MONDAY

"It's a growth I intend to defeat or it will defeat me," Brian Lenihan states the simple truth in his public statement confirming his diagnosis of a cancerous tumour at the opening of his pancreas.

Upbeat, witty and calm, the finance minister wins praise from family, friends, opposition politicians and the public for the way he is dealing with such tough news. It's also a relief to the country (and to the least moral and most vicious of them all, "the markets") that one of the very few ministers in this government with any credibility or ability is staying on in the job.

Making a bit of a song and a dance of it on his wedding day is South African president Jacob Zuma. The 67-year-old president marries a third wife, Tobeka Madiba. The happy groom is unrepentant. "There are plenty of politicians who have mistresses and children that they hide so as to pretend they are monogamous," he said. "I prefer to be open. I love my wives and I am proud of my children." This is his fifth marriage – he is divorced once and another wife committed suicide – and he's also engaged. A busy romantic life, but well short of the record set by actor Warren Beatty, estimated today to have had 12,775 lovers.

TUESDAY

A Slovakian electrician returning to his Dorset Street flat in Dublin is dumbfounded as gardaí break down his door and raid his home for 90 grammes of plastic explosives hidden in his suitcase. Slovakian border officials have taken a leaf from the Austin Powers school of covert ops and tucked highly volatile plastic explosives into his bag, without his knowledge, to "test" the vigilance of security in Poprad-Tatry airport. The Slovakian international men of mystery allow the explosives to be taken on board the Danube Wings flight, telling baggage handlers to pop it back to them on the next return flight, and do not alert gardaí here until four days later when they realise their bomb has gone missing. The Slovakian ambassador says " sorry" to the Irish people, but for what? Tucking explosives into an innocent man's suitcase without his knowledge? Risking the lives of passengers on the plane? Failing to tell the gardaí immediately about their crazy caper? Lying about the precise danger and quantity of the explosives? Ominously, snow starts falling in the east of the country, and in DUBLIN! Maybe now somebody will listen to people in Sligo, Mayo, Donegal and the midlands, where they have been eating freezer food for over two weeks.

WEDNESDAY

Painful, embarrassing to watch, and humiliating for himself, his wife and his family: the North's first minister, DUP leader Peter Robinson, calls in three television cameras and the Press Association to announce that his wife Iris had an affair and tried to commit suicide last March and that he's now trying to rebuild his marriage following what he refers to at least three times as her " inappropriate" relationship. Iris issues a statement admitting the affair, but intriguingly also refers to financial arrangements she encouraged friends and family to invest in.

The interview is extraordinary by any standards of public confessional, but why now? Why is Peter Robinson, a man with political ice in his veins, now showing his softer side? The BBC's 'Spotlight' is investigating the couple, nicknamed the Swish Family Robinson after revelations about their joint salaries and Westminster expenses, and has asked a series of questions about financial matters.

Upset as Robinson looks, the interview has damage limitation written all over it – not for a couple's marriage, but for a political partnership at the head of Northern Ireland's politics, and perhaps even for the peace process.

Ireland finally turns into Ice-land. Now that the capital has slid to a halt and the centre of economic and political activity is threatened, the clamour increases about why the government's handling of the big freeze is snow joke.

THURSDAY

Grit, grit everywhere but not a shovelful for the roads. Bus drivers, postal workers, hospital workers, shops, businesses and their staff show true grit as they battle to work, but there's nary a tonne of rock salt to be found. But fear not: the cabinet meets, its members chauffeur-driven into Government Buildings across the lethal footpaths outside. Emergency measures are declared and environment minister John Gormley is put in charge because the Maltese falcon, transport minister Noel Dempsey, has flown to his island in the sun. Gormley says other countries are struggling to cope too (omitting the fact that at least 10 times more snow has fallen in Britain) and repeats that it's up to the National Roads Authority to find the salt that is now running out. Quarries offer grit for free but nobody knows who to give it to. Here's to you Mrs Robinson: Iris's "inappropriate" affair was with a 19-year-old, Kirk McCambley, but 'Spotlight' follows the money, not the romance, and the story is of donations from builder friends and an alleged failure to declare "inappropriate" financial affairs.

FRIDAY

What did he know and when did he know it? Sinn Féin, SDLP and Alliance Party leaders look for answers from Peter Robinson as he fights for his political life. He says any implication he was involved in his wife's financial affairs is "insinuation and innuendo". There's a snowball's chance in hell that Iris can have any career in public life, but personal sympathies divide on gender lines. Men wonder how much odium would be heaped on a man who, at almost 60, had a sexual affair with the 19-year-old daughter of an old friend whose dying wish was for him to look after his child. Women can't understand how Peter Robinson was able to stand up in Stormont last March and laugh and joke just hours after his wife attempted suicide – and yet could barely contain his emotions 10 months later in the glare of the 'Spotlight' programme.

You cannot be serious

"I... would happily have stayed there for any fee they cared to offer, but there were other considerations."

Jonathan Ross says farewell to the BBC, which is clearly glad to let him go after declining to renegotiate his £6m-a-year contract following the Sachsgate phone messages scandal