COME ON, as Hillary would say, let’s get real here. Nobody was surprised the Taoiseach knew that word and could use it.

In my time, I’ve been asked by one politician to deliver messages to other politicians as varied as ‘Your deodorant, assuming you’ve encountered the concept, isn’t working’ and ‘If you think nobody has spotted you playing offside with yer wan, you’re mistaken.’

WE now have a three-tier ministerial system. At the bottom are the soon-to -be-announced ministers of state. At the top are finance, health, education, justice and transport. In the middle are the others, widely interpreted, since Brian Cowen announced his cabinet, as of minor importance, offering damn-all potential advancement to their holders, and awarded either as punishments or consolation prizes.

YOU only have to listen to Hillary Clinton rubbishing Obama’s statement about the unemployed, dispossessed and generally miserable tending to get consolation from their churches and their guns, to understand that you never, ever insult the voters. They are infinitely wise, thoughtful and responsible. OK? OK.

JOHN PRESCOTT, the former deputy leader of the British Labour party, was defined for a time in the public mind by the day he punched a protester at an election rally.

IF YOU’RE going to set fire to your house, you shouldn’t do it in the middle of the Manchester United v Blackburn match. Trust me on this. I did it, this weekend. And I blame Dick Roche.

THE mobile phone came into its own the day the Taoiseach announced his intention to resign. Anybody involved — even at the outermost edges — in journalism or politics, heard their mobile come alive with ring tones alternating with text squawks.

This column, on this day, is a safe house, offering refuge to readers who may lose the will to live if they have to read one more word about Bertie Ahern’s legacy or Brian Cowen’s cabinet.

BRENT HOBERMAN may not be a name everybody instantly puts a face alongside, but it once was. Brent is one half of the couple who invented lastminute.com. They started their business with virtually no capital in a premises so small that cat-swinging was never an option for them.

THE gardaí may have built up a mountain of overtime hours ensuring that we all stay safe on the roads this weekend, but who’s protecting us in the airports, I ask you?