Jennifer Zamparelli on 2fm 2fm, weekdays, 9am-noon

Radio listenership figures are a strange and treacherous land. The radio has always been a kind of constant companion, rather than something that you deliberately seek out – so you can “listen” to it without actually listening to it.

In this country there are people who’ve had the radio tuned to the same station for 50 years, without ever thinking of turning the dial – even though they don’t necessarily like some of the programmes and the presenters – or perhaps any of them.

But the one indisputable king of the ratings was Gerry Ryan.

All of RTÉ’s stars will claim that their monstrous salaries are justified due to their argument that they are drawing large audiences by dint of their own greatness. But apart from Gay Byrne, of course, Ryan was one of the few who could really back it up.

Sadly this was only put beyond all doubt when he passed away just over 11 years ago – immediately it was clear from the steep decline in listenership figures that it was Ryan, and Ryan alone, who was bringing the people to that particular party.

Moreover many of us also stopped thinking about 2fm in general – it turned out that to a large extent in the public mind Gerry Ryan was 2fm.

Yet that morning slot which he occupied should still be a promising area of radio real estate – and its current resident Jennifer Zamparelli seems to be realising those possibilities.

At that time on national radio she is mainly up against Pat Kenny, who for all his excellence is a man in his 70s – and Ryan Tubridy who, by some measurement beyond the mere numerical, is also a man in his 70s.

But it’s not all about demographics it is also clear that Zamparelli is a highly talented broadcaster in a way that many RTÉ presenters are not. Her show bills itself as “chats, tunes and laughs”, which to some might seem like a nice way of saying “a total waste of space”.

Yet it often seems to me that the “chats, tunes and laughs” are the really tough end of the broadcasting game. I would argue that almost any sentient broadcaster could present the Sunday lunchtime current affairs show This Week, for example, but it doesn’t work in reverse. Zamparelli could easily interview the Minister for Finance but how would the finest minds of RTÉ’s current affairs departments do with the chats, tunes and laughs?

I rest my case.

Indeed you often hear the bit of “chat” when one presenter is handing over to another and it can cause grave anxiety in the listener, hoping against hope that they get to the end of this banter without the whole thing collapsing. Zamparelli has to keep that stuff going for three hours every weekday.

It takes an awful lot of energy to put on such a show, one that is mainly about “culture” in the broadest sense as distinct from politics – deciphering the differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael farming policies is a somewhat more relaxing task than what Zamparelli is attempting. And you don’t have to pick a lot of great tunes as well to go between the chats and the laughs with the minister.

A recent three-way with Zamparelli and writer Sophie White and rugby legend Donncha O’Callaghan was extraordinarily bright and witty and clever from all of them.

She does a perfectly fine “serious” item too – an interview about online gambling with recovering punter and poet Eoin Coyne was outstanding.

Her accomplice, fittingly, is Lottie Ryan, daughter of Gerry. And in the course of their chats and laughs last week Lottie made an hilarious ruling on the acclaimed film Nomadland.

In every other part of RTÉ, in most other parts of the media at large, Nomadland is regarded with reverence as a deeply impressive piece of cinema which raises great issues. When Zamparelli asked Lottie if she’d enjoyed it, Lottie was having none of it: “You’ll never get that time back,” she warned. “You’ll never get that time back.”

And then the blunt conclusion: “Don’t.”

Marking her territory as an outlaw in the Ryan tradition, Zamparelli has a spot in which she highlights the work of some up-and-coming Irish business but only on condition that nobody tells RTÉ she’s doing this – she points out that “RTÉ” is probably not listening to her anyway.

She may be right about that too.

Sunday Independent