Gay Byrne was known for his kitchen-sink eroticism and blue rinse sex appeal. He could talk humbug for an hour, but when he soared he had an incalculable ruthlessness and a natural curiosity. It was called making good television.

When he saw an avenue in which he believed his audience would be interested, he strolled down, and invariably it took him the extra mile. Some of Byrne's most memorable interviews were when he bushwhacked guests. Annie Murphy and Gerry Adams spring to mind. The more the guest didn't want it to be known, the better television it made.

Pat Kenny doesn't have Byrne's antifreeze in his veins. He's personable for the sake of being liked, and he is perceived as a reasonable and intelligent person. He doesn't try to weasel his way into people's affections and then entertain the possibility of savaging them. Kenny lays cards on the table.

Tony Cascarino presented himself like a suckling pig on Friday night. He set himself up for a rigorous interrogation on the Late Late Show. What we got was more confusion and a small admission.

Cascarino is in the middle of selling a book on his life, and he's stepping on the toes of some Irish fans and officials in the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), who don't like to be sold to the public as gombeen men in blazers.

Cascarino said he was a fraud. Like Nick the Greek once did with FAI World Cup tickets, Cascarino claims he pulled the wool over the eyes of the FAI when he played for the Republic of Ireland when he was not eligible.

He says that in 1996 his mother told him that she was adopted. Personally traumatic, but in this instance you might ask, so what? His grandfather, an O'Malley, was Irish. Therefore, assuming Cascarino was the legally recognised grandson of Grandad O'Malley, everything was hunky dory and Cascarino was entitled to apply for Irish citizenship through that lineage under the 1991 adoptions act.

Even if his adopted mother wanted to maintain her non-Irish citizenship, Cascarino's grandfather satisfied the requirements.

"When is an Irish man not an Irish man," asked Kenny, before answering: "No better a man to tell us but Tony Cascarino."

Cascarino began to explain.

"I know I couldn't reveal as much as I'd like to. I have to protect my mother. I couldn't go the full . . . there is a confidentiality thing," he said.

Kenny, who applies a keen sense of logic and reason to most issues, made some effort, suggesting that if an Irish couple adopted a Korean child, then that Korean would become Irish.

"I'm trying to get at where the problem might be," he said, somewhat confused.

"There's a bit more to it than that," answered Cascarino. "I have to protect my mother and my family. There are things . . . I can't talk about . . ." he said.

Why not? It wasn't Kenny who raised the subject. It was "Big Cas" who cast out his "fraud" story like a lure across the sporting firmament and everyone took a bite. Now it seems that, after the FAI had claimed everything was correctly expedited and that Cascarino was most definitely eligible, there is something more to the story and he is protecting his family.

The laws of book selling and celebrity status dictate that the public needs to know everything. This is particularly so when it is the subject of the book who raises an issue which has previously been completely outside the public domain.

Kenny had reasonable rights to interrogate Cascarino more aggressively, and although he suggested weakly that it was all a book-selling stunt, he was rebuffed quite easily by the author, journalist Paul Kimmage, and Big Cas. Both declared that there was a lot more to the book than this issue. Given Kimmage's enviable track record with books, and his newspaper diaries with Cascarino and former Irish captain Andy Townsend, this is very likely so.

But Kenny's opportunity to reveal to us something we didn't know was lost as it transpired to be an issue, not about passports and departments of foreign affairs, not about the FAI (do they know the secret and are they keeping it from Irish fans?), not about crossing Ts and dotting Is and adoption papers, but something fundamental to the footballer's life.

Cascarino went on the Late Late Show and told us all that he had hatched half a story that was not to sell a book and the other half of the tale was a secret and he wasn't telling us. Kenny's logic unquestionably told him that this was so, but he stopped short. Pity.

Colin Montgomerie pitched a ball towards the 14th hole at the Volvo Masters on Friday. It took one bounce and went into the cup. We were informed that the first televised hole-in-one was in 1967 at the PGA Championships and its author was Tony Jacklin.

Montgomerie was asked how many aces he had hit in his career and said he couldn't remember because there had been so many. Somewhere in the teens, he ventured, his anguished face twisting more than usual, before settling on 17 as a close enough figure.

Golfers dream of holes-in-one. There is nothing to compare. A bulls eye in darts you can throw in a pub after nine pints of cider. A maximum 147 break in snooker might compare, but requires too much skill for flukes. Punters don't hit century breaks, but high-handicap hackers score holes-in-one, maybe once in a lifetime.

Seventeen holes-in-one is probably no world record, but as a golfer it made you feel . . .ugh, what's the point?