As NewsTalk and Today FM dropped their planned programming to cut live to the Merrion Hotel on Thursday 7 September, Kylie Minogue was singing 'The Locomotion' on RTÉ Radio 1. Fifteen minutes later, as George Hook and Matt Cooper broke the news of Mary Harney's imminent retirement as leader of the PDs live from the press conference, RTÉ Radio 1 played Van Morrison. The Cathal Murray Show was eventually interrupted by a brief newsflash to let RTÉ listeners know what Today FM and NewsTalk listeners already knew.

The annual Fianna Fáil think tank, which started on 4 September in Westport, provided newspaper editors with much-needed respite from the summer 'silly season'. After eight weeks of parliamentary recess, during which they were forced to devote their front pages to trivial matters such as Israel's invasion of Lebanon, the barbarism of our prisons and our renegade police force, they grasped the chance to focus on the really important issue: the banal utterances of politicians.

The relationship between fantasy and reality is always on artist Ciaran Walsh's mind, whether he is musing about Coronation Street characters or creating brash microcosms, says Billy Leahy

WH Auden once wrote that a writer's politics are of more danger to him than his cupidity or greed. If a story is formed by ideas exterior to it, if there is some sort of socially-engaged intention, the work produced is not art, but polemics. Unlike our magazines, and our radio, even our television news, we want our novels, our plays, our paintings to be pure. We don't want to be lectured on history. We don't need another lesson on social activism. We don't need somebody else telling us how to live. Yet another politician is more than we can stomach.

After more than 50 years on RTÉ radio, Val Joyce, host of Late Date, was axed during a curt meeting with his new boss. He talks to Colin Murphy

While RTÉ One's War Stories featured dignified accounts of young Irish men who fought during the second world war, Sky One scraped the bottom of the TV barrel with Asbo Fever

RTÉ has drawn up new guidelines for staff reporting on sieges and kidnappings following criticism of its coverage of the "siege" at Abbeylara which ended with the killing of John Carthy. The new guidelines say Garda requests not to reveal certain information "should be strictly adhered to".

Even with some clever production techniques and good performances, Trousers just doesn't do it for Colin Murphy

The Drivetime slot was the only daily programme in the new autumn RTÉ Radio 1 schedule ready to start on Monday 4 September. Derek Mooney and Páraic Breathnach are yet to get to the starting line, so we're getting Rattlebag specials and early Late Dates until they are.

The judges on Dragon's Den choose whether or not to break the hearts of eager inventors, while in the strange world of The Honourable Scaffolder, being killed or spared depends on how much you're willing to pay