So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around his back to peddle secret information.

For a team roughly five games from their first double, Chelsea have taken a sustained kicking from media, pundits and fans. Some of it has clearly been deserved, but much has been mob overreaction to something akin to innovation. The rubbish spouted about the soul of the game has been tellingly absent from conversations about Alex Ferguson's record as a manager and a human being over the past 30 years.

In April we look forward to the arrival of the cuckoo and the swallow – the most notable of our summer migrants – to indicate that summer is on the way. But nature has other, perhaps less obvious, ways of demonstrating that the most welcome season is imminent. Summer can also be heralded by the departure of visitors that have been here all winter. Migration is a global phenomenon – a complete movement northwards of birds (and indeed mammals too, in Canada and in northern Europe and Asia).

On Tuesday 4 April, the Minister for Justice revealed that Denis Donaldson's body had been found with one hand almost severed. The Irish Independent took this detail and turned it into a mutilation in their editorial of the next day.

Two RTÉ series reporting on Irish development aid are part-funded by Irish Aid – RTÉ perceives no conflict of interest. By Colin Murphy

So little fun on Lyric. Actually no fun. Furrowed seriousness and demands for concentrated attention. Is there no Ronan Collins of classical music – someone with a light touch, a bit of humour, just a little fun now and again? Or Lillian Smith (she of Late Date on RTÉ Radio One when the wonderful Val Joyce is away)? Or indeed Val Joyce himself?

A shell company recently exposed by Amnesty International as a company linked to rendition flights on behalf of the CIA, bringing people to be tortured, continues to use Shannon as a stop-over. Colin Murphy reports

Tensions within the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the largest paramilitary group in the North, reached crisis point this week with senior members making a bid to oust Andre Shoukri, leader of the north Belfast wing of the group.

Every family has one. A new series, Black Sheep, profiles the eccentric in various Irish families, starting with a 17th-century Quaker from Waterford, who may have been the illegitimate son of Henry VIII

Enda Walsh's new play closes at the Helix in Dublin on Saturday 15 – go see it, advises Colin Murphy