ALF STEALS SHOW

Make sure you see 'An Inspector Calls' at the Everyman Palace. The play will take you back to those halcyon days of complacency and satisfaction, when Cork was a different place. Cosy even , full of middle class platitudes and local drama meant Carl Clopet.

When crooks didn't win or politicos didn't steal, or property developers didn't lie or hospitals didn't kill or gardai didn't beat up suspects. When, as Joe Orton said, telling the truth wasn't a thoroughly defeatist attitude.

Written in 1945 it's J.B.Priestley's call for all people to be treated fairly and where everyone is responsible for the other's welfare. It's a morality tale that recalls Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or Tony Benn's humanist-socialism.

But it was Alf McCarthy's performance that impressed this scribe. He played the part of the brutal industrialist with such credibility that it put Timothy West -who made his reputation playing the bully of humility ('Brass', 'Hard Times')- in the shade.

AUNTIE KATHLEEN WORRIED

Cripes! What's come over Auntie Kathleen? The judicial independence of the Colombian legal system is worrying her. Last week the Labour Party's Mrs Lynch wanted to know if the minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, or his colleagues in the European union intended making a statement 'on the widespread concern by human rights organisations, and Human Rights Watch in particular, over Columbian President Uribe's interference in the Supreme Court's investigation into links between politicians and paramilitaries'.

Oddly enough, Auntie Kathleen was strangely silent a few years ago when three Irish citizens were arrested in Colombia. They were tried and released by a Colombian court after it was established there was no evidence against them, only to be re-arrested and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment by a kangaroo court (wisely they made a run for it and are now safely home).

Nor did she open her gob in protest when Pat Rabbitte blocked Labour TD Joe Costello from being an observer at the trial of the three men.