Fair play to Gaybo. I like a man who calls a spade a spade. I never thought I'd say this - especially as the childhood trauma of having to listen to him talking to bored old housewives from Offaly (Bohos for short) is still gnawing away at the fragile pillars of my sanity - but I agree with the Wise Old Owl's latest pronouncements.
"Well done, well done, good lad, good lad," as he might've said himself. Gaybo's opinions on some of the cretins on our roads are right up my street. With any luck, the cretins themselves won't be.
"There is a coterie of 18 to 24-year-olds with 10-year-old Golf Gtis with their baseball caps back to front barely able to see over the steering wheel driving like certifiable lunatics," he told Motors last week. Come on Gaybo, as a de facto president of this country, can't you swing a Constitutional amendment to allow their execution by wedgie? You know it makes sense.
He's also predicting a zero blood alcohol limit for drivers if he gets his way. Make it so, Gaybo, and I'll forgive you everything. Even that time I was forced to sit through the whole of the Late Late Christmas Toy Show. When I was 19. (I can't go into details, the very thought still sends me into squirming spasms of anguish.)
Anyway, on to more important matters. The World Cup to be exact, which, as all of you will be keenly aware, kicks off this Friday. I'm all set. The twin buttock grooves in my couch are just about perfect after months of careful cultivation. I've a got the local pizzaman on speed dial and a shed full of fizzy pop. I vaguely remember a conversation with Mrs Emissions in which she warned she would leave me if I spent a month watching football, taking our offspring -Reduced Emissions - with her. I didn't quite catch the details, as I was busy reading something vitally important about the design of Thierry Henry's boots at the time.
If you're interested, I predict a reoccurrence of the great victory by the imperious Arsenal, sorry, France, in 1998. Even Martin Cullen appears to have taken note of the impending extravaganza. "The World Cup brings a lot of people out to pubs and clubs," said the Minister. "We're hoping that they enjoy themselves but we're telling people: 'don't bring the car, don't drink and drive'."
His concerns are not unfounded. According to research carried out by Churchill Insurance, accidents will double in England during the World Cup as people rush from work to watch Beckham and his hapless chums get ritually humiliated. During the Euro 2004 tournament, crashes were up by over 51.3 per cent on the day England got knocked out on penalties by Portugal. The team weren't the only ones to die in the hot summer sun.
But Mr Cullen forgets one important factor. Ireland will largely be spared the carnage resulting from having thousands of frantic soccer fan motorists rushing around to watch their team as the bunch of lazy clodhoppers masquerading as the Irish team isn't involved, having been knocked out by a combination of inherent rubbishness and an inability to deal with the genius of Thierry Henry. Which is another reason to love him. Henry has, by that one goal in Lansdowne, probably saved more lives with a single glorious act of skill than any transport minister has since the invention of the Golf Gti. Good lad, well done, well done.
