LockerRoom/Tom Humphries: The Sports Editor picked a little scab of eggnog from the teeming undergrowth of his dense and manly moustache and deeming the eggnog to be inedible he flicked it in the general direction of LockerRoom.

Old habits die hard and out of instinct LockerRoom dived to the floor to save the morsel. "Grushee!" yelled the Sports Editor, delighted with his subordinate's hairtrigger response. LockerRoom got up from the floor and dusted himself down gingerly.

"Time was . . .," he said ruefully.

"Yeah," said the Sports Editor suddenly, and uncharacteristically, reflective. His brows knitted together.

Both men knew it had been all too few Christmases since the little piece of eggnog, or one like, it would have formed the centre piece of the LockerRoom Christmas table. Indeed it had only been a few Christmases before that when the Sports Editor couldn't have afforded to give a piece of eggnog away just like that. Changed times indeed.

"It's been a long, hard year here in the workhouse," said the Sports Editor " but once again LockerRoom, you and I have managed to stay two steps ahead of the workstudy police, we've fooled the efficiency experts, we've dodged the grim reaper of voluntary redundancy, escaped the scythe of unemployment. For that I raise a glass to you LockerRoom."

And he did just that. Draining it in several gulps as LockerRoom stood with his hands in his pockets, beginning to wonder why he had been summoned.

"Now listen, LockerRoom," continued the Sports Editor, but not before he'd let out a long and satisfied belch which carried on its tail the smell of meths.

"Now listen, I want you to make like I'm somebody that is interested and tell me the highlights of your year. Tell me about the lows and the not quite so lows. The regrets and those other things that you didn't get found out about."

"Eh, why the sudden interest?" asked LockerRoom, "you've never talked about my work before. That's the deal. I don't tell anyone about your Freddie Mercury complex. You don't talk about my work."

"Enough with the questions," said the Sports Editor enigmatically. "I move in mysterious ways. All will become clear. For now let's talk about you. What was the high point of the year for you? I know high point is the wrong word for what has been a long plateau of failure but humour me. Was it the Winter Olympics?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Well at a time when the paper was going down the toilet we all liked your style in Salt Lake. Totally out of your depth on the skating scandal. Then missing the Irish story of the Games."

"Refresh my memory."

"Oh just the simple matter of a geezer called Lord Clifton Wrottesley coming fourth in a death-defying event called the Skeleton. Never mind. I think you gave us a dull colour piece on curling that day complete with a pun about clean sweeps."

YOU da Man!" An uneasy silence descended like a raincloud over the two men. Nothing good would come of this. LockerRoom was uneasy. He could sense there was more.

"Or was it the following week?" continued the Sports Editor, twirling so quickly now in his twirly chair LockerRoom began feeling nauseous. "February still, I believe, when you went to California for World Matchplay golf and sent back a series of columns bellyaching about your shuttle bus driver."

"But," began LockerRoom, keen to get in a point about the Matchplay final having been between Scott McCarron and Kevin Sutherland, neither of whom had previously known that golf was played on Saturdays and Sundays.

"Hush," said the Sports Editor, "hush now. Let's hear all the nominations before we choose a moment above all the other moments. We're only at February. For March I think your failure to get a Paula Radcliffe interview stands out. Plus your reassurance she never does anything." He tapped his nose. "Instinct, eh?"

LockerRoom shifted his weight to his other buttock. "I think he's forgotten me not being at the Masters," he thought happily. "Maybe we can get through this." "Moving along," said the Sports Editor, "if you can keep up. We've never spoken about how happy you were with the end result of your huge piece on the Ireland-Italy game in New York in 1994, the one where you were going to speak to all the Irish players and piece that day together again forensically as if it were the Kennedy assassination.

"Personally I was surprised to see it shrank into a Phil Babb/Jason McAteer piece but what do I know about, ehm, your art."

"Well," began LockerRoom, eager to make a point about the phone being off that week. "Ah we're only getting going here," came the interruption. "This is the small stuff. I bet you're part in screwing up the whole World Cup for the whole country must be up there on the top shelf in your little memory bank. Couldn't bring yourself to make Roy seem a little happier in your little interview? Couldn't ask him to say something nice for the folks back home? Couldn't slap him across the cheek and say 'pull yourself together man'? Couldn't pretend your tape recorder was broken?"

"Ah now Jaysus . . ." LockerRoom began.

"But having kept you out there for your own safety when does your big colour piece on the phenomenon of the South Korean fans come through to us? On the night they get knocked out!"

IT WAS late now. The cleaning staff had begun their night shift, many of their faces familiar from the days when they worked in the news room. LockerRoom was suddenly stung with guilt. No, fear. He was stung with fear.

"Where are we going with this," he asked. "Well let's just see where it takes us. We'll forget about the fact you stand up and pass water anytime somebody mentions rugby to you. We won't mention you falling sick the night before the European Athletic Championships and not being there at all. We'll fast forward to the Ryder Cup. Great event. Great win. Key Irish input. You denounce it all as the most evil fraud ever perpetrated on mankind."

"Well there was good stuff too, wasn't there?" said LockerRoom, coming back off the ropes, "not talking about that are you?"

"Well there was the 'humorous' column mocking Cork people. There was the plague on all their houses piece about sports administrators, that was so good it drew a letter of complaint from one of the most comical sports administrators in the country. You picked Sonia for the New York marathon. You bleated on about your little camogie team till they threatened to sue. You 'got an interview' with Tommy Lyons when the only valid journalistic achievement this year would have been keeping interviews with Tommy out of the paper. Your biggest expense claim of the year, by the way, was mileage for a trip to Kerry to interview Páidí Ó Sé in depth. How did that go then?"

"Okay, Okay. What's the bottom line here?" asked LockerRoom, pale and shaken now.

"I'd bring that piece of eggnog home to the family if I were you," said the Sports Editor, lighting a stogie. "This has been your very own Genesis report. Goodbye, good luck and season's greetings."