THE man on the radio said Niall Tóibín could be regarded as Ireland’s Billy Connolly, which established that the man giving the tribute was probably less than half Tóibín’s 90 years and, as a result,recalled the performer mainly from appearances on The Late Late Show, where he did the equivalent of stand-up before stand-up was cool.

The struggle for the birth of a child is the work of love while armed struggle for the birth of a nation state is the work of hate, writes Victoria White