In RTÉ, they probably have committee meetings to decide what and where Middle Ireland is. (It can be hard to tell from Montrose, and certain people keep leaning towards Cork, so a lot of high-level espresso-drinking is required.) Then they show us Middle Ireland from every imaginable angle. This is the face of Middle Ireland. This is the brain of Middle Ireland. This is the heart. This is the ass.

It's all very well, but where are all the crazy people supposed to go? The answer is Newstalk. Coleman at Large takes very seriously its public service obligation to provide a forum for Outer Ireland. Coleman at Large is where you come across the people who play the banjo, and have only one tooth, and peer at you through flinty eyes, their chins damp with spittle.

On Wednesday's programme, Marc Coleman covered the story of teenagers being allowed access to contraception without their parents' consent. One texter named Joe contacted the programme to say: "The more contraception we have, the less scumbags we have". This pushed Coleman into a short soliloquy about the association between contraception and eugenics back in the day. Coleman is the only person on Coleman at Large with an IQ in triple figures, but he seems to forget that.

Another listener named Siobhan texted to say that babies should all be sterilised at birth "and when they get to adulthood they should have to prove that they will make responsible parents". Clearly Siobhan is in no doubt that she herself has what it takes to be a responsible parent. "Good grief, Siobhan, what a viewpoint," remarked Coleman.

So that's who the listeners are. Now to the participants. One of these was David Quinn of 'the Iona Institute'. (Sorry about the inverted commas there; they just app-eared of their own accord.) Quinn as usual was wearing a headscarf and a chastity belt, his lone stump of a tooth blackened by the smoke from his burning cross. I know it's radio but you can still tell. Quinn blames single mothers, obviously, for everything, whatever it is.

Another participant was Brian Leeson of republican/socialist organisation Éirigí, who came on to talk about the possibility of Nama bulldozing its properties. Leeson thinks they should be used to house the homeless. No, in case you're wondering, that's not the crazy part. That's the sensible, dry-chinned part. But Éirigí is also calling for an end to "the British occupation of the Six Counties". That's where the banjo comes in. Hard as it is to believe, there are still people out there who think "the British presence" is the problem in the north today (any more than it was in 1921, actually, but let's not get started on that). And if they're out there, they're on Coleman at Large.

So much for the loonies; where do all the happy people go? Happy people have more choice – beginning, obviously, with the Ray D'Arcy Show (Today FM), where everybody is all ease and vigour and has 32 orthodontically supervised teeth. There's also the Tubridy Show, and especially so over the past week, as Kathryn Thomas, Miss Congeniality 2010, has been filling in for Ryan Tubridy, about whom there is the occasional whiff of self-torture.

On Wednesday Thomas interviewed Glen Campbell, who plays Dublin and Killarney this week. She asked him about Elvis and Frank Sinatra and golf and his kids. Then she played his cover of U2's 'All I Want is You'.

"Whoo! What a fantastic version of that song," she said afterwards. "Glen Campbell; 73 years young; very nice gentleman."

Kathryn Thomas is so relentlessly, tirelessly happy, she could have you believing that Glen Campbell had a rhinestone of a life, and was never a drunk or a drug addict and never had affairs or got arrested. It's a gift, though naturally she would have no future in country music.

Meanwhile, Hector Ó hEoch-agáin, filling in for Gerry Ryan (2FM), regaled the nation with the legend of his own happiness. No one is as happy as Hector unless they're on nitrous.

Actress and comedian Niamh Shaw asked him on Tuesday if he was happy. "Our phone lines have been hopping," answered Hector. "People are happy listening to me, I don't know why."

He and Shaw did a quiz together to measure their own happiness. (Yes, this is what radio has come to: you listen now to find out how the presenter is feeling.) Hector gave himself all eights and 10s.

The four questions were so obvious – "do you have a positive outlook?"; "do you have the support of people close to you?" – that there was clearly an unwritten fifth question: "Could you see immediately where these questions were going?" If you could, you're less likely to be happy.

etynan@tribune.ie