Casting With a Fragile Thread. By Wendy Kann. Henry Holt and Co., €25

In fact, the coffee shop was the busiest business in a row of establishments in the station. Every seat was taken. Customers lined the walls. Even the employees were watching what was happening on the one small TV screen where Germany and Sweden were duking it out in the first knock-out round. It wasn't as if it was even a close game, yet it was extraordinary to see how every face was upward turned to the television. Nor was it as if the US were playing, or Mexico, or Trinidad. There were certainly no German jerseys or Swedish helmets among the crowd.

Dublin City Council is set to elect Paddy Bourke, a Labour Party councillor, as the capital's mayor on 26 June. Bourke has already won the Labour Party nomination in a vote among labour councillors and Labour's partners in the so-called "Democratic Alliance", Fine Gael, will also back him on 26 June. In order to be voted in he needs the backing of one other councillor – Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, the PDs and Independent councillors having an equal number of votes as the Labour/Fine Gael coalition.

A number of leading Sinn Féin activists in Dublin have left the party to establish a "Socialist Republican campaign group" called Éirigí. The new group, launched last month with a "Reclaim the Republic" campaign, includes Stewart Reddin, former Dublin Sinn Féin organiser; Joanne McDonald, the sister of Mary Lou McDonald, the party's Dublin MEP; and Brian Leeson, a former party organiser. Éirigí translates from Irish as "arise" or "rise up".

Nostalgia is the order of the day as BBC2 revisits Britain in the '90s and Channel 4 wheels out Noel Edmonds in a bizarre new box-obsessed quiz show

There was a hilarious moment on radio on Sunday 18 June. Gerald Barry was about to present his definitive analysis of the career of Charles Haughey when suddenly he was replaced by someone singing a jazz number. Charlie had done it once more to RTÉ, silenced them at a crucial moment. When they got back on air after the computer problems had been sorted, they played a self-regarding tape of Charlie saying how wonderful This Week was, how it was his favourite programme.

A front page story in the Sunday Independent of 18 June described public dismay and "astonishment among ordinary people" as Terry Keane sold her story to Ireland on Sunday. The publication of her account of her affair with Charles Haughey, so soon after his death, was sure to "pile further agony upon the family" and was likely to lead to a "public backlash" against Ireland on Sunday.

For the initial couple of days, the coverage of the death and funeral of Charles Haughey was characterised by extremes – on the one hand, the inevitable regurgitation of historical hatreds and the replaying of Haughey's defects and misdeeds; on the other, the attempted veneration of his legendary status as statesman and cultural icon. Almost anything you could lay your eye on was manifestly written by a friend or a foe.

Just when you thought there was no medium left for football to invade Donald Mahoney compiles this summer's essential soccer reading list

Artichokes are best served simply with a bowl of melted butter. By Darina Allen