A BLUES guitar with bad attitude starts to twang. The audience hollers in anticipation. Two officials position themselves at the entrance. It’s like Fight Night at the National Stadium. Any moment now, a pumped-up athlete is going to shimmy in, feinting and shadow boxing. People further back are straining to see what’s going on. Then comes the voice. A loud, hard-bitten Amercian drawl. The audience rises.
“Mah name is JOHNNY! You’ll deal with ME now!” It’s very menacing. Slowly, as the noise reaches a crescendo, the officials push back the double doors.
He emerges from the darkness. A grey-haired man in a neat navy suit, trying not to look embarrassed as he shakes hands, bustles towards the platform. The light glints off his spectacles.
Heeeeere’s Johnny! To be precise, nice John Gormley, leader of the Greens and the smuggest man in Ireland on Saturday night. (And he had a lot of competition in that department at his party conference.)
The ballsy guitar riff continues, as does the hard-bitten drawler. “Allright . . . C’mon now!” John reaches the podium and begins.
“Well,” sez he, pausing.
The crowd like it.
But to be honest, after the build-up, it’s a bit of a disappointment.
This is not to say that Gormley’s performance lacked impact. Far from it.
Reports came through afterwards that a number of middle-aged men began foaming at the mouth just before he started his keynote address, and when he spoke his opening lines, three of them were conveyed, senseless, to the local hospital.
They are believed to be a Mr J McGuinness and a Mr B Aylward, both of Kilkenny, and a Mr MJ Nolan of Carlow. They are Fianna Fáil TDs. Initial reports indicate that the men took a turn when they switched on their televisions and saw Green junior Minister Mary White cracking a weak joke while introducing her party leader to the crowd. It is understood matters rapidly deteriorated when Gormley began by heaping praise on newly-elevated Mary, who was slathered in full-on ministerial make-up for the occasion.
“Well” said John, pausing to look at his trophy Minister while the crowd laughed. “Thank you, Mary.” And another pause for chortling.
This reaction to her wind-up speech was not unexpected, given that it was one of the battiest pieces of public speaking heard from a Green party platform in a long time. It ranged from Aoife McMurrough and Strongbow to Mary’s schooldays in the Ursuline convent; from the Winter Olympics to the life cycle of the freshwater pearl mussel and on through to Walt Disney.
You had to be there.
Fianna Fáil ears must have been burning as White reminded her adoring audience that one of the jobs Greens have to do is clean up after Fianna Fáil. Or as Mary put it: “We are the wily Davids toppling the bloated Goliaths of tradition and convention.”
No, the Tower Hotel in Waterford was not the place to be if you were of a FF persuasion. Which brings us back to the gibbering trio of McGuinness, Aylward and Nolan. Gormley and his party are responsible. The gifting of a Green ministry to White has thoroughly incensed her three FF constituency colleagues in Carlow/Kilkenny. They will be battling to keep their seats in the next election.
The Greens, had they any sense, would avoid public mention of this delicate situation as much as possible.
John continued his opening with: “Or should I say MINISTER WHITE? The first women TD for Carlow/Kilkenny, the first woman minister for Carlow, the Minister for Equality, Integration and Humans rights. A Minister who will . . .”
It was at this point, we believe, that McGuinness, Aylward and Nolan had a major fit of the vapours. And when the crowd crowed and applauded, FF deputies all over the country suffered fits of the head staggers.
It’s just as well they didn’t hear Trevor Sargent a few minutes earlier. He, too, joined the White glee club, declaring “she is about to transform the whole of Ireland and beyond in her new role”.
What about the other new Minister of State, Ciarán Cuffe? He got a great reception for being “the Minister for sustainability across three departments”. This being the Greens, nobody batted an eyelid when he quoted the late Jerry Garcia in describing his path to ministerial nirvana. “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
The head shops must be in Waterford, too.
But it was Mary, because her appointment has caused absolute consternation in Fianna Fáil, who was the toast of the Tower Hotel.
Meanwhile, the canonisation of former minister Sargent was completed. Each time he spoke he got a standing ovation.
And good news! Trevor is pottering again. He neglected his kitchen garden during the recent unpleasantness, but now his lamb’s leaf lettuces are thriving.
The Greens were a happy crew. How they joked over Dan Boyle’s tweeting exploits. “The Twitter is mightier than the sword,” whooped Senator Niall Ó Brolcháin.
And as if Biffo doesn’t have enough on his plate, what will he do if his emboldened Minister for the Environment arrives into his office on Monday roaring “Mah name is Johnny! You’ll deal with ME now!”
The weekend ended on an optimistic note, with Paul Gogarty, the only Green TD who hasn’t tasted high office, intimating he wouldn’t mind becoming the new, improved, Lord Mayor of Dublin.
Gogo for Lord Swear – why not?
