THE Irish, in the early years of the 21st century, devoted their weekends to killing each other, using guns, knives or cars.

BRIAN COWEN was coming down with flu the only time I met him. He had a thumping headache, a sore throat and was rocked with bouts of sneezing.

THE fox, the goose and the bag of corn are a problem. A problem mainly to their owner. The poor sod needs to get all three to the other side of the river, but his boat has limited capacity. Once he’s in it, the boat can accommodate only one or at most two of the other items.

AT SOME point in the future, someone will look at the “developed” world we have today and wonder at its weirdness.

IF REALITY television majors, these days, on the re-cycling of the second-rate nearly-famous, film is rediscovering people of rather different calibre.

On the last day of 2006, I happened to be in a chemist’s shop, hovering around while the pharmacist made up a prescription, looking at the marked-down Christmas gift items and wondering if I really needed a leopard-printed vibrating furry box to put my feet into at the end of a hard day.

A FEW MONTHS into 2006, a client and friend was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He had never smoked. He was 46 years of age. He had four children.

THERE are three great things about receiving a cow for Christmas.

The voice came back at the weekend, thank you. And if you were one of the people who telephoned me last week and could hear nothing from my end of the line but heavy breathing, I do apologise.

Frank Luntz, the American pollster, pitched up on RTE One’s The Week in Politics programme last night, to take the political focus group — famously described by Bill Clinton as “a bunch of bull” — to a new and exciting level.