With its rush-hour time slot and motorway-adjacent title, The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays) has always given off a certain petrolhead energy, while the programme’s iconoclastic ethos has sometimes seemed designed to stir up frustrated commuters listening on the car radio.
So when Shane Coleman, who anchors the show with Ciara Kelly, asks whether cyclists serially disobey the law, one braces for a four-wheels-good, two-wheels-bad jeremiad pitched at drivers stuck in evening traffic.
Far from going full Jeremy Clarkson, however, Coleman confesses that he’s not only a cyclist but a sinner too. “I’m going to put my hands up and say, yes, I do break the rules of the road,” he admits, while insisting that any transgressions are minor: he might go through a red light or a pedestrian crossing, but it’s never at full speed. “I’m not justifying it. Well, maybe I am,” he says. “I’m in the wrong.”
Such self-excoriating reflection might seem suspiciously right-on to anyone pining for the days when Ivan Yates presided over the show in flamboyantly politically incorrect style, but Coleman doesn’t stop there. “All drivers break the rules of the road as well, I would argue,” he says, further risking the irritation of car-bound listeners.
