As the economy circles the toilet bowl, BBC Radio 4’s Midweek had some strategic tips on handling poverty.

Comedian Paul O’Grady described his mother, operating in the kind of times Ireland too will soon see back if the government doesn’t discover its inner planner.

He was sent to the shops as a boy, and the grocer called out to him – in front of everyone – that his mother owed six weeks.

His mam was up to the shop in no time, sneering at the meat. ‘‘Is that ham fresh?” he imitated her in his glutinous Liverpool accent. ‘‘Is that beef meant to look green like that?”

* GAA men have Wags too, as Emily Tully found in her series Footballers’ Wives (Today FM).

‘‘There’s no social life, the cinema is as exciting as it gets,” says Aisling Cunningham, girlfriend of Mayo’s Alan Dillon.

‘‘It’d be a different story if they were getting paid for it and there were a glamorous lifestyle.”

Dedicated players won’t stay out late: they’re training. They won’t go on summer holidays: they’re playing.

Cathy Egan from Detroit landed up in Sligo with her own family of eight footballers, having married Neil, the ‘secret weapon’ of the Sligo team. ‘‘I’d ask ‘How was school today?’ and they’d say ‘Fine’. Neil would ask ‘What games did you play?’ and they’d just keep rambling on.”

On Friday the 13th, Declan, third son of six, broke his kneecap playing under16s for Sligo; already he’d broken two bones in his arm and had pins put in. At last, she had a little girl.

‘‘Wonderful . . . then when she was about seven, they had her playing under-12s football.”

At least the gear in her huge washing machine doesn’t stink of teenage sweat any more, says Cathy. Now, it’s Brut and Dolce and Gabbana.

* Art historian Richard Cork was on holidays as a young lad when he spotted Picasso in a cafe. Goaded by a friend, he went over and stammeringly made friends, and even drew a portrait of the great artist.

Picasso made a series of grimaces, messing with him, before settling into repose to be drawn, he says in next week’s tour of great artists in The Essay (BBC Radio 3).

He demanded to see the picture. Then he took the astonished student’s paper and in a few strokes drew a perfect caricature of Cork’s shy smile.

* ON Thursday morning, Pat Kenny (RTE Radio 1) brought in a bunch of experts to talk about the American election, the chances of Obama and McCain – and the US economy.

China holds most of America’s debt, said one of the guests – a point David McWilliams was making in his columns a good six years ago. And he added that if things didn’t work out, it would be ‘‘a small black hole for America, a giant takeaway for China’’.

* In some countries, ‘remitters’ are so profitable that the neighbours put a fund together. Not to create a small business, but to send a kid out on a raft risking his life to find work.

Follow the Money (BBC Radio 4) followed the $300 billion the World Bank estimates is sent home to countries of emigrants in Africa, eastern Europe, the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean each year.

In Sri Lanka the amount is larger than the income from tea exports; in Egypt, more than the income from the Suez Canal.

Some of the worst-paid people, working in some of the most expensive countries in the world, send home regular payments to buy food and medicine for their family.

They send the money through shops full of fufu and dried fish and gossip from home rather than big banks, because the commission is lower and the exchange rate better. Sometimes these shops collapse.

Taxmen are on the prowl, suspicious of money laundering and tax evasion. It would remind you of the cartoon they were talking about on Mooney Goes Wild. A man says comfortingly to a down-and-out: ‘‘Don’t worry, my broker says the economy’s due for an upturn.” The unshaven panhandler replies: ‘‘I am your broker.”