It is utter nonsense that the stone which we have been kissing in Blarney Castle for the last hundred years is the wrong one and not the giver of gab.
The scientific proof which refutes this idea, recently postulated in a book about the castle, lies in the my own fondness for talk.
As a child we lived in Cork, about ten miles from Blarney so any time we had visitors, and my family were always hospitable, we always went to the castle and any time we went there I kissed the stone.
Anyone who knows me will agree that in my case this kissing “took” and as a consequence I have been generously endowed ever since with the gift of speech.
This has its downside, like nature I abhor a vacuum so do tend to fill silences with speech which might not be as apposite as it should be, a tendency to “go on and on “ about stuff, particularly when wine has been taken, might be a criticism my nearest and dearest might justifiably make.
The plus side is that I am the answer to a radio producers dream and living in Waterford, and having done a piece about food on the local radio, WLRFM every week for twenty odd years now, they are starting to haul me out every time that need someone prepared to rabbit on about anything.

As a result I now make frequent verbal appearances on Sunday View, which is a discussion of what has been on the Sunday papers, and every other week, for the last three or four years I have been reviewing works of non fiction on a Saturday morning.

That this had made me read lots of books I never would otherwise have is the great gift of this exercise. I have been educated about the war in Iraq, the state of the Congo in Africa, and even read an immense tome on the life of Che Guevara.
There have also been turkeys, biographies of young whippersnappers like Brian O Driscoll or Colin Farrell are difficult to keep awake through. Sharon Osborne’s effort was so full of contradictions that I think she should have sued herself for misrepresentation.
There was even something called The Secret by one Rhonda Byrne which made me wonder if Fahrenheit 431 wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.

This weeks offering which Mark Graham, the presenter of the programme assigned is the stiffest one to date.
That this has been on the best seller lists many times on the last twenty years gave me the feeling that it must be readable and (for some people) it may even be.
If you ever want an insight into what AA Milne intended Pooh Bear to feel when he described himself as “a Bear of Very Small Brain” just try reading Stephen Hawkins Brief History of Time.
Here we are introduced to the world of Big Bangs,Black Holes, Quantum Physics, Imaginary time, Quarks and Antiquarks.
How all these behave, and interact obviously fascinates Hawkins but can be really hard going for someone who gave up maths at Inter Cert.

Let me just give you a small example of the speed at which Haw kin’s brain runs;
He imagines an Armageddon situation in which nothing remains except an excess of quarks rather than antiquarks, between brackets he then adds the following useful piece of information (Had it been an excess of antiquarks , however, we would simply have named antiquarks quarks and quarks antiquarks)
Are you all with me?
And I have to talk about this on the radio for fifteen minutes next Saturday?
Come back Sharon Osborne, all is forgiven.