IS Eamon Dunphy grateful to Gay Mitchell? He should be. He should be SO grateful. There Dunphy was yesterday, in the Newstalk studios, having been turned down by a bunch of presidential hopefuls he had invited onto the programme.

BEING topical without talking about the presidency or the economy requires me to let you know that I was invited to be a Secret Millionaire.

A WONDERFUL moment in a wonderful play. It’s the point in A Man for All Seasons where Thomas More faces the evidence trumped up against him to get him beheaded and rid Henry VIII of a turbulent priest who will not countenance the monarch divorcing his wife.

IF I TELL the truth about being a judge for this weekend’s People of the Year Awards, they’ll never invite me again.

HE WAS racing down a corridor as per usual when he noticed that his left heel was clipping the ground. Intermittently.

THE mayor of New York had a specific audience in mind. That audience was made up of Jimmy Buffet’s “tourists covered with oil”: holiday-makers on the beaches.

HE CAME into office on a wave of promise and promises.

YOUR 2-year-old upends his bowl of soggy cornflakes, putting it squarely on top of his head.

SOME people are really organised.

BY THE time you read this, America’s two big political parties may have done a deal on the economy.