Radio had been a lifelong teacher and friend to me!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Like a loyal ever-present friend, radio has always been there for me. Wherever I’ve lived or worked, radio was there. It makes no difference whether my life is fun and fluffy or going through a mental chicane of dark madness, I can rely on radio.

Sometimes radio is truly all you can rely on. Back in 1994, I’d been in Ireland two years and was living alone in a little house, half way between Slyne Head and Ballyconneely.

Like a prisoner escaped from Devil’s Island, I’d embraced the craic in Galway City with enthusiasm that was matched only by two things: my need to flee from the craic in Galway City, and my profound love of Connemara.

So I was in that house during the great Winter storm of 1994, with the electricity gone for hours. The turf burning in the fireplace reflected golden light onto the windows that stretched into curves as it revealed how the hurricane-force winds were bending the glass inwards.

But I was far from anything else, so no low-flying shed door was going to be crashing into my little house.

I was fine.

In fact I was more than fine. A London boy out in the wilds of west Connemara, sitting in my armchair, sipping a whiskey, warm safe and dry.

Listening to the radio – a play on RTE Radio 1. No electricity, but batteries worked fine. Plenty of candles, loads of turf and several inches of Jameson left in the bottle.

It was great. Not the play itself, but having the radio there, the company of human voices offering not only a story to be involved in, but also something to turn a deaf ear to.

Radio offers comfort just by being on, even if you’re not listening. I need and love silence, but know from having lived alone for many years that too much silence is not healthy for slightly loony humans such as myself.

Radio presenters might be upset to know that a lot of us tune into your shows every day to completely ignore you. Sometimes you’re just left on to keep the dog company.

I can’t think of any period of my life in which radio wasn’t a part.

As a scabby teenager, after long dusty days working in a warehouse, I raced home so that I could be lying in a steaming hot bath by 6.27pm, drifting off happily, listening to Just a Minute on BBC Radio 4’s comedy half hour.

Working in a garage in Melbourne, my days seem shorter as I made old cars look newer, because the radio was tuned into a dance music station. Back home after work I’d put on the radio and listen to Prime Minister’s Question Time in the Australian Parliament.

Nothing reminds you you’re a hell of a long way from Westminster better than a brash Aussie MP bellowing: “I respectfully request the Honourable Member to put a bloody cork in it!”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.