The grand old game of ducks and drakes. Anyone out there ever played it? You stand at the edge of a body of water and flick stones (preferably flat) across the surface, and see how many times the stones will hop before sinking to the bottom.
The bodies and bottoms that caused Judge Kevin Haugh to state this week that publisher and businessman Mike Hogan had been attempting "to play ducks and drakes" with the Censorship of Publications Board were of a rather different kind.
Hogan was fined £50,000 after he pleaded guilty to publishing ads in his magazine, In Dublin, which promoted brothels and prostitution.
He had bought the magazine for £6,500 in 1992, and the ads had been running for some years, latterly alongside ads for sex chat-lines.
In 1996, Hogan was asked by this newspaper why he carried the chat-line ads. "I don't hold myself out as being the moral guardian of the nation," he replied.
Although he said he couldn't put a figure on how much the ads it carried were worth to the magazine, he did remark, "It's a revenue stream, it's as simple as that."
Stream? In retrospect, "torrent" would have been a better bon mot. Hogan was making some £400,000 a year from the brothel ads which his magazine carried, over whose contents his staff had no editorial control.
The majority of this money was allegedly paid in undeclared cash. In 1995, the Sunday Business Post, in a profile of Hogan, observed that his business philosophy was to "spend less, make more, and don't mix cashflow up with profit."
Mike Hogan (40) has had a long and varied career. As a snip of a lad of 13, in his hometown of Athy, he started running discos for the local tennis club. At 17, with the help of his friend Paddy Carroll, he opened a record shop in Carlow.
The shop was called the Rainbow, but Hogan didn't stay around long enough to start looking for the crock of gold at the end of it. After a year, he went to RTE and worked as a lighting technician. That proved even less illuminating than the Rainbow; he left after six months.
His interests in music and broadcasting fused with sales jobs first at the pirate stations, Sunshine Radio, and then Radio Nova. By 24, he was general manager of Radio Nova. One of his tasks there was reporting on early-morning traffic from a helicopter: the original Eye in the Sky.
It was at this point he became buddies with Ireland's most famous helicopter man, Ciaran Haughey, and subsequently became friends with other members of the Haughey family. Hogan is well-known as a Fianna Fail supporter.
The early 1980s were years when Charles Haughey was enjoying powerful public office, and striding around Dublin wearing Parisian shirts which the public would only discover the name and price of - and much else beside - a long decade later.
NEXT on the waveband for Hogan was Q102, and then, in 1989, Capital Radio. Capital - now FM104 - was given one of the Independent Radio and Television Commission's two commercial radio licences for Dublin. Hogan had built up a large teenage listenership from his pirate station days, but they were not then considered an affluent audience, and the advertisers were unhappy.
You could say it was Hogan's Pie in the Sky period. He quit as chief executive three years later.
It was at that time Hogan switched his attention from broadcasting to magazine publishing, going on to collect titles in numbers that would make the Irish Olympic Council envious. Among them have been creatures as diverse as the animals in Noah's Ark.
Stabled together have been sharp-taloned beast, Magill, alongside the prancing unicorn of Boyzone, the band's official magazine; and hairy mammoth High Ball, the GAA monthly, eyeballing the lapdog pom-pommed poodle of In Dublin.
Meanwhile, at the age of 36, Hogan married former model Mari O'Leary. Charles Haughey turned up in Dingle for his stag party: that lively ritual where married men traditionally give insights to their about-to-be-married pals of the post-nuptial joys that lie ahead.
Hogan and O'Leary have three children together. It was reported that he nearly didn't usher Magill into his publishing ark because he left negotiations with Vincent Browne at a crucial point to go home and play with his children. John Ryan, now publisher of VIP and TV Now!, has known Hogan since Hogan appointed him editor of In Dublin some four years ago. "I would regard him as a good friend," he says, "and an exceptionally decent, kind, and thoughtful person. What you see is more or less what you get. I don't think he has many enemies - I don't think anyone who's worked for him would have a bad word to say about him."
In August 1999, when Hogan circumvented the ban on the entertainment listings in In Dublin by publishing a magazine identical in every way except for its name, Dublin, it was known at the time that he did so without first informing his staff there. They had not been told either of the pending case about the listings, and morale was extremely low as a result.
And it would appear, contrary to what John Ryan might think, that Mike Hogan has at least one individual out there who could not be considered a fan. This would be the unnamed citizen who made a private complaint about the "health studio" ads, which was to lead towards the ban.
It has been pointed out that In Dublin was not the only national publication running these ads, and there has been some speculation about why the case was taken only against it.
The fact is that it was Hogan - who has no previous convictions - who pleaded guilty this week to 10 sample charges of publishing ads for prostitution which implied that the advertised premises were being used as brothels.
IF YOU happen to pick up the current issue of In Dublin, you will notice it is running seven pages of adult chat-line ads. These are not illegal to advertise, but they are certainly pricey. Earlier in the week, this reporter called In Dublin, and asked to be put through to the advertising department, where an inquiry was made as to the cost of placing a chat-line ad.
There can be up to 16 chat-line ads on one page, with four making a quarter page. The quote given for a single ad was £195, and £395 for a quarter page. These are the same rates which were charged for the "health studio" ads. Based on those figures, the revenue from this month's chat-line ads is some £22,120. Annually, that adds up to £287,000 - not far off the £400,000 a year the banned ads were making for Mike Hogan.
In 1995, he was reported as not being able to put a figure on what income he was receiving from chat-line ads. Perhaps he just needed a calculator.
