Pat Kenny injects touch of venom into take on Charles Haughey’s kickback-funded lifestyle

There’s no hiding Pat Kenny’s excitement. “Halloween is coming,” he proclaims on Sunday’s Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, weekends), with an eager anticipation more befitting a young trick-or-treater than a veteran broadcaster.

Sure enough, Kenny throws himself into the spirit of the season, whether it’s recalling bygone traditions or telling stories of scary characters with shadowy pasts.

For the latter task the host recruits the services of a guest capable of spooking even the most hardened audience (and the odd journalist too), as the former editor and broadcaster Vincent Browne joins Kenny to assess the life of the late taoiseach Charles Haughey.

Once upon a time this would have been a saga of fearful proportions – the spectre of Haughey haunted Irish political life for decades – but its frightening power is now much diminished.

Part of this is down to Browne, who has just written a biography of Haughey. Although he once was the nemesis of the controversial Fianna Fáil leader, publishing revelations about his murky dealings in the likes of Magill magazine, Browne admits he “became close friends” with Haughey in the years before the politician’s death, in 2006.

So while Browne is unsparing in his judgments of Haughey’s deeds – “He was up to his neck in the arms crisis” – he adopts a more indulgent note when remembering their personal relationship: “We didn’t talk much about the embarrassments in his career.”

Inasmuch as there’s venom, it’s largely injected by Kenny. Assessing the intimidating aura that enabled the “untouchable” Haughey to lead a lavish, kickback-funded lifestyle with impunity, the host is understated yet acerbic. “In so many ways he reminds me of a Trump-like figure,” Kenny says. “He did a lot of things in plain sight, wearing Charvet shirts while telling us all we were living beyond our means.”

[ Vincent Browne: Haughey loved Terry Keane. She made his life miserableOpens in new window ]

Quietly damning though his verdict is, Kenny’s reference to the US president has the inadvertent side effect of making Haughey’s venality seem almost quaint by comparison.

Even if it’s entertaining in its own way, the dynamic between host and guest isn’t conducive to spine-tingling thrills. Browne has form as a formidable if idiosyncratic broadcaster, having hosted his own nocturnal current-affairs show on RTÉ Radio 1 for a decade, but he appears off his game here, mumbling as he retrieves details and responding to questions in ornery fashion.

Kenny evidently feels compelled to condense some of his guest’s sprawling answers into neat summaries for the listener.

If Browne doesn’t portray Haughey as the lurid bogeyman of liberal memory, he does provide the odd glimpse into his subject’s private persona, recounting his morosity as his health declined. Like many ghost stories, Browne’s account of this once-feared leader contains as much melancholia as menace.

Kenny, meanwhile, gives no impression of slowing down; his weekend slot may mean a less hectic schedule than in the past, but he still approaches difficult topics typically meticulously. He speaks to Maurice Cohen of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland about a Dublin hotel’s cancellation of bookings for an anti-Semitism conference.

His guest recounts how a hotel manager asked whether the event, organised under EU auspices, involved the Israeli military; the reservation was subsequently voided without explanation.

Cohen views the incident as symptomatic of a rhetorical environment that sometimes conflates the Jewish community with Israel’s invasion of Gaza: “We cannot be held responsible for the actions of a foreign government.”

Kenny sounds sympathetic about what his guest calls “classic anti-Semitism”, but he still asks the potentially loaded question of whether Jews have divided national loyalties. Cohen dissents but notes that Ireland’s Jewish community now has a larger Israeli component. “There’s a philosophical conundrum to be sorted,” Cohen says.

It’s an inconclusive and uncomfortable conversation, but one that underlines Kenny’s commitment to exploring troubling issues.

But he’s not above some seasonal nostalgia either. As the chef Gareth Mullins shares recipes for barmbrack, Kenny shares a childhood memory when his guest notes how the Halloween loaf historically contained items such as cloth.

“We called it a rag because it indicated poverty,” Kenny says animatedly.

When Mullins later extols the virtues of slow cooking as the nights close in, the host’s mood turns decidedly elegiac. “The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” he murmurs, invoking John Keats’s description of this time of year.

Such fleeting reveries aside, Kenny doesn’t come across as a presenter in the autumn of his career.

Meanwhile, Brendan O’Connor (RTÉ Radio 1, weekends) sounds like a broadcaster in his prime, his interview with the soccer player James McClean being the latest in an impressive run of captivating encounters.

It helps that McClean, a former Republic of Ireland international, is a remarkably open guest. If anything he’s too candid; the Derry-born player spends much of the interview clarifying previous comments about seeing therapy as “weakness”.

McClean, who is promoting his new memoir, puts his remarks in context, explaining he was speaking solely from personal experience during the newspaper interview in question.

“My therapy was always going to the gym, and that worked for me,” he says.

“Has it worked for you, though?” O’Connor immediately asks. “Does it mean that you lash out now and again – you’re balling it all up and then it all explodes?”

Blunt as this sounds, the host isn’t being gratuitously provocative. Far from taking offence, McClean admits he goes on the attack if he feels threatened; when the host observes that psychologists would say this instinct speaks of past trauma, his guest agrees.

The conversation that follows is marked by stunning frankness. McClean talks about discovering his previously unknown biological father as a child, the impact of the Troubles on his hometown (“There’s still a lot of trauma”), the experience of having an autistic daughter, his own diagnosis of autism and his fractious relationship with Derry City: “I am struggling.” (Club and player have since parted ways.)

[ James McClean’s Derry City swansong peters out on a disappointing final noteOpens in new window ]

After these raw revelations it’s unsurprising that McClean agrees with his host’s suggestion about having trust issues. “It’s kind of sad in a way,” he says, “But I’m happy in my own wee bubble now.”

It’s a poignant conclusion to a memorable segment – “It’s been amazing talking to you,” O’Connor says – but oddly optimistic too. Happy Halloween, indeed.

Moment of the week

Appropriately enough, there appears to be a ghost in the machine on Lyric FM, as Mystery Train with John Kelly (Sunday-Thursday) leaves the station five minutes early on Monday evening. Kelly sheepishly apologises for the “wardrobe malfunction” that prematurely (if seamlessly) ends the preceding show, with a tech glitch identified as the culprit. But normal service is quickly resumed, as the presenter plays a typically excellent selection of diverse sounds.

Kelly’s mood brightens later, as he realises that the next presenter is Donal Dineen, his equally inspired comrade from their days at Radio Ireland in the 1990s. Dineen, guest host of The Blue of the Night (Monday-Thursday), has his own seasonal yarn. He was driving back from a DJ gig at a Halloween event, complete with face paint, when he encountered a bank-holiday checkpoint. Chuckling, he recalls the guard’s reaction on seeing his painted visage: “This will be interesting.”

It’s a fitting comment: as with Kelly, the music is always stimulating when Dineen is on air.