MONDAY

A postmortem is carried out on the body of Stephen Gately, who died so tragically on Saturday. The sudden death of the shy singer not only leaves his husband, family and fellow Boyzone members numb, but prompts a wider debate about his impact on gay rights. He was the first openly gay boyband star and his courage in defying the music industry's unfounded fears of a commercial backlash was one of those personal acts of courage that transforms public opinion. Coming out in any walk of life was made that bit less overwhelming for other young men after Gately admitted his own sexuality and married his partner Andrew Cowles... Michael O'Leary goes bonkers over Bananorama, or as the BBC calls their flagship current affairs programme, Panorama. Good job too. He offers 100,000 "free" flights for every gaffe made on the programme about Ryanair. Gaffe number 11, according to Ryanair's website, is that O'Leary is a bully. "This is clearly false," says Ryanair, "when the whole world knows that O'Leary is a kind and gentle, caring and thoughtful, sensitive and saintly human being widely beloved by all Ryanair's 6,500 staff and its 66 million passengers."

TUESDAY

You would be forgiven for thinking it was that old recording of WB Yeats droning the Lake Isle of Innisfree, the tone was so elegiac. But the John O'Donoghue version of "I will arise and go now" is all Bull, a 30-minute, 19-second ode to victimhood, delivered with a majesterial sonority that moves Beverley Flynn to a spontaneous standing ovation. The use of repetitive refrains, archaic phrasing, lashings of alliteration and a mind-blowingly high-flown sense of injustice ("I will not allow my life in public service to be stained by the triumph of the half truth") recalls English lessons of yesteryear.

Stephen Gately's inquest finds he died of natural causes, bringing a welcome end to the more salacious half-truths surrounding his death.

WEDNESDAY

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life te-dee, te-dum. Brian (Lenihan) estimates that Nama will make a profit of €5.5bn by the time it is wound up in 2020. It is all, of course, contingent on a Triple IF rating for the toxic bank – that's IF the default rate is as low as 20%; IF property prices go up 10% over 10 years; and IF average interest rates charged to developers remain at 2% over the wholesale Euribor interest rate (currently around 0.75%) to ensure Nama margins are high enough.

There's a bonus, too... Prof Brendan Drumm's €70,000 little bit extra for 2007 – the Year of Cancer Misdiagnosis – has nothing to do with the Minister for Health Mary Harney. "I have no responsibility here." Nice work if you can get it. It seems all she has to do is cut €1.2bn from the next year's health budget and then sit back and watch as the HSE struggles incompetently to find ways of doing it, including cutting 1,000 jobs.

THURSDAY

Nama question of the day: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Collective gasps of disbelief from the opposition at Brian Lenihan's Nama profit prophecy. It's a whopper, rages Richard Bruton. "The tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and the Loch Ness monster are all more credible propositions than the financial projections for Nama." ... More important than Nama is the fate of a six-year-old boy feared trapped in a home-made hot air balloon. The flying saucer balloon is televised live, flip-flopping at 40 mph through the sky, 2,000 feet over the Colorado landscape. Hundreds of millions collectively pray for a safe landing as helicopters chase the experimental inflatable that little Falcon Heene is thought to have climbed into as police, army and the air force devise a strategy to get him out alive. Miraculously, the balloon lands safely. Is the little fellow inside? Is he alive? Four hours later he is found in the attic of the family garage with big questions being asked about whether this was all an elaborate family hoax... 2014. €750m - these numbers are the opening date and cost of the new children's hospital. Remember them.

FRIDAY

After Nama, it's the Budget and it's one for all and all for one as no fewer than four cabinet ministers argue for massive public-sector pay cuts. The four musketeers are drawn from every corner of the cabinet. Athos Brian Cowen, Porthos Brian Lenihan, Aramis Mary Harney and d'Artagnon John Gormley – aka the united front for the liberation of €4bn from government spending – argue we are on the brink of economic catastrophe, but in a slight detour on the road to ruin, they do acknowledge that very highly paid ministers, TDs and senior civil servants will feel the blunt end of the axe... 76 -09 - these are Stephen Gately's birth and death dates which have been tattooed on the bodies of his four Boyzone bandmates, a personal tribute to the friend whose body they accompany home.

You cannot be serious

"It won't be very long before we have to start thinking of the Arctic as an open sea. Man has taken the lid off the northern end of his planet and we can't put that lid back on again"

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics and head of the polar physics group predicts the Arctic Ocean will be an ice-free open sea by 2030