This newspaper publishes on just four days between Christmas and New Year's Day. Over this period the rest of you are continuing the relentless assault on your livers that makes the Soviet conquest of Berlin seem like Mothers' Egg and Spoon Race in the Tiny Tots Montessori. But in the news business, this quatrain of days stretches like an archaeological epoch, an Ice Age in which glaciers move immeasurably across an otherwise event-free landscape.
Out there in Egg and Spoon land, where your day begins with a gin and Solpadeine tonic, you think that commissioning a poll is something to do with appointing a young subaltern to the defence forces in Warsaw. Not for us journalists. Commissioning a poll is one of the most basic ways of concealing our news nudity. It really doesn't matter what questions you ask in this poll - how long you like your grass cut, or whether you think the Catholic Church should appoint seals as nuns, or whether you think Ireland should annexe Peru - any journalist worth half his salt can turn the result into a front-page story.
Nuclear Newgrange
This means that on one day at least this week, we can carry gripping headlines declaring that 65 per cent of Irish people think that a nuclear power station should not be run by chimpanzees, or that if that power station were to be built anyway, 78 per cent of Irish people would be against installing it at Newgrange, but if it were to be built there, 86 per cent would not want to live downwind of it, but if they did, 89 per cent would prefer to grow fins rather than antlers as a result of radioactive contamination. However, when asked if this preference for fins indicated a preference for global warming, with the resultant higher seas, a large majority of respondents indicated that they would in fact prefer to live in conditions in which antlers would be of more use.
When asked if in their view it would be better if the chimpanzees running the power station grew antlers or fins as a result of the radioactivity their incompetence had released into the atmosphere, a surprisingly large minority - 45 per cent - said they didn't know, or had no view on the matter. However, a majority of those polled thought it would be better for chimpanzees to have antlers.
However, when it was pointed out that the chimpanzees' ability to swing around in trees would be seriously compromised on their return to Africa after the power station had finally been closed down, 66 per cent of respondents agreed a fin-antler compromise would be more suitable. But when it was further pointed out that growing fins is a poor preparation for life in the trees, 68 per cent opted for the fresh option of a retirement home in Ireland for the chimpanzees.
Adult education
There was therefore the matter of where to build the retirement home. Should it be near the chimpanzees' old workplace of Chernogrange, thereby enabling them to visit their old chums, and attend adult education classes by the light of the archaeological ruins, now permanently aglow with the warmth within of Strontium 90? Fifty-five per cent of people thought it should. Twenty-five per cent thought the chimpanzees should be given retirement homes of their choice. Twenty per cent thought the chimpanzees should be eaten.
This group divided sharply on the issue of whether restaurant menus should describe the resultant dish as fish, because of the fins, or venison, because of the antlers. A majority - 55 per cent - opted for the fish option. This proved to be because a large number of people are "vegetarians" who do eat fish, and who declared that if the meat were called venison they could not eat it.
A majority of those polled said the location of a restaurant certainly made a difference as to the choice of what they ate. In Dingle, they would order lobster, in Galway oysters, in Westmeath beef; in Belmullet they would order bog, but in Slane they would order chimpanfish or chimpandeer, according to whether they were vegetarian or not. Of those who preferred the chimpanfish option, most said they went to Mass or Divine Service more than 10 times a year. The chimpandeer group proved to be more religious: 65 per cent went to church 40 times a year.
The chimpanfish group were also more sexually active, having had their first orgasm, usually alone, at a median age of 15, as opposed to the chimpandeer median age of 161/2. There was no real division between the sexes in this category. However, both chimpandeer and chimpanfish women reported a greater interest in particle physics than the men of either category. This was counterbalanced by males of both groups expressing a strong preference for mud-wrestling.
Antlers or fins?
When asked whether they liked their wrestlers to have antlers or fins, 33 per cent said antlers, 33 per cent said fins, and 33 per cent said they didn't know, the last group being equally divided between chimpanfish and chimpan deer males. Ninety per cent of both categories expressed the view that mud-wrestlers should be nude. There was a strong pattern of Mass-going among those who insisted on naked female mud-wrestlers. When asked whether the Catholic church should increase the popularity of the Mass by incorporating some mud-wrestling in it, 65 per cent strongly agreed. However, 30 per cent said that, though the wrestlers could serve Mass, they couldn't say Mass, because they were strongly opposed to women priests.
Tomorrow's Diary reveals - exclusively - a riveting opinion poll on nuclear power, mud-wrestlers, and the Tridentine rite.