As someone who banks with Guinness, though not with Mahon, I have taken a personal interest in the Ansbacher affair from the outset. Nothing links me to the scandal, however, unless you count the patio slabs from Cement Roadstone on the Belgard Road.

Of particular interest is Socialist Party deputy Joe Higgins's account, delivered in the Dail last Thursday, of a day in the life of Ansbacher Man; starting out with breakfast with Des Traynor, discussing the Ansbacher account, setting up a few bogus non-resident accounts, speaking at prestigious business lunches, wheeling and dealing for the afternoon, and finally jetting off to the Bahamas for the weekend "where he would join some of his other Irish millionaire friends . . ."

This is very, very suspicious. Where did Joe Higgins get all these details? Did he hire a spy or surveillance expert? How many other people are privy to such sensitive information? Is there a golden circle of insiders who have gone to the right schools, made the right contacts and subsequently exchanged useful information in the right places? Should not their names be published?

And how would Joe like it if the nation was treated to an outline of a day in his life, with similar implications of having had a good time? How would his constituents react?

It must be pointed out that merely having access to such information does not necessarily imply any wrongdoing or illegal activity. (Oh, all right, of course it does. We in the media are just obliged to mouth such nonsense for legal reasons.) We can be sure, too, that these efforts to track down Ansbacher Man are not simply an operation involving a few "errant or rotten individuals" to use Joe's phrase: this witch-hunt has involved a substantial circle of the socialist establishment: treasurers of credit unions, community group leaders, lollipop ladies, commissioners of the peace and the like, whose tentacles spread into all areas of society.

Thanks to his shady informants, Joe even knows what the millionaire friends of Ansbacher Man used to discuss at the poolside in Nassau; namely the forthcoming national wage agreement, the absolute priority of nailing wages down to the very minimum, and the raising of productivity to unheard-of levels.

The daily life of Ansbacher Woman remains shrouded in mystery, but no doubt Joe is making inquiries.

AT LEAST we in the Irish media can pride ourselves on keeping things in proper perspective. By contrast, the London Times letters page has recently been getting its knickers in a twist, literally, with an increasingly plaintive series of letters from men on the subject of boxer shorts.

The correspondence began when an elderly gent from Suffolk complained about the mischievous placing of labels on modern undergarments, causing him problems when stepping into his shorts. This gentleman appears to have kept all the underpants he ever owned: his early garments had the label in the middle of back, later ones had it on the right-hand side, and his newest pair has the label on the left-hand side.

The distressing result is that every morning he is "faced with the task of working out from which era the underpants emanated." (The calamities of a wrong decision should be obvious).

A slew of letters ensued, most of them in heartfelt agreement, and one gent said that his dilemma was further confounded "because the particular nether-region garment I am wearing has its manufacturer's label at the front and on the outside of the supporting band. At least, I hope it does."

All this is harmless enough, but the debate has entirely overshadowed the business of the late British MP Alan Clark and his alleged death-bed conversion to Catholicism, not to mention the forgiveness bestowed on him by Judge Harkess, whose wife and two daughters were so famously seduced by Clark.

This business, involving all kinds of moral and religious considerations, has also given rise to an ongoing letters page correspondence.

The point is that at the time of writing, letters on the boxer shorts dilemma outnumber letters on the Clark affair (and affairs) by four to one.

This must say something about the British character, or at any rate about the character of people who write letters to the Times.

Brendan Glacken can be contacted at bglacken@irish-times.ie