A full-colour picture of a totally nude female dancer being ogled by a crowd of local men graced the front page of the Nationalist and Leinster Times.
There was a time when such events - both the striptease and the depiction of it in a local newspaper - would have had Gay Byrne's listeners wound into a frenzy of switchboard blocking. These days, you have to wonder if there's anyone left who cares about such indecencies as the "female equivalent of The Full Monty" which was performed at the Vikings MC Ireland Motorcycle Show at Garryhill on August 1st and 2nd. Two strippers, a "schoolgirl" and a "nurse", flew over from England for the event and earned £500 each per night. They "gave full value for money", according to the report.
The only eyebrows likely to be raised are those of the Carlow women who pick up the Nationalist and Leinster Times and recognise their husbands and boyfriends amongst the slack-jawed throng. You can almost hear Uncle Gaybo saying "and there's one for everybody in the audience". "In more ways than one [Gay Byrne] has been a true servant of the people," said the Kerryman. "He took on the sacred cows and held up to public ridicule the undiluted hypocrisy which ruled unchallenged in the 1960s and 1970s. He shocked a nation by his audacious performances - but in the process helped us all to grow up."
The Connacht Tribune speculated as to who would fill the void created by the man who "invented talk radio in the Irish context".
"His method of radio has been replaced in many instances by those who are increasingly `gross'. One has only to think of the extraordinary grossness of some of the output of the likes of Gerry Ryan, or `The Navan Man'. And we must wonder in the wake of Gay Byrne how much further the `dumbing down' of radio and television can go?"
While the rest of the world wonders if Bill Clinton will confess to a sexual dalliance of the Monica variety, in Ballybunion the hot topic is who will be in the golfing party? Dick Spring received his invitation, but from a protocol point of view a member of the Cabinet should be in the playing party. Short-listed are Charlie McCreevy, an "accomplished golfer", Ballybunion Golf Club captain Brian McCarthy and golf professionals Tom Watson and Christy O'Connor jnr.
If you play with the US President, do you let him win? The media will be allowed only to witness the first hole and after that - we'll have to rely on golf club gossip. The US President, by the way, keeps a cherished Ballybunion Gold Club Hat in the Oval Office. If only the hat could talk.
The arrival of Romanian refugees prompted negative - if carefully worded - editorials in the Mayo News and the Sligo Champion, both sceptical about the refugees' status as genuine asylum seekers. The Mayo News piece, entitled "Stemming the Tide" - as if there was a "tide" in the first place - said that "we must acknowledge that the word among refugee-seekers is that Ireland is not only a more welcoming place, but is also considerably more generous to its dependent visitors than are most other European countries".
The Sligo Champion said the arrival of refugees was the "downside" of Ireland's new status as a prosperous country. Tales of Romanian refugees "living it up" here heightened antagonism, although they were most likely to be "urban myths".
The Tipperary Star warned tourists not to wear red if they plan to visit one of Tipperary's beauty spots - Devil's Bit outside Templemore. One visitor to the area who made the climb with his two young sons was enraged when he encountered a sign which said `beware of the bull'. "You have all these tourist signs pointing to the Devil's Bit and when you get there to make the climb there's this sign warning you about the bull. I think it's stupid," said James Perkins of Thurles.