You would nearly wish the coalition could stay in government for another term or two, so that we might have the pleasure of hearing Michael Noonan insult the cabinet a while longer. Noonan's backside has barely had time to warm the Fine Gael front bench and already he's providing entertainment for bread and circus-deprived voters.

On Tuesday's Morning Ireland (RTé Radio 1), Noonan described justice minister Dermot Ahern as "a nasty little man" for making "personal comments" about him during a discussion on the capital expenditure programme.

The debate went on for some time afterwards, but it was hard to keep concentrating. It was more interesting to think about why the "little" part of that insult was so much more offensive than the "nasty". Funny that.

However, the conversation did turn towards the pro-Dublin bias in infrastructural spending, a subject that may have crossed some listeners' minds again on Liveline the following day.

A succession of people phoned Damien O'Reilly (filling in for Joe Duffy) to complain that city graveyards weren't being maintained. St Finbarr's in Cork was compared to "a jungle savannah" and "like something out of a Vietnamese jungle", and "something needs to be done".

Cutbacks, it seems, mean there are fewer staff. People have been bringing their own clippers to rural graveyards for generations, of course.

It was reported that only the republican plot at St Finbarr's is in good order. Maybe republicans are more fastidious than we suspected, or maybe they don't recognise the state's right to do their dirty work for them.

Fine Gael county councillor Derek Keating phoned to complain about the condition of Esker cemetery in Lucan. "This is a frontline service," he declared. Graveyard maintenance as a "frontline service" is my official nomination for the Dippiest Idea of the Week award.

Bemoaning the cutbacks, Keating added that cemetery maintenance workers were often moved into "other frontline services like bin collection". Bin collection: a frontline service in urban areas, a non-existent service elsewhere.

However, rural Ireland got its share of glorification last weekend too. For From Our Own Correspondent (BBC Radio 4), Trish Flanagan visited Ireland's oldest publican, Tom Frawley in Lahinch, and put together an aimless but very appreciative despatch.

Frawley, aged 90, has been pulling pints for 81 years. He told Flanagan that Guinness is still the most popular drink in his pub but, as she said, "that is no surprise because there is only the one tap on the counter".

While Flanagan, the sole patron, was chatting with him, she reported, a man came in to ask Frawley if he had any cans of cider.

"I have," says Tom.

"Are they cold?" the man asks.

"No," Tom replies.

"Have you ice?" the man asks.

"No," says Tom.

Soon afterwards Frawley closed for lunch. He closes for dinner too between 6pm and 7pm. After this programme, though, he can probably expect to get suddenly busier.

Meanwhile, Ivan Yates (filling in for George Hook on The Right Hook, and being filled in for, in turn, by Conor Brophy on Breakfast – Newstalk gets more like RTé every day) also touched on the urban-rural divide on Monday.

Yates presented an item on the price of a haircut. You might have thought he would find this sort of lightweight thing a bit infra dig, but he sounded perfectly at home with it. (Weirdly, he also sounded almost perfectly like George Hook.)

Yates reported a 'Consumer Choice' survey revealing that people can pay €85 in a top Dublin salon and as little as €35 elsewhere in the country. He invited hairdresser Robert Chambers to discuss this discrepancy.

"I'm bald," Yates stated baldly, but he wanted to know how often women get their hair cut. "Six weeks is the guide," said Chambers, "but it could be five weeks, it could be eight weeks." Good grief. You'd want a second job to pay for that, and yet you wouldn't have time to work, being constantly at the hairdresser's.

"Let's cut to the chase," said Yates. "Is there not a rip-off element to all this, between wrinkle creams and facials and hairdos and dyes, not to speak of conditioner and all the rest of it? You're just trying to resist anno domini. The ageing process is not a bad thing. We're all going to end up as crinkly wrinklies. Just get over it."

See? Is that not George Hook in all but name? Later Yates read out all the texts saying what eejits women are – "Hair is dead cells. Birds need to get over themselves," said one, sounding almost cryptic – and enjoyed himself no end.

etynan@tribune.ie