John Mallon, duke of hazard
Tuesday, January 28, 2014 at 8:59 Update on John Mallon's tour of Ireland.
Last week John gave interviews to Red FM, 96 FM and the Evening Echo (all Cork); KCLR 96FM (Kilkenny); Tipp FM (Tipperary); Midlands FM (Tullamore); and Ocean FM (Sligo).
He was also interviewed – on the phone – by Northern Sound, CRC FM (Co Mayo), and Phoenix Radio (Dublin).
Yesterday John drove to Tralee where he was interviewed for 20 minutes on Radio Kerry.
Irish radio is quite different to our own broadcasting culture where most items are in the region of two or three minutes and you are lucky to get more than one or two soundbites.
Today, for example, I am travelling into London from Cambridgeshire, a round trip of three hours, door-to-door, for an interview with Sky News.
If I get more than 10-20 seconds of airtime I'll be lucky.
Anyway, John is writing about his latest media tour on the Forest Eireann blog and I loved this passage from the post he sent me last night:
At two points on the road to Kerry I got stuck behind a pair of tractors and both forced me down to 30kph for five or six miles each time. It's madness on a main road but there was just no passing the blasted things. On the way back, though, about two miles out from Tralee, the heavens opened and the rain was horrendous. It has been years since I've seen anything like it. It was dangerous to go above 40kph and it took over an hour to get to Killarney, the rain continuing half the way to Cork too.
Almost blind with the rain I found what I thought was a safe spot to pull over and call Joe Duffy [presenter of Liveline on RTE1]. Incredibly, a squad car pulled up behind me and a grumpy uniform told me in the window that I was causing a hazard and moved me on. The 'basket' followed me for an hour, bumper to bumper, and didn't depart until I was back in Cork County.
See: Raining in the Kingdom.
We've revised John's tour and instead of Limerick, Galway and Ballyhaunis we're sending him to Dublin (via Belfast, possibly) where NGOs are giving evidence to the Oireachtas Health Committee on Thursday.
The west coast leg of the tour is now scheduled next week. Watch this space.
Reader Comments