He started professional life as a lock at London Irish before former England coach Brian Ashton suggested a switch to wing at Bath, where Banahan moved in 2006.

BBC: Matt Banahan braced for switch to centre for England

After last year's Christmas exodus by southern shoppers, Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan suggested it was "unpatriotic" of them to shop in Northern Ireland rather than boost the ailing economy in the south.

BBC: Striking workers head north for bargains

"I don't have a dog in this race, so I don't want to be painted as a guy who's trying to mask anything, " Payne said when Jackson lawyer Brian Panish suggested he was downplaying concerns about Jackson's health in the days before he died.

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As for BofA's Brian Moynihan, his appearance on the Charlie Rose show Monday suggested he might eventually grow into a bigger role.

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TSB, whose boss, Sir Brian Pitman, has made no secret of wanting to buy something and this week suggested that prospects for a British merger had improved.

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It was former national head coach Brian Ashton who set Banahan on the path to success on the wing when he suggested his young charge contemplate a switch of position after spotting his potential at a junior academy Rugby Football Union training session.

BBC: Giant Banahan eyes big impression

More intriguingly, an experiment carried out in 2004 by Brian Hare, then at Harvard and now of Duke University in North Carolina, suggested that natural selection in the context of domestication had boosted dogs' intelligence, too, by allowing them to understand human behaviour in a way that their ancestors, wolves, cannot.

ECONOMIST: Wolves are, after all, cleverer than dogs

The visitors could - and perhaps should - have been gunning for a Grand Slam, having beaten England, only to then draw with Ireland thanks to a late Brian O'Driscoll try and lose 9-8 to Scotland despite producing attacking statistics that suggested they should have won by around 30-40 points.

BBC: Fans disappointed by Wales slump