Miscellaneous

"Somebody was pulling leg. We don't know who was behind it. We forgot all about it. We wish the Irish would. We are Catholics. The Irish are Catholics. We wish good relations."

The last remaining reporter on the news desk, after everyone else has gone away for the night, is called the Night-town Man. The term owes something to Joyce, something to the old Dublin whorehouse district that he celebrated. In the early hours of Saturday, February 14, Frank Duignan was the Night-town Man in the Irish Press.

The Pope's mission to Ireland was not just to plead for an end to violence but to chastise the Irish bishops for failing to identify with the poor and repressed.

Maureen Concannon O'Brien is the founder of the English Language Instiitute at 99 St. Stephen's Green. She came to Ireland in the late 50s to study in UCD, where she received a BA and Masters Degree in English, as well as a diploma in Psychoology.

Kevin Marron - A sort of editor
It has been said that if Kevin Marron had never been born it would have been necessary to circumvent him. Which might be taken as innsulting ... except that it is the diminutive Sunday World ediitor himself who is reputed to have made the remark.

They lied about Bugsy:

AT one pm, Thursday, August 31, 19 people from the Sean McDermott Street-Summerhill area left Dublin airport for a holiday in Benidorm, Spain, booked through Joe Walsh Tours. Their holiday trip was to trigger the most disgraceful outburst of journalistic gutterrsnipery seen in Dublin for some time.

PRESIDENT HILLERY has been on the dry for years ... but when it comes to entertaining in Aras An Uachtarain, he goes straight for taste. That's why An tUachtarain has stocked a crate of Genuine Russian Vodka in the Aras.

A chip off the old chip:

IT PROBABLY escaped the attention of all but the most rabid of Irish racing fans that a certain Wally Swinburn won his first race in England the other day. The Swinburn in question is not, of course, the same Wally who appears to have a mortgage on Ireland's flat-racing jockey's championnship. Instead, it's Wally junior, a l7-year-old stripling who weighs a mere six stone. That may seem fairly light but Wally senior only tips the scales at eight stone seven pounds.

A CAR TAKES more punishhment than probably any other consumer durable.

LAST MONTH'S harvest is now in full swing. There are still some soft fruit pickings to be made, but these will soon give way to top fruit: apples and other tree-grown fruit. The old country orrchards are now brimming with that old reliable dessert apple, Beauty of Bath, which will be ready for plucking shortly. In more recent planntations, this apple has been replaced by the variety George Cave, a seedling of Beauty of Bath and generally regarded as being superior. Some gardens are fortunate enough to boast an even earliier and, in many ways, finer apple, the Gladstone.