Media

RTÉ's drama The Clinic provides welcome relief from the drudgery of Pat Kenny on The Late Late Show

Nell McCafferty thinks Ian Paisley is sexy. Nell's da let her go to discos as a teenager in the hope that it might "straighten her out" while her mother was busy ripping up rags for petrol bombs. Nell's feminist crusade went well beyond bringing condoms in from the North on the famous "condom train". She liberated women pint-drinkers in Dublin by ordering 40 brandies in Neary's pub and refusing to pay until they gave her a pint.

For the last three weeks Shell have been constructing a terminal in Ballinaboy Co. Mayo. Every morning upwards of 100 people gather outside the site to protest against the terminal and every morning a similar number of police arrive to forcibly remove them and allow the work to continue. As the protests have gained in intensity, coverage of them has slowly fallen off the media agenda. On 20 October, the Shell to Sea campaign organised a national day of action, and bussed in a couple of hundred supporters from around the country.

Metro Éireann, Ireland's only multicultural newspaper, will be available nationwide from Thursday 26 October.

Imagine him all those years ago, the dew still on him. Hauling himself down along O'Connell Street, Limerick. The slivers of the world being pulled towards him. He's a magnet for the drunks, the punks, the bowsies, the gurriers, the toffees, the tinsmiths, the auld ones, the chisellers. Coming down the street, shoulders swinging, big enough to tamp down the rain. Yes, he's chain lightening to everything around him. No rust on him. No way he's going to stop, nor rest, nor look behind. He'd break your heart with a gentle word and take your head off with the next. He didn't want immortality.

There has been a self-interested campaign against the Privacy Bill in the media.

Marú, TG4's series about well-known Irish murder cases, is invasive and cynical, says Dermot Bolger

Had enough of talk radio by mid afternoon – people moaning to Joe Duffy, Mooney not going wild on one, Sean Moncrief's fast-talking, busy, busy NewsTalk slot? Then switch over to RTÉ's classical music station Lyric FM where John Kelly is keeping the nation sane for two hours of pure pleasure from 2.30pm each day (The JK Ensemble, 2.30 - 4.30, Lyric FM).

For the last five years, US foreign policy in the Middle East has been the international issue which has garnered the most media attention – with the invasion and occupation of Iraq being the obvious focus for most of the coverage. On Wednesday 12 October, the Lancet published the results of an epidemiological study into excess deaths in Iraq. It examined the death rate, in the periods before and after the invasion, in 1,819 randomly selected households.

In the most interesting, provocative piece of mainstream journalism I've read for some time, the New York Times Magazine recently exposed the terrible damage being inflicted on elephants. Habitat destruction, poaching, culling and casual cruelty have wrecked many of the social networks that sustain these complex creatures – and psychologically scarred, socially alienated elephants are hitting back at the oppressor.