Radio Review: The funniest radio headline of the week suggested that "the Government will seek an explanation" from the British about the Stakeknife allegations. Has Bertie got 25 years? A week hasn't been nearly enough, though excited broadcasters have laid it on thick.
On Today with Pat Kenny (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday), the host revelled in tabloid dilemmas. (You know, the sort where the most bloodthirsty state behaviour is always ultimately justified?)
"Isn't this a verrry difficult moral area?" sez Pat. "On the one hand, you have the IRA, who fought a very dirty war . . . The state decides: 'Well, we're not going to let our hands be tied.' If you take the equivalent, it would be those innocent children in Iraq, who were bombed for the greater common good of getting rid of Saddam."
On the News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) the UUP's David McNarry, defending the running of agents, sounded like a republican: "People shouldn't forget that in Northern Ireland we have had a war . . ."
Then you had the central character, who seemed to have wandered in from Naples or New Jersey - and yet Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) introduced the possibility of mistaken identity. Oh, that Freddie Scappaticci! Danny Morrison, in full media glare, vied with the shy Freddie for "most riveting character". On Monday's Morning Ireland he was refusing to "felon-set" and warning (futilely) of "the media losing the run of itself". Cathal Mac Coille passed up chances to read between the lines of some Morrison remarks that were more specific and interesting than might have been expected. On Wednesday's Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Thursday), Morrison was angry at Browne for reading between those lines, resorting, in the end, to the McNarry defence.
Most of the pundits, all week, spoke on the assumption that Stakeknife's handlers knew about everything he did. Don't get carried away with this image of omniscient authorities - and not only because journalists got other things wrong all week. The Morris tribunal into alleged Garda corruption highlights the messy, normal nonsense that Donegal cops were supposedly getting up to on the fringes of the "war". On Tonight's dramatised excerpts, it also highlighted the improbability of a barrister and an ordinary human being understanding each other. Counsel Paul McDermott, read with huffing exasperation by Joe Taylor, questioned Ciara McLoughlin, interpreted as a lovably matter-of-fact innocent by Deirdre Monaghan. Think Laurel and Hardy.
McLoughlin was explaining her friend Adrienne McGlinchey's way with weapons. "There was one day the bag went over the iron bridge . . . I think she says, Adrienne says, it was cartridges or bullets or something in it . . ."
How long will this tribunal last? Hear McDermott's subsequent pursuit of McLoughlin and despair:
"Could you take that slowly please? You were walking over some metal bridge somewhere - where was that?"
"Goin' out. Not from the town. The opposite direction. The Drift Inn."
"And she had her holdall again . . . How did she come to dump it over the bridge?"
"We seen the patrol car coming."
"So a patrol car was coming up behind you . . . You were out for a walk, and that shouldn't really cause a problem. Would you agree with that?"
"What do you mean?"
"In normal circumstances if you're out for a walk the fact that a Garda car comes up behind you shouldn't really cause a problem."
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"Okay. In any event, what happened when the Garda car came up behind you?"
"Nothing. Because the bag was gone."
"Sorry?"
"Nothing. Because the bag was over the bridge."
"When did the bag go over the bridge?"
"When we spotted the patrol car."
"Could you just help us on this for a moment. The patrol car is coming up behind you, somebody spots the patrol car, one of the three of you - is that right?"
"Ye-ah."
"And says something to the effect that there is a Garda car coming."
"Yeah."
"Did you believe there was any problem about a Garda car coming at that stage?"
"No. I don't think so, no."
"Had you any problem with a Garda car coming?"
"No."
"So it wasn't of any interest to you if a Garda car was coming up behind you."
"No. It wouldn't bother me."
"Can it be taken that one of the other two had a problem about that?"
"It would seem so."
It emerged that McLoughlin and her husband had given McGlinchey some bullets in the first place, supposedly for clay-pigeon shooting at the Carndonagh festival. McDermott was baffled.
"I know nothing about the Carndonagh festival. What goes on at the Carndonagh festival?" he asked.
"They do clay-pigeon shooting, and there would be certain events they would do. Uh, clay-pigeon shooting and things like that," McLoughlin explained.
Right so - in that case, it's definitely going to be Inishowen for this summer's holidays.