TV View: He doesn't, it has, to be said, look a picture of health, but Alex Higgins's tongue is in fine fettle, we can joyfully report. And that tongue was ready and waiting, deliciously sharpened at the tip, when, inevitably enough, he was tracked down last week and asked to analyse the parallels between himself and George Best.

"Parallels have been drawn between your talents and the fact that you're both flawed heroes, flawed geniuses," said Stephen Nolan, presenter of BBC Northern Ireland's Nolan Live.

An extraordinary programme it is too, incidentally, one that attracts callers who, well - cripes, what can you say?

"It is a sin for women to wear short hair and men to wear long," said one contributor, who phoned in to offer his tuppenceworth on the "same-sex marriages" debate. Despite decommissioning, he came armed with a bible and a voice so strident, shrill and wretched you just couldn't imagine, at any point in his life, a smile crossing his lips.

George, bless him, would therefore have been cast as a sinner right through the 1960s and much of the 1970s, and dollops of the decades beyond. If long hair had made George Best a sinner, we'd have all embraced Satan and he'd never have seemed so appealing.

Meanwhile, in the studio, a unionist opposed to same-sex marriages recoiled upon realising that the man sitting beside him was not only gay . . . he was a member of Sinn Féin.

So that was the dreary, dismal stuff on Nolan Live that preceded the brief chat with Alex, stuff so dreary and dismal you thanked the Lord that Alex and George had the chance to get out of their home place to stretch their wings.

And my, how they flew when they were set free!

Stephen, who's a portly chap, asked Alex about these "flawed" parallels. "Well," said Alex, "there's no such thing as a perfect murder and there's no such thing as a perfect human being who does everything right; we're all flawed. I mean, you ate all the pies."

Ah, sublime. And, in fairness, Stephen chuckled. (Who ate all the Pies?, in case you don't know, is what merciless supporters sing at chubby footballers.)

Alex grinned. A grin that said, "When you're a perfectly flawless human being then you can come and talk to me, but until then hold your whisht."

Stephen bowed. Truly snookered. Although, granted, his few spare pounds are, perhaps, less life-threatening than Alex's weakness, as even Alex would concede.

But still, is he not entitled to say: "Let ye without, well, flaws, cast the first stone?"

Anyway, Alex then talked of George like few have talked of George, because, you guessed, Alex understood the man more than most.

And then he cried, because, damn it, he pined for him. And Nolan had the grace to call a halt to the interview and leave Alex in peace.

"I have the honour of carrying George's coffin today," Derek Dougan told Kay Burley of Sky News, "which is nice, because George always said he carried us." Sweet.

A damp, grey, miserable day, but a fitting send-off for the man. Spare a thought for those who complained that it was all a bit over the top - see letters pages and radio phone-ins: truly they are strident, shrill and wretched. Pity them for not getting it.

"All he did was kick a ball," as one of the nation's sourest put it on the radio the Sunday before last. Grow yer hair, smell the roses - there's a whole world of magic and fun out there.

If you're a Drog, there was nothing wretched about events at Lansdowne Road yesterday, where, inevitably, the team that finished 25 points behind their opponents in the league won out. The Cup, eh?

It wasn't long after Roddy Collins, George Hamilton's co-commentator for the day, told us that Gavin Whelan was a different kind of player from his uncle, Ronnie, that Gavin scored a goal that will be as fondly remembered by Drogheda folk as Ronnie's marginally fabulous effort against the USSR in Germany all those years ago.

No, not quite as spectacular, but give Drogheda folk a month or two and they'll persuade you it was.

"If it ends one-nil that will be the winning goal," George told us. Well, yes.

"They didn't look like that when they left Cork," said George when he spotted three Scooby Doos in the crowd, later conceding that he'd misidentified the trio - they were, in fact, Reservoir Drogs.

Full time? 2-0.

A tasty triumph for Drogheda?

Well, yes.

Tastier, perhaps, than a Royale with Cheese.