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Sat 05 May 2007The state of the nation? One call said it allRadio Review Conor GoodmanIt came very suddenly, in the end. Sunday-morning listeners expecting some mild matinal stimulation from John Bowman awoke instead to Charlie Bird hauling them out of bed by the big toe with the news that an election date had been set. RTÉ's journalists, like children on Christmas morning, were too excited to sleep and had stormed into the studio at first light to began broadcasting Hard News to the nation at 8am.Bird was even more animated than usual, hollering questions at Bertie as he left Áras an Uachataráin. "Taoiseach, are you nervous? Are you nervous? Are you looking forward to it?" I am, he might well have added. A stream of politicians from the main parties talked to Sean O'Rourke in the studio, and Aoife Kavanagh gave a lucid report on the Government's record. This well-structured, scene-setting programme may have been a long-laid plan, but to put it into action on a sunny Sunday morning at the expense of regular shows showed vigilance by the news team.