Bruce Springsteen superfans can’t resist when the Boss drops in

Darragh McManus’s week on the radio

Bruce Springsteen will return to the RDS in Dublin next year

Darragh McManus Twitter

May 28 2022 05:00 AM

Bruce Springsteen is playing Ireland next summer. “At 130 quid for a standing ticket, it’s not cheap,” said Kieran Cuddihy on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, Mon-Fri 4pm). “Is it worth it? I wager my next guest thinks so.”

Said guest was Springsteen super-fan Anton Martin, who has seen the bellowing blue-collar rocker play live a staggering 50 times. (He added wryly: “That’s all”.)

Some fellow superfans, he said, have seen the Boss much more than that. His last Springsteen gig was on Broadway; he has also been to Sweden, Italy, Germany, US, all over the place.

If possible, the accountant went on, he would go to shows “20 times in a year”, and hopes to have another 10 racked up by next May’s concert in the RDS. He joked about his wife being “in denial… she’s only seen him 33 times and doesn’t really like him”.

Does it not get repetitive, Kieran asked? “No,” Anton insisted. “There’s always little nuggets to enjoy… it’s always different.”

It’s mind-boggling to us Springsteen agnostics — I’d hardly bother going to see the man if he was playing down the road in the local schoolyard — but sure, each to their own.

Equally baffling are those people who climb several miles high on mountains like Everest and K2. Let’s be brutally honest — they’re lunatics. They’re also admirable in many ways, but they’re lunatics.

James McManus is one such admirable lunatic. The Roscrea native actually amped up the madness by attempting to become the first Irish man to reach the summit of Everest without using bottled or supplementary oxygen.

He spoke to The Ray D’Arcy Show (Radio 1, Mon-Fri 2.45pm) from a hospital in Kathmandu, which gives some idea of what happened — in short, the attempt failed. Basically, James took longer than expected to get from Base Camp to Camp 2, resulting in “a complete loss of power and energy”. He was rescued by helicopter and is undergoing scans; doctors suspect he has fluid on the lungs.

James, who runs the Earth’s Edge Travel Company, is now determined to “go back and try again”, and also intends to climb “all 14 mountains in the world which are over 8,000 metres” without oxygen. Crazy — but admirable all the same.

In Our Time (BBC Radio 4, Thu 9am), the long-running history programme presented by broadcasting legend Melvyn Bragg, continues to set high standards. It’s just great, really: intelligent, engaging and energetic, and covering a hugely broad range of subjects.

Indeed, some shows are closer to philosophy — or archaeology, anthropology, science, religion — than “straight” history. The exploration of philosopher Immanuel Kant’s work, for example, was exemplary. All episodes are available to listen back — and you’re strongly urged to do so.