It is hard to keep the bright side out but the Sketch did think that the wail by one tortured Dail soul last week of "we're worse than Ethiopia" was excessive.

In the end they calmed down after we noted that whilst it may not be too sunny here, Ethiopia isn't suffering from an obesity crisis.

Our mood was further improved by the realisation that the recent furore over the human rights of bumpkins to drink themselves into insensibility before they safely drive home may have provided us with a solution to our economic woes.

As part of our renewed 'we're backing Biffo' campaign, the Sketch thinks the best solution to road safety is to have a man walk slowly in front of every car waving a red warning flag.

The good news is that hiring the fellows with flags wouldn't merely reduce deaths from road accidents. At a stroke, we would end unemployment and the rise in social welfare payments whilst making sure that fatties got the first wave of jobs thus ending the obesity crisis and cutting health costs.

Meanwhile, the extra shoe leather for all that walking would benefit agriculture and the ozone layer courtesy of all the cows that would have to be shot for shoes. Now see where you end up when you start backing Biffo!

Sadly, back in our Dail of the undead the news was not so good.

The Taoiseach's claim that anger is not a policy is right but when someone is making an utter hash of things, sometimes it's the only rational response available. Our mood was not improved by Enda's revelation that he was planning to go on a national tour over the state of the economy.

With the best will in the world, it was hard to avoid the sense that this was the political equivalent of a tour by The X Factor wannabes, the Grimes twins.

It was all very different from those images of our Minister for Finance chewing garlic in a remarkably similar manner to the way Clint Eastwood used to chomp cigars in spaghetti westerns.

In the Dail, there was much sympathy for Brian Lenihan over the accurate portrayal of him as a scattered lost soul who had no confidence in his Finance officials.

However, when it comes to the 'little boy blue' of Finance who is too often far too keen to come 'blow his horn' about his abilities, the new image might actually benefit him.

We never thought garlic might be an aphrodisiac but the Sketch was told by several members of the female sex that "Mr Lenihan is quite hot these days".

It just goes to show what images of a large dark car slowing down, the opening of a door, a scuffle, a brief scuffle and a yelp as another little banker or trade unionist is grabbed by the scruff of the neck and staked, will do.

Sadly, the Sketch's night time fantasies about the Finance Minister were swiftly quenched when our hero went on a walkabout during Finance questions.

Joan Burton might have thought she was providing the minister with the political equivalent of a 'free hit' when she asked him for the latest Exchequer figures an hour before they were due to be released.

When Lenihan said he hadn't been "briefed", Burton rightly said she was "astonished" that the minister hadn't been "poring over the figures all morning".

This, however, was only the beginning of the madness as it became alarmingly clear that Lenihan was in the sort of Que Sera Sera mode we last saw in the Dail when his predecessor used to wing it.

Our hopes that Lenihan's reign won't end equally badly were not improved by the minister's blithe admission that he didn't have a clue just how much our expensive banking consultants were costing and no, he also had absolutely no idea just how many civil servants were going to take up the early retirement scheme.

By the close, Lenihan was so far out in space when FG's newest, most ferocious, roundhead, Kieran O'Donnell, asked about the state of Anglo Irish, he rambled on about its valuable assets.

Happily, just as we were about to wail "more garlic nurse", we were consoled by the revelation that the Department of Finance is about to acquire an "in-house banking analyst to analyse banking matters".

We hope the portly mandarins won't be too upset when the winner of the "smart boy wanted, must possess own abacus" post tells them the real state of the banking trade.

Sunday Independent