Pat Rabbitte wielding his copy of Pliny the Elder; Trevor Sargent like that character in The Simpsons, worrying about "The Children";

Michael McDowell with a moustache and pipe, planning purges; Bertie Ahern in a huff as usual about people's impertinence and referring to himself in the third person on The Last Word (which would be funny if it weren't so sinister).

Pat Rabbitte was taken to task on Thursday's Today with Pat Kenny for comparing Michael McDowell to "a menopausal Paris Hilton" on the previous evening's debate. Someone texted in complaining that the adjective "menopausal" triggers images in people's minds of someone who is "female, sick, old, useless, unable to work, secondclassf" (Does it really? Can there be people whose minds work that way, and if so, do they have a vote? ) Anyway Rabbitte was not in a mood to entertain it. "De gustibus non est disputandum, " he said. This was followed by a long silence before Pat Kenny asked him to translate . . . "there's no accounting for taste" . . . though in fairness, the pause probably had less to do with incomprehension than with astonishment that anyone would break into Latin on tabloid radio.

Kenny persisted, wanting to know if the Labour leader was not worried about offending people. He's not. "If people don't have a sense of humour it's not my problem, " he said irritably, a brave-sounding declaration that won't actually cost him any votes:

after all, no-one believes themselves to have an inferior sense of humour, not even those who bore us day after day with their shrill determination to feel slighted.

Meanwhile, The Ray Darcy Show is now the eighthmost listened-to programme on radio, according to the latest JNLR figures. This could be because, like Gerry Ryan on 2FM, Darcy's show covers everything from fart pants to affordable housing, or it could be because, unlike Ryan, Darcy is bearable.

Darcy's show is an unlikely venue for political interviews, but he keeps doing them and just will not be put off. His strength is that his amiability and apparent cluelessness have a way of disarming politicians. His weakness is that he never shuts up.

On Thursday he had a big laugh-in with Trevor Sargent. They found much to agree on, and we found out a certain amount, even if it was mostly about whether or not Sargent feels self-conscious about the contents of his shopping trolley.

On Tuesday's programme, Michael McDowell tried to be hard-hitting but he might as well have been punching a busy lizzy. McDowell said that noone could remember a single thing Enda Kenny had achieved in cabinet.

"He brought the Tour de France to Ireland, " offered Darcy. "No, I think that was Charlie Haughey, " said McDowell. (Charlie Haughey? In 1998? ) But "Oh was it? Right, " said Darcy, unwilling to depend on his research.

He put it to McDowell that the campaign had begun disastrously for the PDs, what with threatening to pull out of government and then not doing it. "I never said I was going to pull out of government. Some journalists said that, " said McDowell balefully. "Yes but it is about perception.

Politics is all about perception isn't it, " said Darcy, all excited at his insight. He burbled on, but beneath his chatter, McDowell could be heard saying, "I don't control the media yet." Yet! He said yet!