse directed against her is not a surprise.
Much like his guest, Cuddihy sounds shocked but not surprised by such vile acts. He devotes the entire show to the matter, underlining his recognition of how urgent a problem racist abuse has become here.
The host is repulsed by such prejudice, even if his reactions are sometimes clunky, as when he invokes Tiger Woods as an example of racial dynamics. A less starry example might be more relatable.
But Cuddihy, who sometimes appears unsure how to steer the increasingly creaky vehicle that is Liveline, is audibly driven in his rejection of the growing prevalence of racism in Ireland. It’s a direction Cuddihy should continue following, though it won’t be an easy ride.
Moment of the week
He may be a radio veteran, but Ray Foley (Today FM, weekdays) doesn’t display much in the way of professional courtesy towards rival presenters, particularly those hosting certain phone-in shows.
The DJ is engaging in a bantering riff with his long-time sidekick JP Gilbourne about the etiquette of wearing headphones in an office. It’s a practice he largely disdains, with certain exceptions.
“When I do have my headphones on, and I need to concentrate, I listen to brown noise,” Foley says. “And, no, I don’t mean Kieran Cuddihy on Liveline.” Ouch.