Life

Radio review: Salutary tale of the holiday bargain that wasn't

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Nuala McCann
Nuala McCann Nuala McCann

Liveline RTE Radio 1

The Marian Finucane Show RTE Radio 1

The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry Radio 4

It’s holiday season and it’s amazing what the sun brings out. Watch out, you can easily get burnt.

Pauline Nelson did. She told a sympathetic Joe Duffy how she stumbled on a great holiday bargain when her daughter said she had run into a woman starting up her own travel agency, eager for customers.

Kelli Kilpatrick (using Fitzpatrick) took a 1,000 euro cash deposit for a holiday from Pauline and she texted she’d be down on May 2 to pick up the rest - 670 euro.

But Pauline says she is now down the money and Kelli has “disappeared”.

Pauline’s daughter and several of her friends also paid Kelli money to book flights and accommodation for a trip to San Diego, she told an ever sympathetic Joe.

It was when the girls landed that they hit the ground.

“The girls had flown over to San Diego. No accommodation, no nothing. Stranded over there.”

Kelli worked for a legitimate travel agency and had branched out on her own.

Some people did get good holidays. Others didn’t – a family of four had to be flown home from Canada – they couldn’t get back, they had to do fundraising to get home, said Pauline.

“She had fooled everybody and she comes across like a lovely girl,” she said.

With a little detective work, she found out that Kelli had been convicted of defrauding Vodafone in the UK and is now in prison.

Sibling rivalry can be a life sentence. When a second child comes along, it’s paradise lost for the first child and some never get over it.

That was the chat on the Marian Finucane Show with guest psychologist and author Maureen Gaffney.

One woman messaged the show: “My sister lives 1,500 miles away – just about far enough that we don’t fight.”

Another texted: “My eldest daughter was five when I had twin girls, she has never recovered.”

The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry features two science sleuths who try to answer questions sent in by listeners about déjà vu or why your voice changes as you age – it’s wry and funny and edgy and smart.

I caught them chatting about the odds of winning the lottery.

Put simply, they said, if you buy a ticket 24 hours before the draw you are still 100 times more likely to die in that 24-hour period than to actually win. But hey, you have to live in hope.