SRH might be well off its end-September low of £5.55 sterling, but at £8.65 as this column was being written the shares are worth almost half what they were a year ago. The Irish radio and newspaper operations might be some of SRH's few shining stars, but too much uncertainty surrounds SRH's immediate prospects for investors to look at the shares. Avoid!

Scottish Radio Holdings (SRH) has made a number of Irish household names seriously rich - and a number of already rich people even richer.

In the first category is the likes of former Kilkenny People publisher John Kerry Keane, who pocketed more than €35 million (£27.5 million) a few years ago when he sold his newspaper chain to SRH.

Those already seriously rich who have become even richer as a result of SRH's acquisition of Today FM are Riverdance duo John McColgan and Moya Doherty and the two Desmonds - Dermot and Denis - who shared €40 million (£31.5 million) when the Scots bought their combined 76 per cent stake in the national radio station.

And they all have one thing in common - they took hard cash from SRH when they sold out, and weren't they the wise ones!

Media stocks in Britain have had a dismal few years and things have got worse in the past three months, with advertising revenues well down on a year ago. Only this week, SRH chairman Lord Gordon of Strathblane warned that SRH is still not able to call the bottom of this advertising slump - and that knocked 20p off the share price.