Nor was there any scandal. It was not the first time a reference to Mooney's sexuality appeared in the media. References to his sexuality have been all over message boards on the web for the longest time. And . . . despite Mooney's own reluctance to talk about whether he's gay, straight, bisexual, trisexual or ambidextrous for that matter . . . one could easily have presumed he was gay from his casual, unencumbered openness in everyday life.

Mooney drinks in the Dragon on George's Street from time to time with publicly gay media personalities. The Dragon is a public space, a gay bar with some straight clientele, all of whom can go home and tell their mammies, ?I saw your man who used to do Winning Streak in a gay bar last night." As far as the Mooney non-story is concerned, being ?in" or ?out" is redundant. It is, like one's sexuality, a grey area.

In the Today FM broadcast on Wednesday, Bishop jokingly told D'Arcy that he was gay.

Me and Derek Mooney are doing a show, " Bishop said.

That was reference one. D'Arcy said he was cutting to the ads before he ?outs" anybody else. That was reference two.

D'Arcy was conscientiously attempting to move the emphasis away from Mooney, but his use of the word ?out" was enough for the tabloids.

The red tops decided to use D'Arcy's use of the word ?out" as an excuse to break the silent, slightly ridiculous, contract that exists between plenty of gay media figures who are cool about being gay in everyday life and the press. (Ridiculous because on one level it assumes a level of gay shame in our society. ) But, given the front page splashes, Mooney's publicist made a mistake by saying he doesn't discuss his private life.

One can be straight or gay and still not discuss one's private life. If Mooney is gay, the publicist would have been better off trotting out something flippant like, ?Derek has always been gay. He doesn't see the big deal. He's indifferent to the interest in it." That would have taken the sting/story out of the non-story. The tabloid splash is not about being gay.

The tabloid splash is about innuendo and the apparent veil of secrecy.

But in fairness to Mooney, he never played a straight role. He was merely playing himself. (Unlike the late Rock Hudson, who was gay and, in one movie, was actually a gay man playing a straight man playing a straight man playing a gay man. Exhausting! ) There are some RTE personalities, some with children, who are secretly gay because of the era in which they grew up and, like Hudson, it would take too much heartache to unravel the truth now. To publicise those stories would be hurtful to their families and would be a genuine outing" (a word that is still intrinsically insidious) because they have committed to portraying themselves as heterosexuals.

When the Sun ran details of Fianna Fail councillor Malcolm Byrne's Gaydar (a website for gay men) personal ad, he hadn't told his family, who had presumed he was straight. But if a tabloid journalist wants to feed his family by trying to turn somebody's personal ad into something sordid, that's their personal lifestyle choice. It doesn't change who Malcolm Byrne is: honest, brave to put his pictures up considering he's a FF councillor, articulate and, yes, handsome. With Bertie Ahern pushing for the socially liberal/gay vote, Byrne should be one of the party's most valuable assets.

People say, What will happen to Derek Mooney's career if he is gay? He is a housewives' favourite! What will Mary of Skibbereen think?"

It's an insult to the Marys of Skibbereen to imply that that they care. It also projects narrow-mindedness onto our society. Yes, there will always be people who are anti-this or anti-that, but that's their bag, so wrap it in a big pink bow and hand it back to them with God's blessings.

When boys and girls tell their parents they're gay, mothers and fathers are usually (rightly or wrongly) more worried about society's reaction to their son or daughter being gay, that is, the paraphernalia surrounding the gay issue . . . the much-maligned Marys of Skibereen.

Being now thought to be gay, Mooney will probably be perceived as having an extra cool edge to his media profile and is likely to become even more successful. As this gay social diarist and financial journalist has found, some radio/TV producers may stereotype him and mistakenly think him to be a commentator on fashion. (But you gotta laugh! ) Let's not forget, Ellen Degeneres's sitcom didn't fail because she told the world she was gay, it ended because it wasn't funny anymore. But it gave Ellen a powerful platform and helped her build a successful US chat show.

Will Young and Stephen Gately were housewives' favourites, too, and their fans presumed that they were attracted to girls. They weren't. Under threat from tabloid newspapers, they both said that the heterosexual presumption was wrong, no big deal. One can only be outed" if we assume that everybody is straight as a default.

If the tabloid headlines this week read, Derek Mooney is straight!" it still wouldn't have been news, but it would have been a slightly more amusing story.