LAST night reality TV got real with the first of a four-part series called For Better or Worse. It’s all about divorce, and RTÉ publicists say it will ‘break one last taboo’ in Irish society by looking at the reality of marriage break-up through the eyes of some of the people directly involved.

IN THE early 1990s, a member of the Christian Brothers was watching television from his home in Western Canada. He tuned into live coverage of the Hughes Inquiry then underway in Newfoundland. The inquiry was investigating allegations of abuse by Christian Brothers in Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel Orphanage.

IN March 1981, the Women’s Right to Choose movement organised a public meeting in Dublin’s Liberty Hall to push the case for legalised abortion in Ireland.

SOME years ago I found myself in RTÉ’s hospitality suite just after the recording of Questions and Answers. The Government minister who had appeared on the show arrived in, sat down, lit a cigarette and joined in an animated conversation. Some moments later a Dublin West TD — a prominent figure in the opposition who was also a guest on the show — arrived in. He appeared to give a double-take when he got the whiff of smoke, looked uncomfortable and left early.

A LITTLE information is a dangerous thing, and a little information is what was used to print the school league tables published last weekend.

ON the face of it, it’s a tempting proposal. Withdraw public money from fee-paying schools so the taxpayer no longer has to pay for their teachers’ salaries.

ALL over Europe, especially in countries which opposed the Iraq war, you can hear gleeful tidings that America and Britain have been badly bitten after their Middle East adventure.

THERE’S a story going around that Bertie Ahern isn’t the man he was a year ago.

THE great personages of the world hold people’s lives in their hands.

A FEW weeks ago I spoke with a woman who I’ve always regarded as the quintessential rugby mother. Her son played for one of the big Cork clubs, she never misses an international and for the life of her she cannot understand why Ireland doesn’t select 14 Munster players to partner Brian O’Driscoll.