Ah it's all good in the hood. Most people didn't have a clue what I was on about when I excitedly told them that Rattlebag was cancelled or knew and just shrugged indiffrently. For me this it was a moment worthy of shouting out a big gay 'YESSS!'
Rattlebag is/was an arts & culture programme on RTE radio 1 on after Joe Duffy at around 2.30pm every week day. I haven't heard it in over a year but in my last job we listened to RTE all day for 3 years straight. Why couldn't we turn it off? Partly because we enjoyed annoying ourselves and mostly because Irish commercial radio is complete shit and mainly because we all had an interest in arts and culture. Although they covered films,books and the occaisonal good interview the overall scope of the programme was geared towards the 'awts'; pointless wanky exhibitions and plays, readings from crap books, opera etc. But this would all be tolerable if not for the presenter, Myles Dungan.

I've never had to interview someone and I'm sure I would try to ingratiate myself with them in order to get the most for the interview, it would be hard not to but this dope would have his tongue so far up their arse he'd be licking their eyeballs. Really, just sucking their dick while we had to listen, never any serious questions about the validity of their work, never made them squirm or for the listener's sake take an agressive stance and stir some shit; make it an interview and not just an big gay massage. And his phoney laugh! Jesus what a twit.

But that can't be enough to diss him you say, but lissen dis: In the 2-3 years of regular listening I never heard him disagree or object to anybody on Rattlebag until these lads from some circus, Fossets or Duffy's were on. They were highligting the plight of the national circus, attendances were dropping off and they had trouble getting government cash. They wanted recognition from the Arts Council that circuses are a 'performing art' as in most other countries. Mr Dungan throws a spaz and gets all 'How dare you' with them. The only time he ever showed an opinion and actually seemed to go on the attack,defending the AC's right to spend. This was before my grief with the AC and didn't really care about the funding issue but from that day I pegged him as a wanker. The circus have since gotten their recognition.

Another beef I have is with the programme itself. From day one of my self publishing antics I sent letters to Rattlebag trying to get some air time, originally selfishly just for me and then for the larger Irish Comics industry. 5 letters and 2 phonecalls. Apparently comics don't count. Not recognised in their remit. Yeah, they had Neill Gaiman on a while back but who cares? They probably thought it was Gay-Man, sorry, that gag was shit. In my original appeal to the Arts Council about their fucktacular funding decisions I demanded that they recognise the medium of comics/graphic storytelling which of course was brushed off. I argued that if a largescale poll was to be conducted about what kind of 'art and culture' the average Irish person was into, with the view to allocating new funding, theatre, opera and dancing would be dwarfed by levels of interest in video games, films and comics. Video games are art so don't even go there girlfriend.Rattlebag and the Arts Council suffer from the same snobbish leanings. By the way,The AC are giving the Abbey 25million of our cash while everyone else fucking starves.

So to recap, It's rare that I wish harm or bad fortune on people but it this case I'm glad to see somebody lose their job. With continued pressure on RTE from commercial ventures, the cobwebs and stuffyness are being slowly eroded as they are forced to accept that the average license payer thinks RTE radio is shit and out of touch. The axing or harsh rescheduling of Rattlebag is a step in the right direction.

Go on Myles you dick, google yourself. I'm sure they'll let you rock a go online down in FAS.But mark these words, he'll be a ranking member in the AC over the next few years. I'm sure he could think of a few ways to waste your cash.

Sour grapes? Begrudgery? Fucking smart it is. Eat a dick. Peace out.

-------------------------------