It's the old people you'd feel sorry for. There they were thinking that Willie Bermingham had got himself a whole new crew of volunteers. Twice in seven months - old people who haven't had a knock on the door since 1977 and last year they were up and down to the door like yo-yes, people standing there with big smiles and askk-ing is there anything you'd like, missus.

A new genre of humour, more vivid, cynical and even cruel has been slouching onto the Irish stage. By Gene Kerrigan

Timing has a lot to do with whether stand up comedy is good - and tonight the timing is dreadful. Eight, they said, then half past, and nine is long gone and it's half past nine before Billy Magra goes on stage and starts with the humour. The reason for the bad timing was more bad timing - the show was set for Monday night, and that's when Not The Nine O'Clock News is on BBC 2. And a lot of the folks who might go to a gig like this are Not fans.

Monday 1st: 
I summon Mr. Haughey to Cork to account for his recent doings. I had instructed him that under no circumstances was he to provoke this suffragist tomfoolery until I should have left to take the waters. Now, I shall have to propose a change of arrangements to Mrs. Langtry, and she, I fear, will not be much pleased.

Already, Charlie Haughey's scouts have been making overtures to Sinn Fein The Workers' Party for the support of their three TDs in the vote for Taoiseach. His brother Sean phonne,; SFWP headquarters and asked that a message be left for Tomas MacGiollla to phone Mr. Haughey. The reply to Sean Haughey was that if Charlie Haughey wanted to talk to Tomas MacGiolla, he could lift the phone and ring him himself.

THE GENERAL Election was a disaster for women, There are now even fewer women public representatives. Two of the best women deputies are gone. Women's issues played no role whatsoever in the campaign. The only women's group that managed to organise at all was the Women's Poliitical Association, and its effect was minimal. By Pat Brennan

ALL PARTIES had candidates who canvassed personally in the election. But the worst such example we have come across concerns one Albert Reynolds, the Fianna Fail candidate for Longford-Westmeath. Mr. Reynolds had inserted in both The Longford Leader and The Longford News, which he once owned, a special election supplement, which appeared as though it was merely an editorial addendum to the usual coverage of the election. In the 8-page supplement there were 25 photographs of Albert. Page 1 trumpeted "Reynolds Ready for Return to Government".

THE KNIGHTS of Columbanus were active overtly and covertly during the course of the election campaign. We received an anonymous note saying that the organisation's headquarters had sent directives to its members on how to vote, singling out a number of outgoing TDs for special attention. We visited the offices of the Knights and enquired at the reception area if we could have a copy of the circular issued to members in connection with the general election.

It's been a nightmare. I could put a gloss on things and say that the Spontaneous Aggravation Party has been working like a well-oiled machine, that our people are getting an enthuusiastic response from the constituenncies, that if one interprets the variious polls accurately it ts obvious-that there is a massive swing to our point of view. The usual crap.

Paddy Agnew profiles Sinn Fein the Workers Party, Bernadette McAliskey, and Sinn Fein

The microphone takes the sound that the singer is making and feeds it through a lead into a mixing machine. There the sound can be manipulated by the sound engineer's knobs and toggles before being passed on to a reel of tape that is two inches wide. The machine can put up to sixteen individual sound tracks onto the wide tape. There are already several tracks on the tape. Rhythm section - drums, bass, guitar, piano.