SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

ONE of the most watched weather forecasts of the year comes just before the Late Late Toy Show. So on Friday, it’s a pity that when Met Éireann was drawing attention to the cold air that has beset the country in recent days, its caption read, not ‘Arctic Air’ but ‘Artic Air’. There was nothing for the presenter to do but keep on truckin’. WE ALL have skeletons in the closet but Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar would presumably not thank DCU social scientist Eoin O’Malley for dredging up a baby-faced picture of him in a Vote Simon Coveney T-shirt, emerging from a Cork train with two other Young Fine Gaelers in 1999. The image, left, which was shared on Twitter, was accompanied with the question whether Leo would wear a similar shirt these days – a clear reference to the phoney war going on at the moment for the future leadership of Fine Gael between the two pretenders to the throne. In fairness to Leo, he responded by saying: ‘Sure I would. Go Simon!’ SPEAKING of Leo, it emerged during the week that he is to guest-host RTÉ1’s music show Late Date on one night over the Christmas holidays. Fianna Fáil’s designated Leo marker, Willie O’Dea, took exception to the idea but we here at Smokes & Daggers Towers are firmly behind the wheeze. We’d love to hear Leo spin a few tunes. We just can’t decide if we should request him to play Trust Me I’m A Doctor by the Blizzards or Enda The Road by Boyz II Men. ALAN KELLY’s new crusade on behalf of liberalising the craft beer laws is exactly the sort of ‘new politics’ Smokes has a deep passion for. Kelly, pictured, is launching his Intoxicating Liquor Bill on the issue at the Porterhouse Central Bar. In the view of Smokes, there could be no more appropriate place to launch a Bill and he sincerely hopes that the old phrase ‘called to the bar’ will apply to far more legislative launches in the future. We will, of course, attend the launch to investigate the contents of the, ahem, Bill.