I have to catch up on the little notes I do on Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” show — the “BLOOD” episode was just spectacular — but in the meantime I thought I’d be self-indulgent and plug a very personal pleasure of mine that is not entirely unrelated (but almost).

Gabriel “Gay” Byrne is an institution in Ireland (where Yours Truly grew up to a significant extent). You hear that word, institution, tossed around about various individuals, but when it comes to ol’ Gay Byrne and the Emerald Isle, it is not less than a massive understatement. He is the consummate Irish broadcaster. It’s difficult to come up with an American parallel. Rush Limbaugh comes to mind because he has the same natural affinity for his medium; Limbaugh was born to do talk radio, and he makes something which is incredibly difficult to execute well seem effortless and even joyous. Gay Byrne exceeds him in an Irish context because he not only mastered radio but also television, hosting a long-form talk/variety show called “The Late Late Show” for decades. His radio show, likewise on air for decades, was a daytime talk format in which he entertained housewives with blarney on this, that and the other and occasionally inserted his favored jazz records. I would hear it generally when I was home sick from school. Even when I was age 10 or so, I knew that his radio presence was compelling although his choice of music meant nothing to me. For some reason, I have a distinct memory of him interviewing Johnny and June Cash on that show (probably in the late nineteen-seventies or early nineteen-eighties) and my being really struck by the whole thing. I guess Johnny Cash was always by nature unforgettable. No guessing involved, actually.

Now 74 years-old, Gay Byrne is in effect semi-retired but, well, you can’t keep a good man down. In addition to his current duties as “Chairman of the Road Safety Authority” in Ireland he currently hosts a radio show each Sunday called “Sunday with Gay Byrne” on the RTE Lyric FM radio station. It is two hours in length, and you can listen to the most recent show in streaming format on demand by going to the website at this link. I just listened to this week’s episode and it was especially good, from my point of view. His taste in music is centered around very fine jazz, both instrumental and vocal, and he shares his encyclopedic knowledge of the lives of the performers as it suits him to do so. He’ll also throw in music from left-field and accede to listeners’ requests. It is all interspersed with generous chunks of his effortless patter and his reading of messages from his listeners. If you listen, what you’ll hear is just a two hour chunk of genuine Irish radio, including the news headlines and the commercials.

What does it have in common with Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour”? Well, “Theme Time Radio Hour” is a contrived version — a beautifully contrived version — of an hour of radio in which an entertaining and masterful DJ can play anything he wants to play and talk about anything he wants to talk about. Gay Byrne’s two hour show is actually the real thing, live, as it happens. By no means is it as intensely packed as Bob’s show, but it is, as said, live and without a safety net. Byrne’s command of every minute of air-time is all the more remarkable for that. If you don’t dig jazz at all, there’s probably no point to it. If you do, you might be impatient for him to play another good record, or you might be oddly amused by the random commentary that emanates so smoothly from his vocal cords.

If you do attempt to listen, then imagine this: It is raining outside. It has been raining for days. Perhaps for your entire life. You are crouched beside the fireplace, leaning towards the flames, trying vainly to get the perpetual dampness of the Irish climate out of your bones. It’s time to put another sod or two of turf on the fire. You turn on the radio. A friendly and knowing voice is offering a world beyond the constant drizzle, a world filled with the likes of Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Bing Crosby and on and on and on. And yet this voice also lives in your world and understands the drizzle and the dreariness and has a joke or two to share at its expense. Listening makes the hours pass easily, perhaps while you address some other tasks like tackling the bills or doing some knitting. It is cheerful. It is diverting. It is in some strange sense edifying. It is radio. Enjoy it if you will: Sunday with Gay Byrne.

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