Here’s looking at you, kid

Election candidates canvassed for their movie preferences by the Irish Times’s weekly entertainment guide, The Ticket, have shown cross-party support for that Bogart and Bergman classic, Casablanca.
It’s probably the only thing Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Progressive Democrats leader Michael McDowell have in common. Though comedian Brendan O’Carroll has observed that Mary Lou was probably cheering for Bogie’s side while McDowell would have been backing the teutonic Nazi, Major Strasser.

Round up the usual suspects

Maybe the next Dáil could do a remake of Casablanca.
Mary Lou could play Bogie’s love interest, Ilsa Hand. Michael McDowell is tailor-made for the clipped tones of Major Strasser of the Luftwaffe. Vichy France police Captain Louis Renault could be played by Willie O’Dea.
Martin Ferris is a natural for resistance hero Victor Laszlo (but I’m afraid the beard would have to go, Martin).
Seán Crowe or Donie Cassidy could play piano crooner Sam. Peter Lorre’s sly wheeler dealer Ugarte (trying to sell letters of transit to Bogart’s café owner Rick Blaine) has to be Ivor Callely. Sydney Greenstreet’s role as Signor Ferrari, owner of The Blue Parrot trying to buy out the opposition, could be amply filled by Fine Gael’s Michael ‘Baldy’ Noonan.
So who could play Bogart’s Rick Blaine, the roguish anti-hero who offers a refuge for political schemers and thieves and fixes the gaming tables? Does it have to be Bertie Ahern?

PD party plan

Faced with predictions of being decimated at the polls, the Progressive Democrats launched a new policy in Portlaoise on Monday.
PD leader Michael McDowell pledged to establish, after the election, a scheme called ‘One-2-One’. The idea is “to assist those people in communities who are lonely and isolated”.
It was heralded as: “PDs plan to battle loneliness.”
Sounds like its first users will be the PD parliamentary party which might be lucky if it can muster a ‘one to one’ after polling day.

Tinkling his ivories

Piano player Frank McNamara, the PDs’ ‘celebrity’ candidate in Dublin South Central, won’t be a full-time TD in the unlikely event that he’s elected. Frank will still be on the telly, bashing the old Joanna.
“I had planned to give up music but several voters [his agent and bank manager, no doubt] told me they wouldn’t vote for me if I gave up.”
Another reason for several thousand other voters not to vote him.

Blasket case

The Irish Independent’s Kim Bielenberg poked a little fun in his ‘Floating Voter’ column at Sinn Féin for putting election posters up in the Blasket Islands, off the Kerry coast.
“Did anybody tell Sinn Féin that the Blaskets have been uninhabited for some time now?” he smirked before telling us that “visitors to the craggy islands over the past few days have been amazed to see posters of Gerry Adams”.
So someone DID see the posters and thought this eye-catching initiative notable enough to tell the media about.
So what was your point, Kim?

Johnny Adair’s love-in

While various UDA factions are reported to be squaring up to each other inside Maghaberry Prison and outside the jail, Johnny Adair boasts that he is still living it up in exile in Scotland.
The Balloon in Troon has been giving an interview to the Dublin music mag, Hot Press.
‘Mad Dog’ bristles at claims that he might be gay – “I’ve shagged over 1,000 women” – and lords it over the men who used to idolise him by bragging of his life of Reilly.
Adair and his Hot Press interviewer, Olaf Tyaransen, have both been to Jamaica and Olaf complained about how his travel firm tried to keep tourists holed up in their hotels, away from the locals.
“Ah, yeah, but fuck that shite,” Johnny Adair says.
“I went out and met all the Jamaican lads,” beams the former card-carrying member of the neo-Nazi National Front. “I know they’ve a rep for hating white people but one thing I’ve found is that, wherever you go, everybody always loves the Irish. They love us!”

Waters’ spring tide

The pre-Eurovision hype for Ireland’s song, co-written by Irish Times columnist John Waters, was full of guff about how the title, They Can’t Stop the Spring, came from a reported remark by the leader of Czechoslovakia when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.
Yes, that’s 1968 - 39 years ago. And 39 years is pretty much if not more than a lifetime for your average Eurovision text voter. It would have been a bit like Dana doing a song about the Second World War or singing It’s A Long Way to Tipperary.
Dervish never had a chance.
One west of Ireland newspaper wrote in some advance Eurovision puff: “It is also a song that can be identified with by several countries across Europe, most notably the East.”
Indeed. So why did Ireland get only five points? And all those from tiny, isolated Albania in what will probably be its only memorable contribution to the broad musical culture of Europe.
But surely They Can’t Stop the Spring struck a chord in Prague? Er, no. The heirs of the Prague Spring gave John Waters’ tribute to them núl points.
Waters probably feels like sending in the tanks again.

Under the hammer

Wannabe feudal landlords are getting the chance to snap up historic Irish titles when they go up for auction in Cork on polling day.
The titles to the baronies of Castleknock in Dublin West, Clanwilliam in County Tipperary, and Carrigaline in County Cork go under the hammer for sale to the highest bidder. Estimates for the titles are in the realms of €40,000. Regrettably for people like Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, there is no land or serfs included, just the moniker of Baron Castleknock or whatever and the ancient scrolls to hang over your fireplace.
But while you get no feudal frills such as the serfs or the sort of autocratic liberties of ruling in Robin Hood’s days, when you could pillage the village and the women of the land, there are still obligations for the modern-day baron.
Apparently you still have to pledge your allegiance to the British crown and supply troops for England’s military campaigns.
Just the job for a Fine Gael defence minister.