President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky: we had come to the end of a gossipy agenda, three of us, all women lazing around on a summer afternoon. We hadn’t met for weeks and were catching up on the news. There are few things in life as absolutely delicious as a private gossip amongst women. Our word is final, there is no appeal. We were handing down moral judgements like a Supreme Court.

Bishop Casey didn’t take long. If people want to hear him saying Mass, let them, it was disdainfully agreed. Catholics! The Holy Fathers are rearing them yet. However, at the press conference he’ll have to be asked what arrangements he has come to with the other Irish Bishops about visits from his son, Peter. This time, he must not be allowed to wing it on a prayer. This time he’s not standing at the end of a bed in a convent, waving an adoption form at the frightened mother of his new-born child. He will have to guarantee that he has discussed the visit and its implications with Peter, has left the door theoretically open for a visit from his son – no matter what Peter says at the moment – and has run it up the Hierarchy’s flagpole. We want the deal signed, sealed and revealed on radio and television and printed in the papers.

Clinton and Lewinsky didn’t take too long either, though it was rather more relevant and urgent – he’ll be here next week and he has a lot of influence on Irish affairs, unlike the clergy. “She was over twenty-one. We fought long and hard enough to have eighteen recognised as the age of responsibility,” said the red-head. “If the President of the United States – any President – offered me a fling, I’d have to say yes” said the other lady who is at heart a tramp.

We pondered this for all of five seconds and agreed as one. Sure you’d have to. All that power, the most powerful person in the world, experienced at first-hand. (Given the decrepitude of many powerful men, a hand-job is about as much as they could take. Rockefeller died in the act, in his seventies, you will remember.) Before any righteous men start quivering indignantly at such seeming moral turpitude on the part of us three, let us also remember the definitive statement from Bono about fame and all that. The worst part, he said, was going into the men’s toilets. Every man there wanted to take a peek, to measure themselves against him, to just know what he’s like in that department.

The same for dames. What are they like, these guys and broads at the top of the world? If they’re like Clinton, a dead attractive bloke, it’s game set and match. And if you were young, like Lewinsky – we paused respectfully to remember the glory and excitement of youth – you’d be out of your head not to take the plunge. Assuming it’s consensual, of course.

“He was her employer. He exploited the power of his position,” ventured yours truly. We pondered this for all of three seconds and went “Heh, heh, heh.” We should all be so exploited. Take a look around the office and eats your hearts out, all ye who are not Lewinskys. Take a look and throw up at the sight of your boss. There aren’t many Clintons around, playing sax. It’s risky and dangerous having a fling with the boss, mind you, so be warned, young things – if the matter should turn sour, particularly from your side, a boss can be an awful shite and deny your promotion, or sack you. But oh – if you should fancy the boss, who is as glamorous, rich and powerful as you are young, poor and powerless, and if he should fancy you, what fun. Heh, heh, heh. And of course you’d keep the dress or the trousers. The Irish know this better than anybody. Our own James Joyce, in exile, asked his beloved Nora back in Galway to send him on a pair of her dirty knickers, that he might smell them and fantasise about her.

So Clinton has always told lies about his affairs. Wouldn’t you, if you were having an affair? Life is not yet so liberal, none of us have yet sussed out the sex thing to the point where we can tell the beloved that we’ll be back in a minute, just as soon as we’ve shagged somebody else. If Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary has, and can put up with it, that’s her business. If she hasn’t, what is going on between them is a painful, totally private matter. And it’s up to Clinton to talk candidly about sex to his daughter Chelsea, who was born of a sexual act. How that family handles this is for them alone to decide.

He should be more fucking discreet, nonetheless. A person who gets caught in dalliance and denial as many times as he has been, is a person with a definite problem. He’s causing us problems, too. Here we should be, discussing Romanians all over the airwaves and there stands RTE wondering how to handle the Presidential affair. On the other hands, discussing his shenanigans is valid in this context: does it matter what a person does sexually in private life? That is a question which applied to us all. As ever, Coronation Street has its finger on the pulse, with the harrowing story of Hayley the transsexual. And Britain is afire with memories of Diana and her marriage to Charles on this, the first anniversary of her death. Speaking of which, would YOU have done it, given the chance, with Diana or the future King of England?

Wasn’t Edna O’Brien some woman all the same to observe that August is a wicked

month?