It’s all very funny indeed, provided you’re not one of the ones being recorded – so spare a thought for the clients at the centre of that recent story about the booming brothel where the customers were being recorded by secret cameras.

Today’s almost infinite possibilities for publication of those recordings must have caused many a sleepless night among the clients of a business that was turning over the kind of money that shows some industry is simply immune to the recession.

It seems to have always been so for the oldest profession in the world. For there is a recorded story from many years ago in Galway where a lady who was reputedly making a decent living was reported to have said, when asked how was business . . . “I’m so busy that, if I had a second pair of legs I could open a branch in Tuam.”

One of the other figures in the recent stories relating to brothels being raided, must have given pause to many a legitimate business in the area of advertising. One web site selling certain services was alleged to have a turnover of €110,000 per month in advertising and was of particular interest to the Revenue.

This site was allegedly being run from the UK. History does not recall whether the ads carried lines like “Sale Sale Sale” but the thought of a website earning tens of thousands for a mere knowledge of how to put up ads on a website and keep them up to date, makes me sorry I dropped out of that computer course for senior citizens being run by FAS.

Think of the industry I could run from my bedroom . . . and please don’t assume for one minute that I am thinking of running anything other than an advertising web page, though it appears that I might have to base it in England to get away with it, the advertising of some such services apparently being illegal in this country.

When I recall all the years we slaved in the newspaper industry, putting together an attractive package of news, sport and advertising at enormous expense, while all the time there was a formula out there capable of turning over a million a year, with no outlay (oops!), few overheads, and guaranteed profits at the end of each month.

I just don’t seem to have the necessary spirit of the entrepreneur – dammit, the property boom passed me by as well.

This business of running a website advertising certain services beats picking up ads for bales of hay, grazing for letting, and secondhand cars. Even in the boom times for property advertising, to think that there was a fortune to be picked up, with just some skills on a laptop (stop it! Ed.), though maybe it might be handy to have a Kalashnikov handy in case someone came calling looking to buy-into the business!

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.