"A quick note on the 'Silly Question of the Week' award, which jointly goes to Sean O'Rourke and Matt Cooper" John Foley, Radio

There was a sign last week that the country had hit rock-bottom. No it wasn't the floods, the Tuesday strike, the Belfast bomb attempt, the desperate grasp-at-a-straw calls for a replay of the World Cup play-off or the floods (yes, that's twice). It was the fact that someone thought it would be a good idea to call Uri Geller to see if he could give the country a kick-start. "Sure, he's done it to a clock or two in his time, why not an entire nation?" thought one of the Ray D'Arcy Show's (Today FM) production team. Yep, when Geller is called, you know you've either reached the depths or Michael Jackson has died. Again.

After telling D'Arcy on Wednesday that he was calling from Greece where he was looking out over the Parthenon – as you do – Geller started to preach that we need to adopt an "attitude of gratitude" if we're going to get out of the mess we're in. The basic gist of his argument was that your lot in life looks a damn sight better when you realise that a child dies from hunger in the world every 30 seconds. "As I speak, there is a child dying," he said.

Profound as he hoped to be, it only brought to mind that apocryphal tale about Bono on stage one night. Speaking about world hunger, he kept clicking his fingers and said that with every click a child dies. To which some wag shouted: "stop clicking your bleedin' fingers then".

And so with Geller it didn't take long before you hoped he'd stop talking. As worthy as it may be to have a bit of perspective in life, it's probably difficult to acquire when the flood is at your windowsill. Finishing up, he urged D'Arcy's listeners to come together for a moment of positive thought at exactly 11.11am – presumably a time of cosmic significance.

In fairness to the notoriously vociferous D'Arcy listeners, they went through Geller for a shortcut. Although one comment said that positive thoughts had cleared the clouds over Kildare, briefly. Mind you, the host's mind power alone probably achieved that.

Much of Wednesday's show was spent raking over the coals of the previous day's strike and the state of the economy in general. You sometimes get the feeling that D'Arcy's forum is little more than a slightly younger version of what Joe Duffy does over on RTE. 'Oglaigh na Liveline' replaces the spoken word with a mountain of texts and emails and, by God, D'Arcy is going to make a dent in that mountain. He even has Duffy's flabbergasted sigh down to a tee.

It's listener-driven content at its most extreme, with opinions often allowed to swim through without any context. One text from the private-sector side of the tracks raged at the impudence of those who went on strike when a huge proportion of workers were losing their jobs and taking pay cuts. A little mention that an Irish Times survey found just last week that almost 70% of the private sector had not suffered a pay cut might have balanced the tone. But D'Arcy had his colours firmly nailed to the mast at this stage – the public sector needed to gain a little of Geller's perspective.

After all that, his plaintive cries of "why can't we all just get along?" sounded a bit hollow.

There can be something slightly discomfiting about tuning in to a show like D'Arcy's, where the presenter is so in tune and in contact with his listeners. It's like walking into a strange country village where everyone knows everyone and D'Arcy is the mayor. But you get the feeling that the loudest voice, the guy who texts in with all caps is the one allowed to steer the debate. D'Arcy's brand of earnestness can also be a little too strong for some tastes. Mind you, the latest JNLR figures have his show gaining 11,000 listeners, so his village is becoming a town.

A quick note on the 'Silly Question of the Week' award, which jointly goes to Sean O'Rourke and Matt Cooper, who both weighed in on the topic of people going north to shop last Tuesday. News At One (RTE Radio One) had Cathal Austin from the Quays Shopping Centre in Newry on the line and O'Rourke asked what kind of people were making the journey over the border to buy. "Would they be parents bringing children because the children were forced out of school today or would some of them be public-service workers?"

By any stretch of the imagination, it's optimistic to think that a shopping centre manager might be asking folk if they were public or private sector. Get your reporter on the job. Meanwhile, on The Last Word (Today FM), Cooper asked Newry retailer Peter Murray from the Buttercrane Centre if he would like to see another strike this week so that another flood of people would head north. Murray hardly knew how to answer. Does a shopkeeper want to see people coming through the door? Does a bear sh...

Never mind.

Eithne Tynan is away