Woody Allen once remarked that sex was the most fun he'd ever had without actually laughing. It was hard, during The Great Sperm Race, not to think of Allen's film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex -- and specifically of the famous scene featuring Woody playing a nervous sperm about to be shot into oblivion -- without laughing.

By turns ingenious and comical, the film focused on a fictional couple, Glenn and Emily, and set out to recreate the process of conception, magnified 34,000 times and with real landscapes, including the Canadian Rockies, standing in for the insides of the male and female bodies.

Thus, scores of white-clad extras, boosted to millions by CGI trickery, plunged down a terrifying water chute (you can probably guess which body part that represents), squeezed through nightmarishly claustrophobic tunnels (the cervix), raced across open countryside (the uterus) and splashed about in a luxurious spa (the fallopian tubes).

It's a tough life being a sperm; one scientist here described the sperm's arrival in the woman's body as being "like D-Day". And for most it's a short life, too.

A woman's body is equipped with a range of natural defences designed to repel all comers, so to speak, and most sperm won't survive the gruelling, 14-hour journey to the fallopian tubes. In fact, some of them, the older sperm, may even be DOA and never get to swim a stroke.

Of the millions that actually reach the cervix, only 1pc will make it out alive. Of that 1pc, maybe two or three will have a shot at fertilising the egg. "The sperm will face death at every turn," intoned the narrator, ominously. "There's no going back, no surrender and only one winner."

Once you got past the initial silliness of the presentation, The Great Sperm Race was packed with information. Apparently, 'boy sperm' swim faster than 'girl sperm', though 'girl sperm' live longer.

In other words, it's a question of speed versus stamina. As frustrated women the world over can tell us men, there's absolutely nothing new there.

Sperm are not homogenous, either. Some have small heads, some have large heads. Some swim straight and true, while others wriggle about all over the place, getting nowhere fast.

And then there's the selection process. A woman's body will reject about 80pc of the sperm as being unsuitable suitors before they get past first base. It's a bit like a biological game of Blind Date.

It was kind of satisfying to discover that the process of procreation is not as random as it might seem. Sperm aren't as dumb as they look -- mind you, that isn't difficult. I mean, you can hardly visualise one of them swishing its tail in the Mastermind chair, now, can you?

Rebellion, an overheated account of the war of attrition between the striking Cork hurlers and their now ex-coach Gerald McCarthy, made you wonder what kind of sperm filtration system the women of Cork have, because everyone involved, from committee members to players to fans, seems to have behaved like petulant children.

I'm more a fan of football (or soccer if you insist) than Gaelic games, but still: to anyone in the wider world -- ie, outside Cork -- the whole tiresome affair came across as something of a storm in a Lee cup.

STACEY'S STARS

The Great Sperm Race * * * *

Rebellion * *

- Pat Stacey