All About August: Doing a reality check is not so easy on the parallel universe that is The World cruise ship, where the "residents" are spoken of in hushed tones, writes Mary Morrissey

If your idea of hell is to go on a cruise, don't go near The World. Docked in the deep-water berth at Cobh, Co Cork - a town with a bad precedent in the luxury-liner department - The World is the first resort community at sea, circumnavigating the globe for 352 days of the year.

Here - as Jennifer Aniston would say - is the science bit. The World has 12 decks, weighs 43,000 gross tons, is 644 ft long and can carry 976 people. It has 110 luxury apartments of which 76 to 80 have already been sold at prices ranging from $2.25 million to $7.5 million (and the euro is nearly at parity these days). Maintenance fees start at a cool $92,000 a year. If this is beyond you, you might consider renting a guest suite - at a special discount price of $500 per night per person.

It is the brainchild of Knut U Kloster, Jr, a major player in the Norwegian cruise-liner industry. In 1997, with a number of other prominent Norwegian shipping magnates, the American CNA insurance corporation, and financial services companies in Germany and Bermuda, the concept was born. The World made its maiden voyage in March with its first home-owners aboard.

On Saturday, Ms Lisa Bailey, communications manager with ResidenSea, took a group of hacks on a tour of the inner sanctum of the ship. But not before we signed away our rights to interview or even approach any of the guests - referred to in the upper case as Residents and spoken of in hushed tones. Mr Ronan O'Driscoll came along too. He's a director with CB/Hamilton Osborne King, which has sole rights to flog the onboard apartments to Irish buyers.

"A couple of years ago we had a number of invited guests, around 150, to a function at the Westbury \ where we had the plans for The World," Mr O'Driscoll says. Forty of those who saw the plans then will be viewing the apartments while the ship is in Ireland.

Of course, owning an apartment on board a liner that is constantly on the move has tax implications. Ansbacher jokes are hard to resist. But Mr O'Driscoll insists what they are selling is "simple luxury", not a tax dodge. "If they stay on board, they become non-residents."

Ms Bailey says The World is not peopled by "the mega-rich".

"Many of them are first-generation entrepreneurs. We are not promoting this as an investment - people are buying into the lifestyle."

Current apartment owners are aged between 30 and 80, 40 per cent from the US, 40 per cent from the UK and Europe, and the rest are South American or Asian.

Both Ms Bailey and Mr O'Driscoll remain reticent on the identity of the Residents - who must, it seems, neither be spoken of or to - although on our tour we spied a few - a very few - dining singly in some of the ship's four restaurants. Roast pigeon was a mere $13.50 at "Tides" on the pool deck, while parmesan sage-crushed veal loin will cost you $36 in "Portraits", the most formal of the dining experiences. Such is the discretion with which these not- mega-rich people are treated that Mr O'Driscoll won't even be drawn on the number of Irish people who have bought apartments. "Over one, fewer than 10," he says coyly. Would they be household names, people we would know? He couldn't say.

So, what's it like? Well, it's all very tasteful in an understated, designery sort of way. Think Stena Line meets the Clarence.

Frankly, I found the apartments "compact". Economy of space, so crucial in a ship, has produced ingenious design solutions - the ship is constructed with steel beams that are cladded in wood or disguised as pillars. The kitchens must comply with maritime galley standards and are all cool clean surfaces and come complete with cutlery and crockery.

The apartments, each with a balcony, are designed and furnished in four distinct styles - Traditional Comfort, Classic Contemporary, Continental and Maritime - and basically look like hotel rooms. And you never forget you're on a ship - even at rest, there's that constant thrum.

Here and there, there were touches of real people, and maybe real lives being lived. In "The Study", which houses 3,000 books, videos and an internet café, there was a coffee table where a half-finished, multithousand-piece jigsaw had been abandoned. Rainy days on a seaside holiday came to mind. Obviously, someone who had tired of the casino, the tennis court, the nightclub, the card salon, the teleconference rooms, the dry and wet sauna, the flotation tanks, the beauty spa, the House of Graff diamond boutique. . .

The most popular amenity on our tour was the golf simulator. Golf pro Bobby Walia demonstrated. For the uninitiated this is for all the world like a stage area with a screen backdrop. You whack the ball, it hits the screen and bounces off - but then the trajectory of the ball is tracked electronically on the screen made up to look like a golf course. Not any golf course, of course - you programme the screen for any one of 52 courses from St Andrew's to Valderrama.

The boys loved this. Outside on deck the driving range uses ecoballs that turn into fish food 96 hours after they hit the water. Though the guests on board remain anonymous, everything else is highly personalised. Every room has a name - the children's art studio is called Palette, the non-denominational meditation area is Harmony, the theatre is the Colosseo. Even the lavatories have been artily eroticised - the Gents are identified by Michelangelo's Davids, the Ladies with Botticelli's Venus.

Call it sour grapes, or envy of the meanest kind, but when we reached the end of the tour in which the pursuit of leisure had been fetishised to a high art form, and the lifestyle of the seriously rich had been so thoroughly revered, my response was: "Stop The World, I want to get off".