TV VIEW: The insomnia beat begins around 11.30 p.m. At this time of night you have the repeats; Sex Sense, Sex In The City, Ibiza Uncovered and you have sport. Snooker, sailing and, on the Late Late Show, a little bit of Niall Quinn.

The LG Cup and the America's Cup with a little Quinn on the side were this week's insomniac's choice. With the flick of a thumb you could move from working man's snooker to millionaire's playground, from dreary England to the Hauraki Gulf in east New Zealand.

The America's Cup is an epic contest. Sailing competitions are usually epic. They race across the Atlantic Ocean, around the world; they race single handed in little boats and they race in huge boats. In the America's Cup you need an enormous boat and an even bigger wallet. You need tens of millions of euro to play this game and by the looks of things the BBC were paying almost as much with their lavish video gadgetry, gismos and computer models.

Sailing's top trophy was treated to Peter Snow off the leash. This, presumably, is why it began at 11.20 p.m., because Snow blowing down-screen at you with the spinnaker flying is quite a sight to behold, particularly when you are sedately watching two boats travelling at 10 miles an hour in the middle of the ocean.

You need a Snow to tell you what's going on, to really breathe wind into those sails. From his excitement, there was a message conveyed of something more than two dinky vessels serenely cutting through the azure.

Beside him in studio were two worthy but dull sailing know-alls and a blinding array of graphics. Wind direction, virtual reality boats with a line angled across their bows to show who was actually winning, schematics, tactics, statistics pre-race and post-race interviews. He even had part of a sail in the studio to show where the batons go and to explain how one of the crew, in the middle of a race, swinging from a rope about 90 feet up, had managed to kick a hole in one.

The current Challenger series of races is being held to see who takes on New Zealand for the America's Cup proper next March.

Each boat has a crewing squad of around 34, which is actually down on the boats that raced at the turn of the last century, where a crew of 50 hauled the ropes and pulleys that propelled the 130-foot yacht of Irishman and tea tycoon Sir Thomas Lipton. This great sailing nation, about the same size as New Zealand, we are often told, has no boat competing in the race, while the Swiss have.

This weekly peep at the grinders and the trimmers and the helmsmen of America's Cup sailing could acquire a cult status if Snow is encouraged more. Oddly, it was all quite compelling.

Steve Davis was talking up snooker, another game that has the capacity to become epic. Denis Taylor's World Championship win over Davis was one such occasion.

"Tactics don't count as much as they used to," said the great tactician. "I'm trying to be more aggressive. You have to go for the 50-50 balls now, even the 70-30 ones." Davis faced Mark Williams, who frequently goes for the 90-10 shots. This week the "Welsh Potter" was a little off his colours.

"Side on the cue ball is his Achilles heel this evening," observed John Virgo. Zap. Come back to us when it's from the Crucible.

"Financially, I was better off, but spiritually, maybe not," Niall Quinn told Pat Kenny on Friday night during an interview on the Late Late Show. With those sort of lines tripping from his lips, you could easily forget that Quinn is a soccer professional.

The former Irish player was talking about his life choice of soccer rather than hurling and in doing so articulately perpetuated his Persil-white image.

Even the grubbiest stains don't stick to Quinny. His biological action has resisted the verbal assaults of Roy Keane, while his diplomacy allowed him emerge from the mine fields of Saipan relatively intact.

Quinn is obviously intelligent, reflective and morally well anchored. He effortlessly "chums" his way through interviews and says all the right things. It is not that Kenny failed to land a punch on Friday night, but simply didn't try. Quinn isn't that type of interview. He is there to talk sense and sell a book. His wife, who has become a soapsuds celebrity, was asked what annoys her most about her husband.

"Nuthin' much," she said. "The odd late night."

Unfortunately when you are choc-a-bloc with benevolence, modesty and wisdom in the face of endless opportunities not to be that way, you don't always make an interesting interviewee. As Roy Keane knows, a second of menace is more rousing than an hour of charm.