SINS and SCAPEGOATS

Great show yesterday Kid! Burning the midnight oil with the second hand CD player the BBC bought on eBay certainly paid off. It never pays to buy complicated electrical goods that come without a manual. On your behalf let me appeal to your listeners.

Listen up you lot. If you have an old CD player gathering dust in the garage, or the attic, for God's sake send it to Gerry.

NOW, you just need to spend a night or two with Mr Coyle and fix the glitches and hitches of that most complicated of men. And once again! No manual. God sent him out without one thinking perhaps, that Mr Coyle like the Bic razor and the Biro pen was disposable.

Catholics are so lucky to have confessions.

This morning I was sitting on a hard chair punching the face of myself for the naughty sins I had committed last night. That's what Prods do.

It's either that, or go through all the trouble of being born again.It's the bit with the placenta that I can't stand. As I spat out a gum shield and wiped the blood from my face, Tommy my cat walked in.

"Not again!" said Tommy. "This is the second time this week!"

"I know," I muttered through a thick lip. "There's a ship in from Papua, New Guinea and some of the little dwarf sailors are SOOO- pretty."

"Why don't you turn and be a Taig?" said Tommy. "It would save a lot of wear and tear on your face."

"NEVER!" I yelled. "Never, never, NEVER! If I became a Taig, mummy and daddy would spin in their urn."

"There is another way to get rid of sin," said Tommy.

"What is it?" I yelled. "WHAT IS IT?"

"It goes by the name of-scapegoat," said Tommy. "What you do, is buy an old buck goat from Jordie, load all your sins on it and send the goat to the barren desert, that is Bellman to die.".

"Do you think I'm made of money?" I yelled.

"I can't afford to buy three or four hundred buck goats every year."

Tommy mused, pondered, thought and said.

"There is another way. In certain parts of America, where the banjo is the instrument of choice and kissing cousins takes on a whole new meaning, there used to be an outcast known as the Sin Eater. For a small fee, this recluse would eat your sins and take the punishment for said sins on Judgement Day."

I ran to the yellow pages and cried, "Stationery, stockings, studs, stocks, saxophones, where are the Sin Eaters?" I yelled. "I can't find the Sin Eater's."

"Alas!" said Tommy, "The Sin Eaters have all died out. BUT! I know one, an oval lardish one, who would willingly eat your sins, if they looked like-chips."

Now when the Taigs go to confession on Saturday night, you may see me on my way to Tubby Nolan's house. And you may see in my hands, a steaming fish supper. But what you don't see are my horrible, naughty sins floating in the grease and vinegar in the bottom of the bag.

Tubby Nolan is my secret Sin Eater and people no longer take me for Rinty Monaghan on the street.

All this and more have I seen from the studio of Talkback, where Wendy "House" Austin has put up frilly little curtains, painted the walls girlie pink and glued the toilet seat down. Men in the throes of heftedness need not knock on the door of Talkback. Wendy will tell them sweetly, tenderly and indeed-gently to-SLING THEIR HOOK!

A new broom certainly does sweep clean.

I remember David Dunseith just had a po in the corner!

Turned out nice again! Must be the weather.