Behind the scenes of an essential part of weekend radio for 50 years

With its distinctive theme tune and eclectic contributions, Sunday Miscellany has been an essential part of weekend radio for 50 years. Jonathan deBurca Butler went behind the scenes to see the show being made.

Aoife Barry was 34-years-old when she decided it was about time she learnt to drive. Until then she lived with a deathly terror that she might sneeze while driving or “take a swipe at a bee” and cause a crash.

It was the promise of a bigger world, “trips to Seapoint” and “impromptu visits back home to Cork”, that eventually enticed her behind the wheel to face her fear. It also gave her the content for her first, and decidedly charming piece on Sunday Miscellany.

“I have done a lot of radio but this was my first time doing Miscellany,” says the journalist. “It’s a real institution in Irish radio so it’s an honour to have something on it. I’ve been

tipping away at the creative writing side of things for a while so it’s really exciting to get that acknowledgment. It was a very pleasant experience. They are very helpful and they give really good feedback.”

Thursday mornings in this little corner of RTÉ are something of a guilty pleasure. While the rest of Radio Centre is rushing around chasing interviews from ministers on the latest chapter of the Brexit debacle, we are locked away in a spacious oasis of studio calm contemplating a panoply of topics from driving lessons to the opening of bookshops; topics which frankly seem much bigger and certainly more enduring than Brexit.

CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Sunday Miscellany is celebrating its 50th year. It is considered something of a national treasure. It has a staggering 261,000 weekly listeners which series producer, Sarah Binchy, puts down to the show’s honesty and consistent format.

“I think the mix of published professional writers, newcomers and of course the music is quite unusual,” says Binchy. “It was a formula that was dreamed up 50 years ago at a time when they didn’t have as much technology as we have now. We could do so much more with this if we wanted to but the format clearly works.”

It also helps that the producer herself is utterly dedicated to the show. “It’s a joy to work on,” says Binchy. “I know it intimately and I’ve listened to it all my life. Instead of a presenter you have a kaleidoscope of writers.

And writers are lovely people. They’re artists so it’s lovely to interact with that.

Working on a weekly programme over a daily programme allows you more space to think. But also you can really shape a programme and people’s commentary on subjects by the selections you make.

“You can very gently manifest something that’s larger than the sum of its parts and that’s very satisfying.”

PEOPLE PERSON

But there is more to Binchy’s role than just shaping the running order. In the few hours we are in studio with her, Binchy guides her guests gently and skillfully through the takes and retakes that are inevitable in such a well executed process. She listens to every word, every breath and every pause and in her soothing tones she suggests, rather than dictates, the changes that need to be made to infelections, timbre or tone.

Every change, every suggestion turns out to be the right call. It is truly impressive.

While minor tweaks to scripts on the day are par for the course, some things are sacrosanct — the theme tune ‘Galliard Battaglia’ by Samuel Scheidt, the name of the show, the no-fiction rule and and most critically people reading their own work.

“I think people really respond to that,” says Binchy. “You’re best shot at reading something well is something you’ve written yourself. It comes from the heart. In the early days actors read but we will only do it very rarely and under extreme circumstances.”

When change does come, it rarely goes unnoticed.

“A couple of years ago we decided to use music with vocals and that was quite controversial but it has been done. I remember we had a story last year by Angela Keogh about her father saving her mother from drowning even though he couldn’t swim and she spoke about him having his David Hasselhoff moment so I played the Baywatch theme tune after it.

I think people were a little taken aback. It wasn’t exactly what you’d expect to hear on Sunday Miscellany.

“So you can throw in the odd wildcard but you have to be careful too, you don’t want to be shaking people out of their bed on a Sunday morning. And really we want the words the authors have written to speak for themselves.”

OPEN SUBMISSION

Guests are chosen through open submission. Even the regulars have to submit. Eminence does not guarantee inclusion. The show gets upto 70 emails per week and from that it is whittled down to the four or five guests who appear every week. It’s a tough task for a team of just two — Binchy and Carolyn Dempsey.

Sarah Binchy, producer of "Sunday Miscellany" with Noel Roberts sound engineer recording a piece they for the programme in the studio sat RTE in Dublin. Photograph Moya Nolan.

“I’m always on the lookout for new material but I like it if it’s timely even if it’s just to the season,” says Binchy. “I think that adds a freshness to the show.”

Writer AM Cousins got her “first outing” as a writer on Sunday Miscellany seven years ago.

“I had just started to write and it gave me the confidence to keep on going,” she says.

It is probably one of the few places where an emerging writer gets to share a stage with a professional writer and it also gives me the opportunity to tell some Wexford stories as well as my own childhood memories.

Some of those childhood memories are included in Cousins’s beautiful piece on the role that phones have played in her life. It is nothing short of a masterpiece. The clarity of imagery and depth of feeling will put smiles on the faces of those who remember the time of village phones, dial phones, the scribbling of numbers “on cigarette boxes” and the “waiting for him to ring you at a designated time”.

It is the very epitome of Sunday Miscellany— evocative, wistful, the examination of the universal in what is or what was the everyday.

For it’s next outdoor broadcast, Sunday Miscellany will visit the Ennis Book Club Festival, at Glór in the Co Clare town, on Sunday, March 3, at 11.30am. ennisbookclubfestival.com

For information on how to submit to the show, see here.