Having to boil your water, it seems, is more significant.

Everyone is throwing around outlandish comparisons with the third world, although a trip home to Co Galway last week revealed that, if anything, it's more like the second world. Seeing people queueing for clean water is decidedly Soviet (although at least the communists might not have made you pay for it).

Anyway the water in parts of Co Galway has long been undrinkable, as it is in many towns all over the country. Think swimming pool swallowings . . . a strong taste of chlorine and the worrying suspicion of wee. But cryptosporidium is the hysteria du jour, so no doubt moves are by now afoot to supply us with even more heavily chlorinated drinking water. Thanks, everyone.

We heard from hoteliers, businesspeople, TDs and senators, the mayor of Galway, healthcare workers, a microbiologist, and the luckless rural affairs minister Eamon O Cuiv, who was harangued about the water on Wednesday's Drivetime. O Cuiv was pitiable, really, having to take the blame. He did hold his own though, perhaps because he personally has not been pouring the contents of everyone's septic tanks around the peaty shores of Lough Corrib.

The coverage even extended to the regulation 'quirky' news story: on Thursday's Morning Ireland, Fr Stephen Farragher, administrator of Tuam cathedral, told Richard Downes that the cathedral has opted to bring in holy water from elsewhere for Easter week, just in case of infection.

"We have found that holy water can end up literally anywhere, " he said. "I saw a photograph a few years ago of a woman visiting Elvis's grave at Graceland with a bottle of holy water from Tuam cathedral." It's not that tainted holy water could do Elvis any harm . . . everyone knows Elvis isn't even in that grave . . . but clearly he suspects people of drinking the stuff. "Maybe it would be tempting faith, as distinct from tempting fate, to distribute water that might have the possibility of infection, " he laughed, delighted with his soundbite.

This was the kind of item that couldn't give rise to much questioning, but Downes chanced one anyway, perhaps to fill up the time. He wanted to know if blessing the water alone wouldn't "do the business in terms of chlorosporidium [sic]". But Farragher didn't want to get into it. "You would have a topic for another whole radio programme in that, " he said.

Still on toilet water, You and Yours (BBC Radio 4) had a report last week about a new perfume now on sale at Selfridges that smells of absolutely nothing. It's called Choix, and yes, people are buying it. It costs �40 a bottle. (And this was Wednesday, several days before April Fool's Day. ) Christine Watts from Selfridges was brought in to explain herself, and used the opportunity to present a five-minute advertisement for the department store.

The perfume, she said, was part of a project called 'Surrealism in the Shop', running at the Oxford Street branch. It was made by an outfit called Dadadandy, who describe it as 'dressing-table art'.

"People don't quite believe us, " she said. "They are all trying the tester and saying 'Oh no, I think I can smell something'" . . . alcohol, no doubt. Perhaps the boast that you can smell the perfume that smells of nothing is worth �40. A show-off and her money are easily parted.