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20 December 2007 Edition

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The Fifth Column - Xmas Quiz

IT’S the Fifth Column Xmas Quiz, pulling some arguably intellectual plums from the staple diet of schoolboy humour and sniggering of yer man slumped in front of the telly with a large bottle of Southern Comfort and a box-set of Reverend William McCrea DVDs.

1. Who wrote in the Irish Independent that he once hid a gun for an ‘Official IRA’ man in Belfast to help him escape arrest by a British Army patrol?
2. The Liberal Democrats’ spokesperson on the Six Counties, Lembit Opik, left BBC weather woman Sián Lloyd for one of the novelty pop twins, The Cheeky Girls. What is The Cheeky Girls’ best-known chart hit?
3. Which politician was outraged that former Secretary of State Peter Hain apologised for Britain’s role in the slave trade?
4. Which prominent public figure, recently in world news headlines, upset unionists by describing the RUC as “a paramilitary, almost completely paramilitary organisation”?
5. Willie Frazer, the head of the self-styled Families Acting for Innocent Relatives who is planning to have tourists travel in the back of Saracen armoured personnel carriers to see “sites of atrocities”, was taken to court this year for non-payment of debts in a previous failed enterprise as what?
6. Kevin Myers revealed that he holds honorary membership of which military body?
7. Which Fine Gael Dáil candidate and entrepreneur told Dubliner magazine that he admires the close ally of Fidel Castro, the revolutionary socialist President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez?
8. Dublin North Fianna Fáil Dáil candidate Darragh O’Brien was quoting which historical figure when he declared his motto to be: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”?
9. Which minister in the Fianna Fáil/PD/Green Party Cabinet denied they had ever smoked cannabis despite saying in a newspaper interview in 2001 that they had?
10. Who claimed to have 2,500 members in their organisation in South Armagh yet only polled 1.2 per cent (605 votes) in Newry & Armagh in the Assembly elections.
11. Kampala Police HQ in Uganda urged lonely women to stop blocking their 999 line every night begging police officers for sex, but which Irish journalist is reputed to have given birth to satirical magazine Private Eye’s euphemism for illicit sex, “Ugandan affairs”?
12. Which unionist leader said that too many visits by the British royal family upset him?
13. Who was reminded this year that they once said in The Sunday Times: “My bedroom fantasies favour the kind of buxom Ballycastle woman who is the backbone of the Unionist Party and could swallow a babe-waif for breakfast”?
14. Which travel company upset unionists by using the British Army’s withdrawal from the Six Counties in a national newspaper advertising campaign?
15. In a series of poster billboards of great Irish writers to have “taken ferries to make good their getaways”, which company used a portrait and quote from IRA Volunteer Brendan Behan who took the boat to bomb Liverpool Docks during the Second World War?
16. It was revealed this year that the funeral in 1997 of Princess Diana of Wales had what impact on Ireland’s soccer World Cup qualifier against Iceland in Reykjavik?
17. In their autobiography this year, it was confirmed that which Manchester United legend met IRA legend Martin McGuinness in Derry in 1975 to try and get an end to the IRA military campaign?
18. Who said: “Pressure? Pressure? Pressure is millions of parents around the world with no money to feed their children”?
19. Fine Gael whizz kid and newly-elected TD Dr Leo Varadkar showed his compassion for workers by asking the Employment Minister to give which industry special treatment in terms of visas and work permits?
20. Who teased us by revealing that there would be no more radio interviews from home on RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland “often done in my underwear”? 

 

 

 

THE ANSWERS

1. Kevin Myers.
2. The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum).
3. DUP MP Sammy Wilson.
4. Sir Ian Blair, now London’s top cop as Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
5. Night-club owner.
6. The United States Marine Corps.
7. Would-be Fine Gael TD Brody Sweeney, founder of the O’Brien sandwich bars chain.
8. US President Abraham Lincoln.
9. Willie O’Dea.
10. Unionist campaigner and failed nightclub owner Willie Frazer.
11. Mary Kenny after she disappeared from a dinner party to a bedroom where she later claimed to have been with a former minister in Milton Obote’s government “upstairs discussing Uganda”.
12. Orange Order Grand Master Robert Saulters, who said that royal visits preceded the disbandment of the B-Specials, the UDR and the RUC.
13. Fianna Fáil-appointed Senator Eoghan Harris, former Svengali of the Workers’ Party.
14. Ryanair.
15. The Dublin Port Company. Behan’s quote is his reaction to being court-martialled by the IRA: “I was court-martialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.”
16. For some still inexplicable reason, the team of the ‘Republic of Ireland’ wore black armbands and a minute’s silence was requested by the Dublin-based Football Association of Ireland for the British royalist and aristocrat who had no connection to Ireland.
17. Paddy Crerand.
18. Ex-Chelsea supremo Jose Mourinho, ‘The Special One’.
19. Polo clubs.
20. Progressive Democrats former deputy leader Liz O’Donnell.


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