WHAT kind of madness is this? €100 million a year on spin? €2 million a week?

JIM McDAID has character. Perhaps not every ingredient that goes into that elusive characteristic, but he has a lot.

FIVE euro. That’s what it costs to land a passenger in Dublin. To put it more precisely, that, on average, is what it costs an airline to land a passenger in Dublin.

IT’S 2005, maybe year 13 of the Celtic Tiger. Fantastic growth, incredible wealth, Ireland leaping up the economic league tables.

I WANT to get rich, famous and laid. Three modest (or immodest, depending on your point of view) enough ambitions, I suppose.

ROCK Hudson died in October 1985. His death convulsed the world not because a handsome if minor star had passed away, but because of how he died.

THERE is a mother in mourning in Ireland. Every day, she cries for the boy she has lost, and there is often no end to the tears.

LAST week friends of Olunkunle Eluhanla, a 16-year old boy deported by the Government, picketed outside the Dáil.

ON a Friday night a couple of weeks ago, three young boys slept in the same bed in a hostel.

YAMANOUCHI is a Japanese word that means “middle of the mountains”.