Isaac Bickerstaffe

AFTER a welcome hiatus from public life, former Green Party leader and environment minister John Gormley returns to share his thoughts on the latter- day rise of Sinn Féin. Writing in Village magazine about Prince Charles’s Dublin 1995 visit, Gormley – who was the city’s lord mayor at the time – claims he was given ‘a good insight’ into Martin McGuinness’s thinking following the decision to invite the royal heir to the Mansion House. Gormley, 53, insists lack of space prevents him from elaborating on ‘certain incidents surrounding this event’, adding ominously: ‘I’ll save all that for my memoirs.’ What, pray tell, has the publishing industry to say of the great man’s plans to record his pensées politiques in book format? ‘Coming to a bargain basement near you,’ predicts my source. DOUBLE Oscar-winner Jane Fonda, pictured, plays Grace, a hippie grandmother estranged from her family, in her next movie, Peace, Love & Misunderstanding. The 74-year-old confides: ‘My secret is attitude. I’ve discovered that you can have a robust, love-filled sexy life at any age.’ Miss Fonda made millions selling exercise books and videos to the unfit. Is she about to mimic that feat by offering love-making tips to the elderly? AFTER five years in Ireland, flamboyant broadcasting executive Ben Frow – TV3’s English-born director of programming – admits to a few niggles about life here. The 50-year-old complains: ‘It rains 90 per cent of the time in Ireland. Yet there are few bus shelters. About 120 buses go down Exchequer Street in Dublin and there is not one shelter. People get soaked and it drives me beyond crazy.’ Alas, it seems Mr Frow’s efforts to hail a bus on the narrow, one-way thoroughfare in question have been doomed all along. My man with a well-thumbed copy of the Dublin Bus timetable reports: ‘Not a single bus goes down Exchequer Street and none has at any time over the past three decades, if indeed ever.’ FOLLOWING the loss of his last remaining Renault contract, car salesman Bill Cullen is said to be in talks with both Kia and Hyundai about selling their motors from his two Dublin dealerships. There seems little doubt that Bill, 70 – star of The Apprentice and better known to his oldest friends as ‘Liamo’ – will bounce back. His entrepreneurial acumen was first evidenced almost six decades ago when he flogged cigarettes to classmates at O’Connell School directly from his school briefcase. ‘Liamo was never lacking on the liathróidí front when it came to making a few bob’, says an insider. DESPITE his enormous historic achievement, Neil Armstrong, who has died aged 82, was endearingly shy and retiring. The first man on the moon was so embarrassed that his Ohio barber Marx Sizemore had sold locks of his hair to a curio collector that he threatened to sue him. Some of them, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity by Sizemore, were offered recently by a Bristol-based company, A Small Piece Of History, for €63. No doubt the price will rise. MICHAEL Douglas, who ravished Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, wears a white, llama-fur coat with a 16ft train in Behind The Candelabra, his new film about pianist-showman Liberace. As such, is it possible the 67year-old will become a bigger movie sex object than his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, pictured?