They are both interesting ideas and I have combined them in a new proposal for Sunday Tribune management.

Entitled 'Giving The Readers What They Want', it proposes that I be paid to go on a long holiday; to Barbados, perhaps, although I'll happily settle for the south of Spain.

"Here we have two specific proposals for the future development of the Tribune, " I write. "Newspapers are often accused of being out of touch with their readers. Now we have a golden opportunity to show we care what our loyal subscribers think. There's a flight leaving for Bridgetown at midday."

The memo concludes with a few thoughts on the Sandy Lane hotel, what constitutes sufficient spending money and the importance of having a satellite dish in my new location to keep in touch with important world events, such as the start of the new football season in England.

Letters pages have been around almost as long as newspapers themselves and have always been an excellent gauge of what readers think about particular issues of the day.

Presented and managed properly, they can be amongst the most enjoyable sections of a newspaper, collecting the ravings and the ramblings, the wit and the stupidity, the thoughtfulness and the spontanaeity of readers under the one literary roof.

In other contexts, of course, they are ripe for satire. The 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' cliche, used to make fun of those whose middleclass sensibilities have been offended in some way, is believed to have started off in a local newspaper in Tunbridge Wells in England, where the editor was worried one week that nobody had written any letters to him. And so he and his staff fired off some angry missives to themselves, including at least one which was signed by "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells".

In the novelGood Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, an inveterate writer called RP Tyler is satirised thus: "RP Tyler's chosen forum was the letter column of the Tadfield Advertiserf If he sighted teenagers sitting on the village green, their portable cassette recorders playing, and they were enjoying themselves, he would take it upon himself to point out to them the error of their ways. And after he had fled their jeering, he would write to the Tadfield Advertiser on the Decline of Morality and the Youth of Today."

These days, the RP Tylers of this world tend not to write to the newspapers but, instead, contact radio stations. As we have moved away from the broadcasting monopolies enjoyed by RTE in Ireland and the BBC in Great Britain, more and more stations have battled for listeners by giving them a stake in their shows.

"Tell us what you really feel. Your views are important to us. We read every comment and design our show accordingly." There is a crucial difference between this approach and what newspapers do with their letters pages. Newspapers allocate their readers a defined space within the overall product and let them fight it out amongst themselves.

Radio shows often allow their whole tenor and approach to be influenced by those listeners who shout the loudest, and spout the greatest cliches.

The result is some unbelievably yobbish radio. Even Today FM's The Last Word and Newstalk's Breakfast Show, two programmes which are in the Champions League of Irish radio, are regularly pockmarked by the ravings of some of society's most addled.

These particular listeners live on their anger, which is fuelled by a belief that Ireland is going to hell, that all asylum seekers are living on the pig's back, that we are living in the midst of a crimewave, that all politicians are on the make or take, that morality is in decline and that the youth of today are beyond redemption and repair. (Sometimes, these people end up with columns in the Irish Daily Mail, but that's a topic for another day). While newspapers . . . the Irish Times' letters page is good for this . . . edit for taste and cliche, radio shows will broadcast any old rant, subject only to the laws of libel and restrictions against bad language.

No matter what you think of the arguments contained in the aforementioned letters to the Sunday Tribune, or the letters which appear in the Irish Times every day, or in the Irish Independent, which has been giving more space to its readers' letters in recent years, or even in the Mail, which gets some lively correspondence, they are, mostly, the products of a functioning intelligence. People have thought about what they want to say; they then construct their argument, draft it, revise it and send it.

Radio listeners, by contrast, are opinion-monkeys, drooling, scratching and chattering at home or in their cars, waiting desperately to be offended and then sending off the most hackneyed response their texting fingers will allow.

They wouldn't be so enthusiastic about it, of course, if the radio stations weren't so desparate to hear what they have to say, so open to allowing the lunatics take over the asylum.

They do so under the delusional belief that their listeners are the salt of the earth, ordinary Joes having their say and reflecting what the 'real people' think. They are no such thing. If you were to listen just to radio shows, you might well conclude that Ireland was some kind of fascist state, where everybody who didn't fit the white, able-bodied, Irish-born, employed template was to be regarded with suspicion.

Read the letters pages, however, and you'll get a fuller picture: of a people wedded to debate and argument, who are literate, articulate and thoughtful, sceptical and curious about the world they live in, and mildly eccentric.

That's the country I live in every day. And I never get to hear about it on the radio.