How Certain Millionaires Can Help Make Poverty History - They Can Give a Few Bars of a Song

Millionaire television producer Bob Geldof has announced plans for an international series of popular music concerts to coincide with the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, on July 2nd. The concerts are taking place at five venues - London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Philadelphia, all cities of G8 countries simultaneously with the G8 summit.

The free concert in London's Hyde Park will feature millionaire Madonna, millionaires Coldplay, millionaire Dido and millionaires REM. Millionaires Bon Jovi and millionaire Stevie Wonder will perform in Philadelphia, while millionaires Duran Duran will perform in Rome.

The millionaires are assembling in support of the Make Poverty History organisation, who were recently in the news concerning allegations that the trendy white wristbands that show the wearer's conscience is in the right place towards his less-developed brethren are made in the same sort of sweatshop as the wearer's Nike sneakers. The assembled millionaires' position on the sweatshop issue is unclear at time of going to press.

Ag Fánaíocht an Ghréasáin as Gaeilge!

D'insíonn seanchara don Spailpín agus sáreolaí teicneolaíochta go minic gurb é Firefox an brabhsálaí is fearr agus An Spailpín ag siortaigh ar an tEadarlíon, ach níor bhac leis an Spailpín leo. Cosúil le cach nach h-oibríonn i gcroí na ríomhaireachta, is cuma leis an Spailpín faoi cach seachas cad atá taitíoch dó.

Ach nuair thug mé cuairt ar an suíomh Firefox cúpla nóiméad ó shin, agus mé ag éirí beagán breán den obair agus ag cuardaigh tonnta móra an Ghréasáin Domhanda, fuair mé amach go bhfuil an brabhsálaí Firefox le tarraignt anuas agus leagan Gaeilge air.

Thogas anuas é comh tapaidh mar is féidir liom, agus tá sé le húsaid agamsa anois. Is ait an rud é, bheith ag obair i dtimpeallacht Ghaeilge - cuirtear bród orm, sárbhród, go bhfuil áit ag ár tseantheanga ins an domhan mór nua teicneolaíochta, an seantheanga chéanna atá ar leathchós san uaigh leis na mblianta fhada. Tabhair é daoibh féin anseo, agus cuardaigh ar an líosta.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

My God, it's awful. Really, really bad. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a bad, bad movie. Fans will have to go and see it, just as fans of County Mayo will march off to support the Green and Red against whatever football power is going to give them a scutching on that particular Sunday, but the feeling of abject depression at the end of the "entertainment" is just the same. It's such a waste.

The holes in the plot are endearments, compared to the rest of the horror. Consider this: not only are the Jedi smart bucks generally, but they are also in commune with the Force, thus giving them an extra layer of insight. Now, one of their number, and Jedi are not supposed to have any truck with the ladies, is not only living with a lady, but said lady is eight months up the duff and large as a barge in consequence. And the boys twig: absolutely nothing. D'oh!, Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn't remark when the penny finally drops.

Poor Ewan McGregor. He does his best, he really does, while those other British thesps, Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid, simply think of England and the cheque, and ham it up for all their worth. McDiarmid, particularly, is sheer bacon, especially when he goes from the cultured vowels of Chancellor Palpatine to the rasp of the Emperor. But the rest of the cast just sink beneath the waves of dialogue that's just too awful in a script that, in word, sucks.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has to be one of the worst written movies in history. It stinks. It's rotten. And, as Anthony Lane remarked in the that brilliantly vicious review in the New Yorker last week, any time Lucas gets himself into a position to knock the audience's socks off - socks that have resolutely stayed on since this this whole sorry sequence of spurious prequels began - he invariably makes a complete balls of it.

Since Qui-Gon Jinn first pitched up to Tatooine and discovered Anakin Skywalker we've been waiting for Skywalker to turn into a badass. Six or seven long and boring hours of pitifully dull cinema later, he finally gets his freak on and, in a scene reminiscent of Riefenstahl at her jackbooted best, makes his way to the Jedi Temple with intent do harm. And what does Lucas do? An Spailpín cannot say as he's been begged not to spoil the movie for anyone that still wants to go, but anyone that has seen it and remembers what happens next - well, it's pass the sick bag, isn't it? Gawd bless us, every one, says Tiny Fucking Tim.

The characters have no depth whatsoever. If anything Anakin Skywalker sounds even more petulant that he did last time out, in Attack of the Drones. This is a man who sells his soul, and the reason why is because he reasons and feels like a baby. The man is meant to be on his way to Jedi master, a supreme mystic and intellect in the galaxy, and he sounds like a spoilt little brat. If the Jedi had light slippers instead of sabres and Anakin spent a little more across Obi-Wan's knee (or Mace Windu's, if he's such a playa) getting six of the best it could have saved the Republic you know.

Shall we sample some dialogue? If we must, I suppose:

Obi-Wan: "But Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"
Anakin: "I believe the Jedi are evil!"

It's like listening to five year olds, it really is.

There's more to these space opera than effects you know. Anything that happens in Star Wars has to be true to its own reality, the Star Wars reality, but it has to serve a greater cause as well, and that's to keep the story bombing along. In the Western World we've been wondering what makes drama work since Aristotle wrote the Poetics. But this is passed by in Revenge of the Sith in order to satisfy some bizarre need for misplaced authenticity in a story that's MADE UP in the first place.

Example: In Revenge of the Sith, always true to the Yodic way of speech Yoda is. And that was one of the delights of The Empire Strikes Back, still the best Star Wars movie by a street, this object initial way of speaking that Yoda has. But here's the thing: in Empire, when Yoda has something pertinant to say, he drops the act: "No! Do, or do not - there is no try." "That is why you have failed." In Revenge of the Sith, he oy, veys! to the end. On his way into exile, his religion over, his priesthood destroyed, Yoda says "failed have I." Schtick must always remain paramount over the story in Sith, and that's why it's a rotten, rotten picture.

My advice? Wait for the sequel. You'd never know - Kenobi lying low in the desert watching how Skywalker's young buck gets on, Darth Vader finally finding an outfit that suits him, maybe we can throw in some sort of space cowboy to liven things up a bit - there might be a trace of movie there amongst the rubble. Oh, hold on....

"Rip-Off Ireland" - Éirinn na nGadaithe

Mar is eol daoibh go leor, is tírghráthóir é bhur Spailpín Fánach - is breá leis an rud ceart a dhéanamh ar son na hÉireann. Mar sin, nuair a léigh sé go raibh Micheál Ó Mairtín, an tAire Fiontar, Trádála agus Fostaíochta, tar éis gadhar faire tomhaltóra a chur ar siúl, bhí súil an Spailpín níos oscailte roimh gadaíocht na siopadóirí.

Seo scéal daoibh. Bhíos i lár BÁC Dé Sathairn agus, tar éis lá fada siopadóireachta agus sula bhfuaireas mo bhus abhaile, bhuaileas isteach i siopa chun píosa beag seacláide a cheannach, le h-ithe ar an mbus fad atá luifearnaigh na cathrach ag caitheamh a gcuid drugaí. Tá an siopa seo ar chúil Sráid na Tríonóide agus Sráid Aidriú, ach tá sé néamhghnáth mar tá an praigheas ar gach chuile milseáin atá le díol acu. Ochtó cent an ceann, más maith leat.

D'fhágas an siopa, agus chuaigh mé trasna na boithre chuig siopa Centra ar Sráid an Dáma, atá bunaithe in aice leis an bhialann Little Caesar's. Bhuaileas isteach, agus thogas Cadbury's Snack suas chuig an freastálaí. "Naoi cent ochtó," ar seisean. "Tá sé sin ró-dhaor domsa," arsa mise as Béarla dó, mar a duirt an tAire agus an Tánaiste ba cheart duinn a rá. "J¤ß·PÁÂ¥þ²yªºµØ¤H¤õ½b¶¤²y°g­Ì¡C«Ü," ar seisean liomsa. Síneach ab ea é, agus ba chuma leis má fhuaireas seacáid don bealach abhaile nó mura bhfuaireas. Bhí sé buíoch go leor bheith in Éirinn álainn ná bheidh abhaile san Sín, agus ní n-iompódh sé aon bhád murab fhéidir leis.

Cheannaigh mé mo sheacláid tráthnóna inné, i nDunnes Stores. Ocht cent is caoga. Bhí sí go deas, muise, agus tríocha cent níos suaraigh ná mo bhuachaillí ar Shráid Trinóide nó Sráid an Dáma. Nach iontach é an taisteal, i ndeireadh na dála?

John Waters on the Roles of Ideology and Values in Modern Irish Politics

None whatsoever, of course. Sigh. You can read it here.

An Speaking of Gurriers...

Two sightings yesterday: the first was on a city imp bus, on a side road that turns onto O'Connell Street. A track-suited young man had been refreshing himself with a bottle of Lucozade on the journey into town. His beverage consumed, he leaned towards one of the windows of the bus and threw the empty bottle out onto the road. Whoosh. Pop.

Some hours later, a chipper on the north side. Five young men, awaiting chips and milkshakes. Two have a soccer ball, and are kicking it against the wall of the chipper. From the inside. Three more - a tracksuited shout chap, a whippet-wiry second chap, dressed from toes to chin in Nike gear, the one exception to the uniform being a burberry baseball cap, which looks even more foul in real life than it does on the television. I can't remember what they third guy looked like - he must have passed for a human being.

Burberry goes up to the counter and address one of the staff, a young man trying to make a few quid working in a chipper. This entire address takes a place at the top of the burberry capped one's voice: "Hey you!... Where's me milkshake?... I told ya... it's chocoleh!... Three Euro fifty!... where's me change?... Hurry up, wouldyeh!" The three friends then retired to the front of the chipper, where they watched some character doing wheelies up and down what's left of Fairview Park on what looked like a toy motorcycle.

When I saw the young man nonchalantly throwing his bottle out of the window of the bus, I suddenly remembered one of the chapters of a book written PJ O'Rourke called Holidays in Hell. The book is about visits O'Rourke made in the 1980s to some of the world's then hell-holes, such as El Salavador, Northern Ireland and Eastern Europe. In the chapter I associate with my bottle-disposer of the city imp bus, O'Rourke was in South Africa, as the houseguest of a white South African who was explaining to O'Rourke why it would take years and years for the apartheid system to be dismantled. While they were having their chat, O'Rourke and his host were in the garden, enjoying evening cocktails and a few smokes. O'Rourke noticed that once his South African host had finished his cigarette, he'd just throw away the butt onto his perfectly manicured lawn. O'Rourke couldn't understand it - why keep a lawn so perfectly cut if you're going to litter it with butts? And later the penny dropped for O'Rourke - the South African could chuck his cigarette butts anywhere he pleased because there would always be a kaffir who had to come along and pick them up. That was how the South African apartheid system worked - there was always an underclass to service the needs of luxury for the whites, just as my lucozade refreshed young man clearly believes there is an underclasses - "muppehs," I believe, is the term used in that society for people who are employed in everyday jobs - who will pick up his bottles for him.

Do you remember Leona Helmsley? Ms Helmsley, the so-called "Queen of Mean," was the hotelier who famously quipped that "only little people pay taxes," and who was famously cruel to her employees. If Ms Helmsley was ever to visit Dublin and was overcome with a desire to visit an Italian chipper and enjoy a one-on-one, could she have been any more boorish that the boy in the burberry cap?

The Dublin Gurrier's Song, from the Pirates of Phibsboro (A Work in Progress)

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert once quipped after a particularly poor performance of Hamlet that the question of who wrote the plays of Shakespeare could now finally be settled. It was simply a question of opening the graves of both William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, and seeing which of them had turned over.

Old WSG will be burrowing his own way out after this, the poor old hoor:

SONG: DUBLIN GURRIER

I am the very model of a dodgy Dublin gurrier,
I'm working on the quiet as a motorcycle courier.
Spinning round the city, I always have to hurry her
Collecting rats and cats for a leading Dublin furrier.
I'm sick to death of immigrants, both Nigerian and Romanian;
It's more detail than I need to keep track of in my cranium;
If I wanted to be smart I would have been librarian
To a wealthy private school of religion Presbytarian.

ALL

He's working on the quiet as a motorcycle courier,
'Cos he is the very model of a dodgy Dublin gurrier.

DUBLIN GURRIER

I like to deal in grass and hash in an alley down off Grafton Street
The rich kids up from Ranelagh are the favourite ones I like to meet
"It's only fifty Euro bud, my grass is straight from Marrakesh" -
That I cut it in the Phoenix Park is something that I don't confess.

ALL

That he cuts it in the Phoenix Park is something that he don't confess
That he cuts it in the Phoenix Park is something that he don't confess
That he cuts it in the Phoenix Park is something that he don't confess

DUBLIN GURRIER

I'm in a council flat with a mot whose name is Natalie,
I'm getting very worried that she's quickly going fat on me.
I might have to do a legger and move in with me Ma and Da,
Especially as my Natalie is now embracing kabbalah.
I'm hopelessly addicted to cider, skag and methadone;
I'm living in flat in the middle of a battlezone
When social workers call I pretend that I'm not at home
While I'm drinking bottle after bottle of disinfecting Parazone®.

ALL

He's drinking bottle after bottle of disinfecting Parazone®
He's drinking bottle after bottle of disinfecting Parazone®
He's drinking bottle after bottle of disinfecting Parazone®

He's working on the quiet as a motorcycle courier,
'Cos he is the very model of a dodgy Dublin gurrier.

Chips

The legendary "Deadly" Deborah Ross has a paean to chips, good old greasy chips, in this week's Spectator. She's always been one of the all-time greats, Debs.

Anthony Lane on Star Wars: Episode III

Anthony Lane gives the new Star Wars movie a terrific shoeing in the New Yorker. Lane wasn't gone on the Phantom Menace, and it looks like he positively despises Revenge of the Sith. An Spailpín will got to see the movie anyway, of course, but Lane's review is terribly well done: "The general opinion of 'Revenge of the Sith' seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, 'The Phantom Menace' and 'Attack of the Clones.' True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion." Miaow!

Tsunami Aid

Remember getting stiffed time and time again in the aftermath of the tsunami as people were shaking collection buckets under your snout where-ever you turned, and you got guilty about Western materialist lifestyle and reached for the wallet? Turns out you would have been as well off having Masses said at Knock for the poor hoors, for all the aid that got to them.

Mark Steyn is laying it on the line in the Chicago Sun-Times. A lot of people seem to loathe Steyn - our own Michael D Higgins condemned his column as a "column of bigotry, homophobia and racism," which wasn't very nice - but my own two cents tells me that the chief reason that Steyn gets on so many people's nerves is because he's so very often correct in his analysis. Oh-er!

To Whom It May Concern

The word "whom" is on its deathbed, and is soon to be lost to the language. Its loss is part of the evolution of English - as the language spreads and is being spoken by more and more people, its grammatical constructs are becoming more free. Ancient languages, like Greek, Latin and Irish, are quite baroque in their grammatical construct, and remain so while so few people speak them, but English is quickly shedding these pedantic niceties as it hurries to take over the world.

However, English has not shed them all quite yet; "whom" is still a word in common and if not correct usage, and while "whom" is still in common usage An Spailpín will by God have it used correctly or not at all. Incorrect use of "whom" is one of An Spailpín's pet hates, along with people who don't scald teapots before making tea and people who shoot up their heroin on the upper decks of Dublin buses - we'll cut out this nonsense straight away.

Let's consider the following sentence: "Tommy hit Danny with a wooden plank." Once you can figure out the difference between hitting someone with a four by two and getting hit with a four by two - and I can give you every assurance that the difference is very real - then you are half-way to figuring out the difference between the words "who" and "whom."

In grammar, a distinction is drawn between people who do things and people who have things done to them. The doer of an action is called the subject of the action, and the person or thing that gets the business end of the four by two is the object of the action. In our example, "Tommy hit Danny with a wooden plank," Tommy is the subject and Danny is the object.

Simple, really.

Some languages change the way a word looks according to what it does in a sentence - whether it's the subject or the object of a sentence. English doesn't, with one exception - the personal pronouns. When we're using personal pronouns, "I" does the action, is the subject, but "me" is the object. "He/she" is a subject pronoun, "him/her" is an object pronoun - "He hit him with a wooden plank." And when it comes to relative pronouns, "who" is a subject pronoun, and "whom" is an object pronoun. "Who" does the action, "whom" has the action done to him or her. "Who hit whom with a wooden plank?" "He hit him with a wooden plank."

Easy, peasy. When in doubt, try using he or him instead of who or whom in the sentence - the correct usage will soon click into place. You can then go about your business, knowing that though your tie may sometimes be crooked, your grammar will always be straight.

How to Run a Revolution in the 21st Century

More fascinating stuff in today's Guardian - and to think you have to pay to read about nothing in the Irish Times online! - about the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Fascinating stuff.

Like a Rolling Stone

Marvellous piece by Greil Marcus in this morning's Guardian about Bob Dylan's classic song, Like a Rolling Stone. When you finish reading, dig out your Highway 61 CD and play it as loud as you can. It's just fantastic.

Malcolm Glazer and the Manchester United Takeover

The lead story on RTÉ's nine o'clock news tonight was the buying by Malcolm Glazer of John Magnier and JP McManus' shares in the English soccer club Manchester United, a move that opens the door to a full Glazer takeover of the club.

So what? People buy and sell goods and chattels every day. How is this news? It's not like Glazer is from some country verging on the third world who needs to launder money fast after regieme change in the old country meant that a man in business needed to cover his tracks fairly lively - I could understand the eyebrow being raised at that. But Glazer is a legimate US businessman who's interested in buying a business. He's made a lot of money out of and for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and he'll make a lot of money out of and for Manchester United. Big deal.

What would be interesting, of course, would be if he did what An Spailpín Fánach would do, which is flatten Old Trafford, and build a factory on the site dedicated to selling Royal Family souvenir china in Asia. Man U already has a big fanbase in Asia, and this way the Mancunians of Bangkok and Phnom Penh would have something just as British as the Giggsy Premiership shirts on their backs to put in their dressers at home. You have to see the big picture when you're in business you know. You snooze, you lose. Greed is good. Up, down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. Hurrah for free enterprise. Turn that dollar.

So. Farewell Then, David Brady

So David Brady is gone at last. After a long and fraught tug of war between the heart and the head, Brady has quit inter-county football at the age of thirty.

Brady was never loved in the county the way Willie Joe was loved, or Liam, or even the way McDanger is getting his due now, after all these years. Brady was never that kind of player, never that kind of fella. Mayo has always worshipped footballing Don Quixotes, anachronisms, romantics, tilters at wildmills, windswept heroes who fleetingly touched glory without having been apprenticed to greatness on the way.

That was never Brady. Brady never did salmon leaps in summer skies like Willie Joe used to, or went on jinking, shimmying runs like Joe Corcoran, or made the ball curl and flicker in the thinning air like McDanger. In style, temperament and approach, it was like Brady wasn't a Mayoman at all. If he had the misfortune to be born under the Primrose and Blue dawn, he would never have to buy his own porter again. Brady was and is hated in the Ross, because in Brady they saw one of their own - a big, strong and honest footballer, who worked and ran all day for the team, who handed out and took belts from all and sundry, and looked on both impostors the same.

Liam McHale inherited the title of God of Midfield from the Lord of the High Low County, Willie Joe himself, but looking back it's now clear that McHale was lacking until Brady stood beside him. Where was midfield when Leitrim staked Mayo out in the sun of the Hyde in '94, or when the hated Tuam hoodoo enjoyed its last hurrah against Mayo in '95? But in 1996 Brady stood by McHale's side, and the two dominated midfields in Connacht and beyond, for club and county, for as long as either could stand to be in the other's company.

Brady made the difference to the Stephenites and to Mayo in his time, dragging the Stephenites to the club final in 1999 when he and McHale were all they had. Midfield in any game belonged to the green and red when McHale and Brady were in harness, but Brady's contribution was only easy to see after he was gone, and there was a void left in his place.

At time of writing, it looks like the Mayo midfield will be McGarrity and Billy Joe Padden, a alliance between a basketballer and an artisan, just as McHale and Brady were allied in the generation before them. But Padden the younger is smaller than Brady, less physically imposing, and possibly lacks Brady's devil, the torment of losing, of not being the best. All Mayo wishes the two young men well, of course, but it is a pity that the Heather County has lost another hero, a hero, like his team-mate James Horan, the Flying Kiwi from Ballintubber, who was never fully appreciated in his time.

Football Championship 2005 - Arms and the 'Magh

In the United States of America, they've long been aware that they're no! Business like show! Business, like no! Business I know. As such, the NFL season opens with a fanfare, featuring the Super Bowl Champion's first game against an equally high profile team, played on Thurdsday, four days before the other fifteen games of Week 1 are played. This year, the baseball season started with a series between the New York Yankees and the World Champion Boston Red Sox, which is just exactly what the fans wanted after a remarkable end to the season last September and October.

In Ireland, the Gaelic Football Championship opened with Louth ("An Lú," which translates as "The Least," I'm afraid) gettting their ears boxed by Offaly before three boys and a man in Navan's Pairc Tailteann, the only game in this year's Leinster Championship not scheduled for Croker. And when you consider that the boys would open up Croker for a dog and pony show at this stage, that makes for a very low-key opening indeed.

Still, it's the only Championship we've got and, as the summer lengthens and the interest grows, the cresendo will be reached, as the ersatz appeal and rhinestone glamour of the English Premiership is swept away by the glory of Gaelic football in a high Irish summer.

That noted military man Kevin McStay was telling Michael Lyster last night (and how cruel of Lyster and Tommy Lyons not to tell Caoimhín that ties are back after the open-collar casual apporach of last year - picking on the small guy, as usual) that Armagh are too short in talent and too long in tooth to go all the way this year. Hmm - An Spailpín has his doubts. Not least as Joe Kernan has been seeding his 2002 All-Ireland winning team with young guns, thus having grizzled veterans on the bench to bring in when the going gets tough. Armagh have the most feared full-forward line in the country right now and certainly the scariest full back - were it not for the fact that they have to journey through the living Hell of the Ulster Championship they would surely be short odds indeed for Sam.

Armagh haven't been getting sufficient credit for their football, but it was very clear in their League semi-final and final that they play considerably less basketball than Tyrone, the other main contender in Ulster, that they waste very few passes and they're pretty handy at what they do.

Kerry will have a serene progress in Munster. They will meet few teams as obliging as Mayo with their unusual "after you, vicar" approach to Gaelic football in last year's All-Ireland final, but until they do meet a team that wires it up to them it's reasonable to presume that the Kingdom will be wearing its crown at the usual jaunty angle. Hard to see Cork doing it, as the Rebels seem to be lacking a little scoring right now.

Leinster seems pretty moribund, apart from remarkable evidence in the Division Two final that Meath have started to mirror the film career of Robert de Niro. De Niro, as you may remember, appeared in many strum and drang pictures at the start of his career, like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, that were quite harrowing to watch, just as watching Kevin Foley, Gerry Harnan and Mick Lyons imposing themselves on the soft, white flesh of Dublin footballers in the eighties was strictly over-eighteens viewing. Now, De Niro's off cracking jokes with Barbra Streisand and Ben Stiller, and Meath are punching balls into their own net to cost them national titles, just for laffs. Changed times, indeed.

There are likely to be more like An Spailpín who backed Wexford at healthy odds to win Leinster who were quite concerned by the scutching the yellow-bellies got from Armagh in the League Final, but the chances of Wexford running into a team in Leinster remotely as good as Armagh are slim. Laois are probably still the pick of them, but if the Messiah manager is to have an effect he has to do it sooner rather than later, and Micko is in Laois three years now. Do not expected to have to sit through another of those riduculous documentaries about Páidí in Westmeath - I do not expect them to raise many flags.

If you want to read about Dublin, buy the Irish Times.

Over in Connacht, the emergence of a second generation of Terrible Twins took another step when Galway won the Under-21 title thanks to Seán Armstrong and Michael Meehan. On the debit side for the heron-chokers, Joe Bergin is not filling Kevin Walsh's man-sized boots, and while Armstrong and Meehan are doing damage upfront there's nobody back in front of Galway's goals to mind the house, which must be a source of acute distress to Peter Ford. Galway to have their hearts broken is what the tealeaves are predicting here.

Speaking of broken-hearted Westerners, it was interesting that all the reporters who started their league match reports with "Mayo went another step of the way towards putting their All-Ireland final defeat behind him with a fine win over [insert county here] at [insert venue here] yesterday," did not start their reports of Mayo's loss to Armagh in the League with "Mayo Back at the Mayor's Residence, Loserville," or "Harney calls for more proctologists as Mayo persist in entering Football Championship." Moved by pity, you know.

Mayo people take their football far too seriously and get a little carried away, but their is a real sense of despair building in the county as the first game of the Championship at Dr Hyde Park looms. The stench of Bradygate still rankles, and while John Maughan might be a Dublin media darling, he's less popular among his own. It's hard not to feel for him of course, but the problems that were ruthlessly exposed by Kerry in the All-Ireland final remain bright and glaring, and even the Sheepstealing Sanhedrin have spotted at way by which Mayo can be got at. They look at Mayo's small little corner backs and they think: prey. In fact, it's not hard to visualise some monster from Ross smashing some poor little Mayo corner back like a rag doll and then bringing the remains to the ref while pleadling like Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice of Men: "I only met to pet him, honest I did. I didn't mean to break him."

The Rosseroos themselves are poor mouthing of course, and God knows they have evidence, but An Spailpín is getting terribly, terribly nervous about his sweet County Mayo's trip to the Hyde on June 19th. Mayo should win, but An Spailpín will be investing in Diageo shares just in case. With all the porter those primose and blues will sink if they triumph, it could make An Spailpín's fortune.

Here Chuck, Chuck, Chuck - English Hen Nights in Dublin's Temple Bar

It isn't until you've seen twelve stone and change of aged British beef in a little black dress shaking her ass to "Is This the Way to Amarillo?" that you are finally full sure that now is the End of Days. Repent, and know ye that the day of the Lord is at hand.

Dublin's fashionable Temple Bar has long had a name as the venue of choice for the discerning British hen party, but it's not until you witness these things in their full, ghastly horror that you realise just how accurately Sky television holds a mirror to reality. Those terrible people are not making it up; this really is what they do for kicks. It's especially disorientating when you're strictly a BBC2 Newsnight followed Late Review with poet and critic Tom Paulin kind of guy - it's hard to imagine Paxo in L-plates and a kiss-me-quick chapeau.

This weekend is one of few Bank Holiday weekends in Ireland that coincide with Bank Holiday weekends in Great Britain. Most Bank Holiday weekends county people, such as your humble correspondent, hightail it out of Dublin just as quick as their Corollas can carry them - which An Spailpín Fánach has long considered the most eloquent judgement on the worth of the capital - but, due to a debt of honour to a man whom An Spailpín Fánach holds in the highest esteem, your chronicler of contemporary Irish life ended up walking up Fleet Street late last Saturday night, into the beating and gory heart of Temple Bar itself, and bore witness to what goes on there when England decants to Dublin.

It is possible that our British visitors are unaware of the more recent pronouncements of the two Gerrys, Martin and Mitchell to the effect that the war is over. That, or they just don't believe them, for why else would so many of them have travelled in disguise? The most popular device popular with the ladies was the kind of demonic horn motif that is predominantly pink in colour and is sometimes fringed at the butt, or base, of the horn with pink fluffy stuff. We can only assume that the devils that sport these same pink horns are the ones that do the filing in Hades, as opposed to those ones that do the heavy work of forking Protestants into those fiery pits for which Hell is chiefly notorious. Then again, they could work in HR - who really can say?

Irrespective of the duties performed by these ladies in this world or the next, it's hard to believe so many of the guests of our nation in Temple Bar are so lacking in documentary evidence, such as Birth Certificates, that leaves them unaware of how long they've been existent in this green and verdant Earth. Ecclesiastics tells us that to everything there is a season under Heaven, meaning that there is a season when a lady can look like a million dollars dressed as a French maid, and there is a subsequent season when the very same lady looks a bit better in a twin set and pearls, and the French maid's outfit is confined to the trunk and sweet memory. A quick consultation with a birth cert might prevent ladies mixing up same seasons, and prevent An Spailpín Fánach from getting a very severe case of nervous fright on Saturday night from seeing too many Whitneys dressed like Britneys.

Despite the horrors, there was one young lady with whom your hopelessly romantic Spailín Fánach fell more than half-way in love - from across a crowded room of course. This girl had what can only call style, as she chose to visit us as Catwoman, that justly famous anti-heroine of the Batman movies and comic books. She looked just fabulous, and could easily have been acclaimed the Queen of Dublin, a woman of such class that the ancient city could only bow down in fealty and pledges of honour. Until she opened her mouth to speak, of course, when the illusion could very easily have been shattered and led to more of a Marie Antoinette short-sharp-shock sort of a scene.

An Spailpín Fánach, despite being quite Correct in his politics, has long been entranced by the cut glass accent of the English upper classes, as enunciated by Liz Hurley, the fantastically glacial Kristen Scott-Thomas and La Divina Nuova Keira Knightley. However, those accents from the other side of the British social sphere are utterly without charm or favour and, after a mere half-an-hour among its speakers, "Eey-oop chuck" began to sound to your shaken correspondent just as terrifying as the war-whoops of the Apache braves that once swept across the plains of New Mexico and Arizona, tomahawks waving above their heads as they tried their best to support their squaws' toupee making cottage industry.

Apaches don't do that anymore, not least as Uncle Sam wiped them and their lifestyle off the face of the Earth over a hundred years ago, but it's hard to imagine how they could have been anymore terrifying than Doris, Charlene and Tracey, pink horns glowing, ample midriffs showing and on-the-session patrolling the mean streets of Temple Bar. Lock up your impressionable sons.