The politics of poison

TVReview: 'A treadmill to death, a never-ending funeral" was how Bernadette McAliskey described the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze prison, outside Belfast, which led to the deaths of 10 republican prisoners.

Hidden History: Hunger Strike, a two-part documentary to mark the 25th anniversary of the strike, began with an examination of the particularly poisonous political climate leading up to the strike and the freshly elected Margaret Thatcher's decision to deny H-Block prisoners political status ("A crime is a crime is a crime," she said in one of her doggedly unimaginative but effective soundbites).

Thatcher knew as little about nationalism as she did about unionism, the programme claimed, and it was left to an earnest but rather daunted-looking Garret FitzGerald to fill in her dots. His tuition, one suspects, fell on iron ears. And with the murder of Lord Mountbatten and 16 British soldiers on a single day in August 1979 confirming Thatcher's legendary implacability, republican demands could whistle in the wind.

Among the programme's contributors was Mgr Denis Faul, whose equanimity, in the midst of buoyant, chatty ex-prisoners and a worryingly indifferent Bernard Ingham (Thatcher's notoriously bellicose former press secretary), was welcome. He described a conversation he had had with hunger strike leader Bobby Sands, who became the first to die despite winning the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election and becoming an MP during the early days of his refusal of food. Mgr Faul described Sands's "prison vision", a singularity of purpose that republican prisoners shared, having endured the blanket protest and dirty protest for five years, a vision that was as unshakable as that of their nemesis in 10 Downing Street.

"There is no greater sacrifice than for a man to lay down his life for his friend," the 27-year-old Sands told Mgr Faul when the latter expressed concern about the suffering and repercussions the strike would cause.

While the programme was at pains to point out the not inconsiderable level of ambivalence that existed south of the Border towards the hunger strikers, the unease of moderate nationalists and the disgust of unionists (former UUP leader David Trimble described the dirty protest as "bestial"), there was a sense of the documentary having a sympathetic ear for the idealism of the strikers. In part two next Tuesday, as the strike leads inexorably to tragedy, the balance may shift.

THATCHER'S IMPLACABILITY WASN'T just evident in Ireland. In 1986, four years after she had sent the royal navy scuttling off to defend the Falklands (that strategic mid-ocean rock), one of the most politically charged matches in World Cup history saw England beaten by "the hand of God", albeit firmly attached to the arm of an Argentinian maestro called Diego Maradona. When Lineker Met Maradona saw the very pleasant Lineker (teeth, bonhomie and greying temples) travel to Buenos Aires in search of the much-loved and much-reduced Maradona.

Lineker's first meeting with the legendary Argentine was when he scored England's only goal in that 1986 quarter-final (though not until after Maradona had conjured a staggeringly well-executed second for Argentina, this time with his feet). When Lineker eventually caught up with the diminutive Argentinian (he was round his mum's place, lolling by the pool) they discussed the contentious goal that is still lodged in the psyche of England fans like a misplaced stud.

"Was it a handball?" asked Lineker, his pretty smile wavering. "Was it . . . cheating?"

"Cunning, cheeky, crafty - but not cheating," replied Maradona, admitting that yes, it was a handball.

"I looked behind me to see if the ref took the bait," he said of his carefully choreographed celebration, "and he did."

Lineker, momentarily stunned by Maradona's sunny insouciance, said he blamed the ref and the linesman.

Maradona lives like a tiny deity surrounded and supported by a family and a nation that revere him. He has apparently kicked his cocaine and pizza habits, has had his stomach stapled, has lost 54kg and looks as taut as he was in his prime. He has his own TV show where he's a kind of sporty singing and dancing Parkinson, doing the rumba with big girls in feather boas or reaching up to kiss the chest of a benign and hirsute Fidel Castro.

Lineker, looking very much the Englishman abroad, travelled with a bejewelled and manically excited Maradona to watch a Boca Juniors match, where they shared a kind of royal box with an entourage of family and friends. Maradona's love of the beautiful game hasn't waned, and he spoke enthusiastically about the forthcoming World Cup.

"Rooney!" he expostulated. "I like him - he's strong, he's tough, he sticks his bum out!" I can just hear the chants - pity the poor chap's derrière probably won't be there. Isn't it?

'WHY DON'T YOU invest in a property in Croatia and just keep living at home?" Tiger cub one asked Tiger cub two as they sipped their Tiger juice in their chrome-plated den. But Tiger cub two didn't want to invest in Croatia because, apparently, "Croatia has no sand". Ummm.

Sisters Róisín and Ciara Whelan were the first candidates in the new series I'm an Adult, Get Me Out of Here, in which presenter John Maguire helps adult children to find a pad and (in the case of Ciara and Róisín) get out from under Mummy's well-shod feet. Ostensibly a programme about the property market, I'm an Adult actually seems more like a wildlife programme, an anthropological entertainment focusing on the rituals of the young, free and single, an examination of the lesser spotted but often overheard (while yabbering into their mobiles) pampered offspring of the movers and shakers.

"Today, all day, I didn't know where I was," said one of the sisters brightly, after Maguire had brought them west of Dún Laoghaire to view houses.

Back in the sanctuary of their southside Dublin home with Mummy and the Aga, the girls, after much tossing of locks, decided they didn't want to live in a place where the residents found it necessary to board up their windows, so they telephoned Dad in Hong Kong to get a deposit. Then, with Mum as guarantor, they purchased a pretty apartment next to the gym and the Luas and breathed a fragrant sigh of relief.

It was unmissable entertainment: someone should stick a camera in these girls' new home; they're more fun than Jordan and whatshisname.

SEVENTY-FOUR MINUTES AND 11 seconds, I kid you not. That is the time it took the two dullest snooker players in the history of the game, Peter Ebdon and Graham Dott, to complete the first frame of the final session in the World Snooker Championship.

Seventy-four minutes and 11 seconds. The audience, frozen into terrified submission by the day's previous elongated session, sat in a gloom of palpable despair as shot after shot got lost in the maze of the baize.

Seventy-four minutes and 11 seconds. Wives' expensively back-combed heads lolled against uncomfortably suited husbands; silent tears were shed for lost lives as the purgatory of the last night at the Crucible turned into an eternity of misses.

"He over-screwed that by 18 inches," said an indignant John Virgo as Dott's fragile, tortoise-like head retreated back into its shell and Ebdon, with alarming over-confidence, sent a couple more reds spinning around the table like fat drunks at a cocktail party.

Seventy-four minutes and 11 seconds. At one stage my cat sat up and stared gobsmacked at the television: either she thought the snooker balls were shiny mice, or she was just staggered to see Dott in the final.

"Ohhh . . . that's a pity," moaned Virgo as another easy black clung to the jaws of the corner pocket. Seventy-four minutes and 11 seconds. A half-cut cartoonist could clear the table in half the time: I should know, I spent great chunks of my childhood marking up snooker scores for my late father (once he nearly won a turkey, but I think that was because they couldn't get his opponent out from under the table).

Seventy-four minutes and 11 seconds.

"What are they playing here?" beseeched Virgo.

"I'm not the same player wearing a black waistcoat," said Ebdon before the "action" started, explaining his choice of a royal-blue one (well, thank God for that).

"Rocket" Ronnie O'Sullivan, who was knocked out in the semi-finals, was meanwhile probably touching down in Barbados with a cluster of air hostesses, 147 bottles of pink champagne and every chance of a maximum break.

Seventy-four minutes, 11 seconds and counting . . .