AGAINST my better judgement I once went to a Cher concert.

In Dublin for a long weekend in the dying days of the last millennium, I was assured by a friend who worked for RTE, the Irish state broadcaster, that tickets were like gold dust and she wouldn't hear of me not sharing her good fortune.

Now except when Manchester United won the treble and I found myself sub-consciously humming We Are The Champions, I don't do rock music; especially with only one serviceable ear.

But being rather enamoured of the lady in question (the one from RTE, not Cher) I thus found myself in the balcony of The Point theatre pondering many things, including my sanity.

While awaiting the main event, a woman in a plain grey shift dress sidled on stage to sing several of the most bland, maudlin songs I'd ever heard.

Some of them must have been well known because I recall the audience doing that thing where they applaud over the opening bars, but the singer was never in any danger of stealing the limelight from the star turn.

Eventually she departed and Cher, turning back time while clad in what appeared to be three buttons, two sequins and a pair of criss-crossed bootlaces barely concealing her freckles, was lowered somewhat ostentatiously from the ceiling in a blur of lasers and strobe lighting and all hell broke loose.

The woman in grey, unsurprisingly, was seen no more.

Maybe the trauma was to blame, but for some reason I always remembered her name, although I hadn't come across it again until this past weekend when in one of the Sunday tabloids Belinda Carlisle (for it was she) confessed that her 30-year drug habit lasted until 2006 and was so severe that she is fortunate to "still have a nose".

How selfish do you think I feel now? There I was worried about my love life and losing what was left of my hearing, and this poor wretched creature was fighting a private battle to stop her nose dropping off.

IN THE suffocation of doublespeak, broken promises and policy denials since the General Election, it's a rare moment when anyone in the political establishment dares to say what they really think.

Dave was clearly in radical mood on Saturday, albeit one could feel a U-turn coming on the moment Nick Griffin dubbed him "a wolf in British National Party clothing". But if Dave meant his multiculturalism speech, why on earth did he have to slope off to Germany to make it?