A great day for the Irish.........

So that was the Queen, that was. When the State visit to Ireland was announced I think that most of us hoped that she could just get through it without trouble. I suspect that few thought that it would have been a diplomatic triumph. The Irish handled it perfectly - respectful but not fawning, dignified but not cold, and who would have expected a standing ovation for Her Maj at the theatre?

Much of the credit must go to the President of Ireland. The Irish seem to have a talent for choosing attractive and brilliant women for the job. Mary McLeese, who is 60 and looks 30, was a Professor of criminal law at 24! Her predecessor, Mary Robinson, is an outstanding international public servant. Both are eye-candy. Both have beautiful speaking voices. Why can’t America get a similar POTUS?

I am sure that we have now seen a turning point in the English/Irish saga. Perhaps we might now get on with telling jokes about each other.

Apropos which, we came home from South Africa on the old ‘Canberra’ on one of her last voyages. One of the on-board entertainers was a very funny Irish comedian called Pat Noonan. One of the features of Irish life is the ‘holy hour’, the only time of day when you can’t get a drink. Pat described how he went into a bar only to be told by the barman that it was the ‘holy hour’. So he said he would wait. And the barman said ‘Will you have a drink while you are waiting?’

Some years later I went into the bar of a lovely pub in Waterford with my son-in-law, Paddy. The barmaid told him that she didn’t open for another 15 minutes. Paddy said that we would wait. So what did she say? Yup! As another great Irishman, Oscar Wilde once said ‘Life follows art’.

Outsiders might find it difficult to understand the relationship between English and Irish humour. The English is based on irony – the myth of the thick Paddy when the English know perfectly well that the opposite is true. We know the Irish to be very smart indeed – a small country that has produced Becket, Wilde, Joyce and more other poets and writers than you could shake a shillelagh at. They also seem to run a disproportionate amount of UK business e.g. the fearsome little guy in charge of BA.

Irish humour is based on logic; they torture logic so that it will tell them anything; it is subversive logic; it is reduction ad adsurdum. For example, who can challenge the logic of ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here at all’ in answer to a traveller’s request for directions?

I remember a real life example. When my old friend Frank Rooney was practising law in Ireland, he was approached by a ratty little fellow who asked if the counsellor ‘would be after making a will for Paddy Riley’. When Frank said he would, the guy said ‘Would you make it unbeknownst?’ When Frank asked him what he meant he said ‘Unbeknownst to Paddy Riley!’

And no sooner has the Queen departed than O arrives. A  great day for the Irish, as  the old song goes.