Julian Gough

RTÉ Radio 1 (the Irish national broadcaster) will be nationally broadcasting little lumps of Jude: Level 1 all this week, from Monday to Friday. The short extracts will go out at 11.45pm each night (Irish time), and can be heard live, anywhere on earth, and probably far out into space, on the RTÉ Radio 1 stream. They are read by the brilliant Beckett actor Conor Lovett. (One of the select few actors - a band apart, a very special breed - who have appeared in both Waiting For Godot and Father Ted).

I would have posted this earlier and given you a bit of warning, but nobody had officially told me that it was happening, and I couldn't find any advance mention of it on the RTÉ website. Maybe it's a secret. Maybe I shouldn't even be telling you. (Or maybe I'm just not very good at navigating the RTÉ website...)

No, I've had another poke around the RTÉ website, and they've just updated the Book on One page (after the first episode had aired, naturally) to plug Jude. Ah, there is more rejoicing in heaven over the sinner who repents than over the goody-two-shoes who updates his website punctually.

And I've just noticed, Lucille Redmond in the Sunday Business Post previewed it, in their Radio Review section:

The Book on One this coming week sounds enticing. It’s Jude: Level 1, in which a Tipperary orphan sets off for Galway, ‘the Sodom of the West’, when the Mob burns down his orphanage. After facial surgery reconstructing him in the image of Leonardo DiCaprio (but for an erectile nose), he endures a chase through the Dublin of Ulysses. It’s to be read by Beckett interpreter Conor Lovett. 

A woman of great taste and discernment, Lucille Redmond.

Anyway, I  heard some of the first episode as it went out (the live streaming kept breaking up, I really must tinker with my internet connection... chase those storks off my chimney, hunt the voles out of the DSL box, unpeel the clinging vines from my cables), and the bits I heard sounded mighty. Sorry I couldn't warn you in advance about the first episode, but you can tune in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 11.45pm Irish time for more, more, MORE of Jude's adventures across Ireland.

I  think he'll be walking through Tipperary, in the dark, tonight, and may well meet the mysterious Pat Sheeran, who will give him a lift on his motorbike to the Sodom of the West... I'm not sure where Jude will be tomorrow (possibly doing battle with James Bond super-villain Charlie Haughey, on Haughey's private island). On Thursday and Friday I do believe he'll be trying to preserve his innocence as he pursues former Supermacs employee, and his true love, Angela, through the Inferno of Dublin...

And if you like that sort of filth, you can buy the book here...