Terry Prone: Celebrity guests should learn to mind their Ps and Qs on chat radio

Originally published in the Irish Examiner.

A-list celebrities don’t do this. B-listers do it, though, and C-listers never stop doing it. Which is pretty amazing, really. 

Imagine coming into a radio study, where you’ll get a plug for your new book, song, or appearance on a reality TV show and telling the presenter that they’re lazy, incompetent, uncreative, and generally boring. 

All of this may be the case, but professional etiquette, common decency, and a sense of self-preservation precludes its articulation.

Yet, every day, some guest sits in a studio and, in response to some presenter query, says: “I’m always asked that question.”

In the process, they have grievously insulted the person across the table. 

If the presenter has insight, they will be mortified at having asked such a bleeding obvious question. 

No radio interviewer ever wants to be lumped in with vox populi.

They want to represent the public, but when it comes to questions, they want to frame them in a way Joe/Jo Bloggs wouldn’t think of because if asking key questions is that easy, everybody and their granny would be doing it. (Which, of course, they are; witness the podcast explosion.)

Nevertheless, to be told, live on air, that what you’re asking is so self-evident that a passing pint-swiller could have come up with it is not an experience to be subsequently recounted with pride.

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