PART racing page (Graham Swift, evens; Margaret Atwood 5/2; Beryl Bainbridge 4/1...), part gossip column ("Oh, there's Harold Evans and Tina Brown, who've flown in from New York") and part lit crit section ("immaculate prose, but a flawed work"), the Booker Prize packages "litteracha" as a kind of journalistic game show. So? Well, it rankles that, ironically, Booker pundits regularly insist on being precious about "literature" and condescending towards journalism.

"It tries to rescue the Irish situation from journalism," said Germaine Greer of Seamus Deane's Reading In The Dark, the 14/1 outsider on the six-book shortlist. Perhaps it does, but Deane's autobiographical book is scarcely fiction anyway. Remembering the row over Thomas Keneally's 1982 Booker victory with Schindler's Ark (shrieks from what Eric Hobsbawm calls "the elite ghetto" that it wasn't really "imaginative litteracha") this year's judges were never going to declare Deane the winner.

Ms Greer and her fellow pundits, Michael Dibdin and Tom Paulin, agreed that Deane's book was easily the best. Dibdin praised its "vigorous, exact prose" and the others concurred. But "rescue" does not sound a vigorous and exact way to describe the achievement of Seamus Deane's hook. Implicit in the word is a freeing from danger, a heroic liberation, a salvaging from ignorance. Fair enough. But implicit too is a ghettoising of writing, a smug, Bookerish notion that shortlisted hooks are not only different from mere journalism, but by definition, superior.

Of course, they may well be (and, by most criteria, Seamus Deane's is) but not necessarily. Assumptions that even rubbish in a particular form (fiction, poetry, drama) is superior to strong work in a more limited form (journalism) are assiduously fostered by the literature industry. Granted, a six paragraph news report of a house fire is not Shakespeare. But most of what passes as "literature" is not John Pilger or Robert Fisk.

Such writing snobbery has been particularly virulent in Ireland. Because of our traditions and Nobel successes and because Dublin lit crit delights in considering the place a great lit cit, Irish fiction has been living off its reputation for years. It's a welcome development then that (along with Seamus Deane's hybrid book), Nuala O'Faolain, Dermot Healy and, a few years back, Denis Donoghue, have written non-fiction which, at least partly, rescues Irish writing from the poets-and-novelists-on-tea-towels tourism industry.

Anyway, TV coverage of this year's Booker made Hobsbawm's phrase about "the elite ghetto" ring true. As ever, the wood-panelled Guildhall oozed pomposity. The PR for the event seemed suspiciously conscious of exuding old-world decorum, appropriate perhaps, given that, as Dibdin remarked, "all the books seem obsessed with the past".

It may be true that we now live in a post-literate age, but it is hardly necessary to package a celebration of literature in the trappings of aristocracy in order to flog it to a lumpen bourgeoisie.

If it is, then the game is up. Yearly, we can detect embarrassment on the parts of many of the writers at being coaxed into bow ties or evening dresses. They flinch at their appropriation by PR and by this snobbish version of a tradition they wish to protect. But, most of them can do with the publicity and the money and, understandably, they play along. They are, to be fair, in a great tradition, but the Booker Prize is mummifying fiction, not enlivening it.

SO, from fiction to film and from PR to propaganda: The South Bank Show examined Neil Jordan's Michael Collins. It's amusing how the cabal which has sought to destroy the film has ended up manufacturing a controversy which will do the movie no harm at the box-office. Propagating the notion that, in essence, Jordan's film is Provo-propaganda, the revisionists ("revvies" for short) have seen their own propaganda blow-up in their faces.

For its part, the South Bank Show largely ignored the concocted controversy and dealt with the film in a responsible manner, which will have been particularly instructive to a British audience. As a history lesson, there was little here that most reasonably informed Irish people wouldn't already know. But, in tone and in seeking proportion, the programme avoided the hysterical shrieking of the revvies. It was a welcome relief.

Jordan said he included the machine-gunning of players and members of the crowd on Croke Park's Bloody Sunday for "drama" and because it speeded up the scene. So, this was historically inaccurate. But how crucial is this? Does it portray the British as more brutal than they were (Provo propaganda) or is it a legitimate dramatic device? Or, if it is both, is it so distorting that it invalidates the entire movie?

Let us see the film before we decide on any of this. But let us also remember that in the bitter but sometimes hugely comical sparring which has paved the way for Michael Collins to become a box-office record-breaker in Ireland, Jordan has routed the revvies and their auxiliaries so far. So much for the creative, introspective writer/filmmaker. Jordan has remembered his Northside roots, shown his studs and put the boot in no Hush Puppies here - with a vengeance. Clearly, he can scrap when he has to.

The subject of parallels between Collins and Gerry Adams was broached. With or without a $28 million Hollywood movie, this was perfectly reasonable. Might republicans split yet again, inquired Melvyn Bragg? Certainly, there is intense pressure being applied to get them to split. Whether or not Michael Collins the movie, will affect their emotional temperatures on the matter, we'll have to wait and see. The likelihood is, for all the propaganda and manufactured controversy, this film will go the way of all films big splash, huge initial interest tailing off and then to the graveyard of the video-shop shelves.

THERE wasn't much history, but there was a history student in Soho Stories. Her name was Gwen. Shortly before Gwen stripped off all her clothes, we saw her studying Crown and Nobility, 1450-1509. She had got herself a summer job as a stripper in Paul Raymond's Revuebar. When she was working, Gwen went under the name of Sugar Cane. How sweet!

Mind you, Gwen was very happy to have the gig. The Revuebar has, wait for this, an "artistic director" - Gerard (not an ordinary Gerard, of course . . . a Geraaard!) Geraaard teaches young women how to strip and he takes his vocation very seriously. "Nunnunno.. you just undress," he says, "you have to streeep. Geraaard was presented as a Soho "character". But really, he was a mega-sleazeball. "Nunnunno ... you mussst moo-veh your `ips and shulders."

Danny, a transvestite thespian, was another Soho "character". His last movie was titled The Killer Tongue and no, it wasn't about any of Neil Jordan's attackers. But Danny was a sad case. We saw him at an audition, singing an Edith Piaf song. Unlike Edith, Danny was well over six feet tall, didn't have a French accent (even a daft one like Geraaard) and was black. He wasn't very convincing and unfortunately, the contrast wasn't very funny

Still, Soho Stories did capture the mood of the place. That mood is, quintessentially, sleazy. But it is not even garishly sleazy. It is dull sleazy and most of the Soho characters were bores. Middle-aged and elderly men drinking and acting the bohemian were even more boring than middle-aged and elderly men just getting drunk. They didn't talk. They pronounced... but they had nothing interesting to say. Like so many "litteracha" buffs, they seemed to think that a concentration on form would excuse their risible content. It was sad, indeed.

SAD too was Cracker's trip to Hong Kong. The series has regularly been the best thing on television but this trip east, written by Paul Abbott, was, in parts, as implausible as an average American cop show. It was obvious that the cast and crew brought the pattern of more successful episodes with them. But, as with Hong Kong's 24-hour tailors, too many critical details were neglected.

In fact, it was all too neat and it is tempting to think Robbie Coltrane was not especially happy with the cosy imperialism of acting the Brit shrink sorting out the mess for the local yokels. Even with a disclaiming speech about Brits "always being visitors to Hong Kong", this episode was uneasy. An Essex lad, a member of what Coltrane classed as "FILTH" (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong) went on a murder spree, because, it emerged, he had seen his mother copulating with a man who was not her husband, but was, in fact, his biological father.

The principal problem was that the logic of the psychology was variable. At times it demonstrated - all the traditional strengths of Cracker but too often it seemed too easy. Faced with options Coltrane, as Fitz, unerringly chose the right one. Perhaps, to a trained psychologist, motivation is as simple as junior infants addition. But the result was that the killer did not seem an adequate opponent for the Great Fat One. The scenery was special, but really, Cracker should stay away from travelogues. Closer to home and closer to the bone has served it better in the past.

BACK on RTE, Stateside travelled to Los Angeles. This was the fifth in the current series San Francisco, Chicago, the American Southwest and Philadelphia having preceded it. Of all the Irish abroad, the LA crowd featured here seemed the least likable. It's probably the city, but maybe some people have a predisposition to become too easily LA-ised.

There was an actor, a make-up woman, an accountant and a salesman. They didn't so much seem to be chasing the American Dream as the American Coma. To be fair, they were generally positive and lively. But the Dublin-born actor, in particular, seemed desperately smug. Perhaps being frank, if you're successful in LA, inevitably means being smug. Then again, maybe he was just out of character.

The previous week, Stateside was in Philadelphia. This was a better, less onanistic programme about an older, more civilised city. Included was a profile of Father Michael Doyle, an advocate for the poor. Urban decay was his backdrop but he was able to speak about more things than himself and his career. Generally, the series has been slicker but less captivating this year. Unusually, the Philadelphia programme managed, unlike The Booker Prize, to be both slick and relevant.

FINALLY, Draiocht, which was the centrepiece of Teilifis na Gaeilge's pyromaniacal opening night. Set in the 1960s and focusing on the changing world of an 11-year-old boy, it was a kind of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha as Gaeilge. Gabriel Byrne wrote the script and Aine O'Connor made her directing debut. At times, it looked like a series of postcards, as a still, lingering camera delivered lusciously flamed shots.

The boy (James Murphy) becomes aware of tensions between his parents. His soldier father is due to depart to The Congo, taking, inevitably, the child's boyhood with him. Lite is at a transforming moment for the family when they visit a small seaside resort, the kind of image-drenched summertime town that burns into childhood memory.

For film-makers, there is magic in such towns. They explode rushes of memories and nostalgia in viewers minds. The boy, seeking to turn faith into action, asks a travelling performer, dressed up as an ancient god, to make things right for the family. The real magic of the film, however, was its appreciation of the delicacy of childhood. In spots, it laboured the point, but, if TnaG can maintain this standard, its future looks brighter than that of the tired Booker Prize.