I often think our online lives and personas are like that infamous experiment from the 1970s where one sociologist set-up an elaborate ruse to test how cruel people could actually be.

I’m writing this as my old friend Bill O’Herlihy reads a laundry list of names to Eamon, John and, yes even, Ronnie Whelan.

THERE’S a well-known, probably apocryphal story, about one of the first All-Ireland finals played after the wireless became a feature of life in rural Ireland.

The cliché is a vital component of any sporting occasion. You could even argue that it’s not actually an occasion at all until at least a few of these have been trotted out.

How, you ask, did one of The White Stripes’ singles first become an Italian football chant — and then be omnipresent in games across the globe?

THE first thing people ask Simon Hutchinson is if he’s mad.

MANY of us this week may have at last broken a self-imposed winter training ban of our own after an extended Christmas period.

REMEMBER the end of When Harry Met Sally?

ON Sunday morning, many of us will be woken by electronic bleeps and whirrs as new computer-powered gadgets and toys are plugged in, charged up and used for the first time.

THEY say necessity is the mother of invention.