A pint of plain water is yer man’s only drink

FI RST things f i rst. Elsewhere i n this newspaper last Saturday, I suggested that the most boring place I had ever visited was Brussels.

I’d like to take the opportunity to correct that right now and, as a matter of courtesy, apologise to the entire Belgian nation for such a dreadful slur. Somehow I had completely forgotten that I once spent a few days in Washington DC. Perhaps I’d been subconsciously trying to block out the memory.

Even though Leo Varadkar’s trip to t he American capital f or St Patrick’s Day was overshadowed by questions about phone calls and wind farms, the general consensus seems to be that he handled himself quite well in terms of the official business.

If his experience was anything like mine on the same occasion about 15 years ago (although I wasn’t the taoiseach at the time, obviously), he is due congratulations for even managing to stay awake during the protocol bits.

Anyway, it’s all over now. The upshot is that we are now highly likely to have a reciprocal visit by Donald Trump in the not-so-distant future. As i s already becoming apparent, there will be all sorts of huffi ng and puffi ng at t hi s prospect.

I’m no fan of Trump, but I’d like to know what the objectors do with the rest of their time. All sorts of undesirables are allowed into this country without so much as a murmur being heard. Where were these naysayers, for instance, when Phil Collins descended on our shores with his foul music last summer? I rest my case.

Still, howling protesters will be the least of the Government’s worries. But we will come back to that in a little bit.

Back in my days as a jobbing reporter, the first visit by a US president I covered was when Bill Clinton touched down in Air Force One at the beginning of December 1995. It sticks in my mind not because it seemed like a momentous occasion but due to the Arctic conditions as we waited for the great man to address the adoring masses at College Green. I thought frostbite was going to set in at one point.

Nor was that the worst of it. Following his speech Mr Clinton was due to pay a visit to Cassidy’s pub in Camden Street, which is about a 15-minute walk away (although I suspect he wasn’t travelling on foot himself).

IWAS working for a red-top newspaper in those days and, right from the off, the big story of the day was always going to be (a) what drink he chose and (b) how many of them he had.

Word from inside the pub wasn’t promising. There was initial disappointment when it emerged that he’d only ordered a glass rather than a pint. Worse still, there was confusion over whether the tipple in question was Guinness or Murphy’s. Things got even more complicated when newsdesks across the city were led to believe – either via a press release or news agency copy, I can’t remember which – that the drink was, in fact, Beamish. I think we got around the conundrum by publishing a Bill- Clinton-in-beermystery story.

Erskine Childers – namesake and father of the future Irish president – wrote a novel called The Riddle Of The Sands; I knocked out a frontpage splash that could have been headlined The Riddle Of The Stouts. Such is life.

It was much easier for reporters when Barack Obama visited Moneygall a few years back. Everyone with access to a TV set could see him gulping back a pint of Uncle Arthur’s finest with gusto.

Of course, those sort of images are pure gold in tourism terms. But it seems unlikely that a l i f elong teetotaller like Mr Trump will be in a rush to be pictured with his nose stuck into a pint pot.

This will principally be a problem for the nation’s newspaper photographers and TV camera crews. But it will also present challenges for spin doctors keen to project Ireland as a fun place to be.

Perhaps they’ll instead persuade the great man to pose in one of those shamrock-green, faux velvet hats with the leprechaun- style beards attached. It would certainly be an improvement on his current look.

As for the school of thought at St James’s Gate? I’d say there might be an element of relief that the Donald won’t be endorsing their famous brew.