THE timing was ironic on many fronts. He died in his sleep, 17 years to the day after the Berlin Wall came down.

We’re a rotten shower. We think about nothing but money. As long as we get bigger and bigger salaries to pay for our SUVs, we don’t give a sugar about climate change.

Alcohol companies are in the business of shareholder value, like every other kind of company.

I RECENTLY was lent a baby overnight. This baby was distinguished by a sunny disposition and a willingness to give everybody and everything the benefit of the doubt.

WHEN Michael McDowell removed his teeth from Bertie Ahern’s leg long enough to whisper “We’ve survived,” it was an awful let-down to two groups.

It may not apply across a broad media front. It may not even apply right across the Irish Examiner’s front. A lowly columnist cannot be held responsible for what news editors and leader writers decide.

IN the middle of the current — albeit dwindling — feeding frenzy, a politician who shall be nameless let out a statement which went unchallenged, perhaps because the interviewer was having too much fun pursuing the story of the loans/gifts/whiparounds for Bertie Ahern. Or maybe because the interviewer found the statement inarguable.

Monday, as we all know, is the absentee day. The day when the undermotivated, the hungover, the weather-challenged and the just plain lazy get their mother, their flatmate or their partner to ring the office and say they won’t be in.

Won’t you come into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.

When you’re almost stark naked, it’s difficult to get a good grip of your busby.