Lights, camera, action! Here we go again this weekend. It will be emotional.
There will be winners and losers. Every last move and word recorded; commentators analysing every little detail. There will be big entrances. Cheering crowds. Camera crews, flash photography. Best frocks and fashion faux pas. It will go on, like, forever.
Then the famous after parties start. There will be tears. Fights. Unconscious couplings and conscious uncouplings. Some people will get very drunk. It’ll all be in the newspapers the next day. Oh, the glamour. All because of a few awards.
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Here’s a typical acceptance speech: “Oh! Oh! Oh My God! Deep breath. Breathe.” Exhale. Giggle.
“I can’t believe I’m standing here tonight in front of you all with this magnificent quota. Ever since I was a little [boy/ girl/brat/Blueshirt/Shinner] I have dreamed of this moment. Hi Mom! Oh! Gosh! What to say? OK. Here’s goes. . .
“I’d like to thank my parents, Packie and Flossie, without whom I would not here today. I’d like to thank family, my wonderful election agent Arthur Guinness (God bless you, Arthur!) and, most of all, Jesus.
“I would like to thank Ballykillhooley Woganites for the use of the hall, which is here today because of a sports capital funding grant from my party.
“To the other candidates, I want you all to know how great I, er, you are. I am humbled and blown away by your genuine tears. And most of all, I want to thank Enda/Micheál/Gerry/Joan/etc for believing in me through the dark days, when I wasn’t selected at convention. You have made me what I am today and I will love you until the heave. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yahoo!”
But never mind all that Oscar palaver. On polling day, after the longest short campaign ever, here are this weekend’s real awards:
Best poster (non-defaced)
Micheál Martin’s very nice photograph, taken by Conor McCabe, seemed to adorn every second lamp post around the country. Enda Kenny, on the other hand, looked like he’d been dipped in wax. And that was Fine Gael’s second choice – the first poster, revealed to delegates at a private meeting during the party’s ardfheis, was deemed so awful by the shocked audience that it never saw the light of day. As usual, Mick Wallace made good use of the colour pink in his efforts, but for attractiveness and impact the Green party takes the honours. One of their colourful and arresting posters features a stunning photo of planet Earth with the plea: “Show Me Love.”
Best video
The winner is Kildare South Fine Gael TD Martin Heydon for his good-humoured and energetically cheesy take on the movie Back to the Future. He can't act for nuts but the video was a hoot. Runner-up is Dublin Bay North Independent candidate Senator Averil Power (campaigning very strongly on the need for a referendum on the repeal the eighth amendment) demonstrates her battling skills and handy fists with a video shot in a local boxing gym.
Best election leaflet
We hear James “Bonkers” Bannon had some great leaflets in Longford-Westmeath, but they disappeared before we got a chance to see them. But in this category the runaway winner and most popular leaflet of the campaign came from Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald in Dublin Central, whose invitation to voters to “Join that Rising” featured a stirring quote from “Booby Sands”.
Best use of purple and balloons
The Social Democrats, by a mile. Founding principle: you can’t have a party without balloons.
Best nickname
Has to belong to Sinn Féin’s deputy leader: “Maire Leithris Ni Dhomnaill.” Think about it.
Waste of space
The fiscal space. Yawn.
Best legal bill
It’s a three-way tie between Tipperary’s Michael Lowry, Sligo’s John Perry and Dublin Bay South’s Eamon Ryan. Lowry lost a High Court bid to stop his trial for alleged tax offences. Perry went to court over his failure to get on the Fine Gael election ticket and told some tales about how the selection convention was allegedly conducted. The case was settled and the doughty Ballymote man runs today in the Fine Gael colours. And the already impecunious Green Party lost its legal bid to have Eamon Ryan included in RTÉ’s television leaders’ debate.
Chicken Licken award
The honour goes to Socialist Ruth Coppinger, the little Miss Sunshine of the Hard Left, who always looks on the bright side. Although Michael Noonan gets a statuette of a leading economist of his choice for calling most of them “chicken- licken economists” for casting aspersions on some of his spending promises.
Black (Mountain) Adder award
Gerry Adams, the veteran politician from beneath the Black Mountain in Belfast, is the big winner here. The Sinn Féin leader is firmly of the view that nothing adds up with the outgoing Government, but he showed during the campaign that he’s not very good himself when it comes to running totals and adding up figures. But that’s no problem for “I Believe Gerry” and his doting supporters. Not when they have Fierce Pearse, who had a very good election, doing the maths. As “I believe Gerry” loves to say of his finance spokesman: He’s sum man for one, no two, sorry three, er, wait a minute. . . With respect, one man.
Best gimmick
Pens and keyrings, buttons and badges, are so 2011. Alan Shatter handed out bouncy balls to bemused voters in Dublin South-Rathdown. But his Wicklow colleague Simon Harris wins the day with his personalised packets of wet wipes. How did his team come up with that idea?
Outstanding smugness
Fine Gael, now wondering how the party managed to annoy so many voters with their “keep the recovery going” mantra.
Outstanding smugness in future
That’ll be former Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery, who wasn’t kept in the loop very much when the whizz kids were importing the tricks of David Cameron’s snake-oil merchants and trying to work them on a much different Irish electorate and more intimate local political scene. Frank won’t have been gloating at the disappointing opinion poll figures. Oh, no.
Dogs in distress
The gold-plated pooper scooper goes to that plucky little terrier in Geesala who was so terrorised by an electioneering Michael Ring that she bit the Minister of State on the leg. Ringo had to get a tetanus injection. So did the dog.
Roy Keane prize
The “Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail” Award goes to Fine Gael’s strategists, who overprepared for the election to such a degree that they contracted paralysis when the campaign began. Such was their state of preparedness they failed to see that their overcooked game-plan was sickening voters. When the penny finally dropped, the election was already in its final week. A bit less focus group and a lot more feeling would have trumped FG’s slick-Willie marketeers.
Boundless Optimism
The Minister for Transport, forced to go on a trip to Loop Head in deepest west Clare last Sunday for a tourism announcement with the Taoiseach when he really wanted to be back canvassing in Dublin Central. Never one to be downhearted, Donohoe gathered up a sheaf of his “Paschal for Phibsborough” leaflets and stood outside the Church of the Little Ark in Moneen. “Anyone from Dublin 1, Dublin 3, Dublin 7 or a little bit of Dublin 9?” he asked massgoers. No joy.
This must stop
Medals go to all the parties who think that parking a mobile billboard is a major event which must be treated to as “launch”. A medal also to us (journalists) for entertaining them. Another “This Has to Stop” medal to the mega-rich bookmaking firms for commissioning political opinion polls which lend a certain sort of respectability to their gambling empires. And a medal to media outlets for giving them free advertorial on current-affairs programmes and in the news pages.
Comeback kid
Micheál Martin.
Most surprising hat in the ring
Danny Healy-Rae.
Whinger award
It doesn't go to Enda Kenny for whinging in Mayo about local Fianna Fáil whingers, but to the Liveline audience which spent an entire show whingeing about Enda's comments about whingers and then whingeing about the whingers.
Most bizarre incident
That mad day in Tipperary when Alan “AK47” Kelly had a row with Newstalk’s Chris Donohoe for daring to interview Michael Lowry ahead of him. Then Mattie McGrath accused Kelly of hiding in his Hiace to avoid voters, but later retracted the claim. “That only happened in the ice- cream van that plays the music in his head,” said a spokesman for Kelly, quietly disappeared from much of Labour’s national campaign after the rumpus.
Heroine
Labour’s Ann Phelan for storming out of a noisy radio debate in Kilkenny while declaring: “I’m fed up with up with bloody lot of ye!” Know how you feel, Ann.
Most Mortifying Selfie
Me – taken by a terrified hack in a helicopter.
