TV View: Mon Dieu. Or, as Del Boy used to put it, Mange Tout. We can only hope there aren't any entrepreneurs out there with 10,000 "Ireland - 2005 Grand Slam Winners" T-shirts printed. A solution might be to add "(if we'd beaten France)" to the inscription, in tiny writing, but it would hardly save the day. A bit like those "50 Not Out" T-shirts at Arsenal, they'll remain unsold, writes Mary Hannigan.

For Keith Wood, Saturday was a whole new experience. For so long now he's been the one doing the comforting on the BBC panel, patting a despondent Jonathan Davies on the head after Six Nations games and telling him that everything would be alright, that Wales's day would come again. This time it was Davies who was saying "there, there", as Wood slumped so low in his chair he was barely visible.

Over on RTÉ, George Hook tried not to say "I told you so", but he kind of told us so. He'd warned us before the game that "in boxing terms, we float like a butterfly and sting like a bee". By half-time Ireland, he intimated, were floating with all the grace of an obese bumble bee and stinging with all the venom of a Red Admiral with no enemies.

"The key differential all afternoon in the match was Gordon D'Arcy, who wasn't there," he said, which was kind of like the fella coming out of the pub and saying "there was me bike up against the wall gone."

"It was like Hamlet without the prince," said George.

And, funnily enough, the gist of Eddie O'Sullivan's message to Tracy Piggott after the game was: "All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." In other words, adieu to the Grand Slam.

And the day had started so hopefully. Tom McGurk had told us the French were "vexed and troubled" and they'd only arrived in Dublin "late last night". And Brent Pope had addressed the nation with a bubbly message of hope and confidence.

"Ireland have the better team on paper, they're more experienced, they're at home, they hold all the aces," he said. "What have France done this year? Nothing really. Ireland are on top of their game, good team spirit, well coached - of course they can do it."

"I love it, Pope," said Tom, "but His Eminence is troubled." "I'm fearful rather than troubled," said Cardinal Hook. "We've had three scabby performances."

All this negativity was getting Brent down. "Why do we insist on saying 'this is the trouble with Ireland'?" he sighed, pining for an outbreak of positive- accentuating on the panel.

"The psychiatrist calls this the Yin and the Yang," said Tom, buoyed by Kiwi Yin's optimism.

The build-up. Bertie Ahern bellowing Ireland's Call, while waiting for a text from Kildare.

Full-time. The "noooooooooo" you heard wasn't a response to that Christophe Dominici try in the 78th minute, it was a reaction to the text when it arrived. By full time there were as many Fianna Fáil TDs in Kildare as there were "Ireland - 2005 Grand Slam Winners" T-shirts sold outside the ground. Divil a one.

An unhappy day at Lansdowne then, the scene of a fair old helping of pleasant days for Jack Charlton. And damn sprightly he looked too when he turned up on Tubridy Tonight. The only thing troubling Jack this weather is that his two sons ("46 and about 37") have decided to get married. "They're trying to sort out who's going to pay," he said. "It's normally the lady's parents who pays," he said to Ryan, in a kind of trembling, questioning, looking-for-reassurance way.

"I can't believe it, it seemed to have passed them, but Deirdre wants to get married and Peter's girlfriend wants to get married, so they both got engaged," he said.

It struck us: Jack couldn't remember Peter's fiancee's name. And when asked what he thought of the Irish team, he praised Damien Duff and Robbie Keane, but admitted he couldn't really remember the names of any of the others.

Now, Jack's been ridiculed far too much over the years for forgetting and muddling names, so we're not going to join in on the ribbing. Except to say if he were still manager he'd be naming Clifton Morrissey, Matty Belgium and Shane Gibbon in his squad. All we hope is that by the time he gives his speech at Peter's wedding he'll have memorised his son's bride's name. And no, Jack, it's not Deirdre. It's the other one.