5/10/2023 0 Comments Calm radio![]() ![]() She’s never going to be a tabloid shock jock, but during a harrowing week, it’s a tonic to hear Byrne letting her hair down.Īs the appalling enormity of the Tallaght murders emerges, it proves too much for Ryan Tubridy (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). When guest Dr Harry Barry talks about youngest children having poor self-discipline, Byrne (a middle child, as she tells us) can’t help sympathising: “Gosh, the poor youngest child is getting the holly.” As with her chat on nits, the atmosphere is appealingly lively. Her news pieces can sometime have a dutiful air to them, but the presenter sounds like she’s actually enjoying herself during lifestyle segments, such as her discussion on the impact of sibling birth order. While Byrne deserves her reputation for calm thoroughness, her show’s strength increasingly lies in its lighter items. Byrne calibrates her approach accordingly, framing her questions sensitively when speaking to local Fianna Fáil councillor Theresa Costello about the atmosphere following the killings. The murders of twins Christy and Chelsea Cawley and their older sister Lisa Cash are so darkly unimaginable that the news of Liz Truss’s credulity-defying elevation to British prime minister comes as a welcome diversion. Of course, the discussion acts as a much-needed distraction from what Byrne calls the “absolutely horrific” events in Tallaght. Meanwhile, Byrne insists that “we’ve never had nits in our family”, though her tone is one of forlorn resignation rather than hubris, as White wickedly recognises: “You’re just inviting the universe to mess with you.” White revels in recounting her family’s battle with nits, laughing about “shearing” her sons’ heads and vividly describing the detritus found among the follicles: “The eggs look like dark sesame seeds.” Morgan offers a more scientific viewpoint, albeit no less graphic: “The itching is the reaction to the saliva from these lovely little guys,” she breezily informs her host. ![]() Sure enough, it’s hard to resist a surreptitious scratch during her viscerally mesmerising discussion with writer Sophie White and GP Dr Amy Morgan. “I don’t have nits, but it does create the sensation of itching, which I’m sure our listeners are experiencing right now.” “Thinking about this I’ve had itchy hair for the past 24 hours,” she says. But it’s a timelessly icky subject that clearly gets under Byrne’s skin, though not – as she makes clear – in her hair. In a week when parental nightmares of the most unspeakable variety dominate the headlines, scalp-dwelling parasites seem more like a symbol of benign normality. “Parents are dreading the possible return of a little visitor on their children’s heads,” she says. So it’s unusual indeed to hear her sounding distinctly unnerved on Tuesday’s programme ( Today with Claire Byrne, RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), as she gingerly introduces an item guaranteed to cause shudders among her audience. No matter how tough the topic, she’s not easily thrown. As a current affairs presenter, one of Claire Byrne’s key assets is her sangfroid.
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