SMOKES& DAGGERS

Inside the corridors of power...

WITH more and more politicians deciding now is a good time to come out of the closet, Westmeath TDs Robert Troy and James Bannon are playing it straight, at least on gay marriage. They told the Westmeath Examiner that they were right behind their parties’ endorsement of the referendum. Labour’s Willie Penrose, on the other hand, said he wasn’t going to tell anyone how to vote on the issue, while Fine Gael’s Gabrielle McFadden was incommunicado. IT’S nothing new to see Olympic boxer and Fine Gael hopeful Kenny Egan with a fancy bird on his arm. Before fiancée Karen Sullivan, he had flings with reality TV stars Bianca Gascoigne and SOMEBODY didn’t do their homework at Advanced Laboratory Testing in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, this week. If there’s one thing everyone knows about Big Phil Hogan it’s that he’s… well, big. But when the EU commissioner turned up to open a new facility, the only available lab coat looked like a size zero. Poor Phil, right, popped at least two studs – leaving him open to accusations that he might be living it large on all that Brussels pâté and Belgian chocolate. OUR sister paper, the Irish Daily Mail, found some aptly named sources this week. A story about turtles cited Professor Emer Shelley. And Tuesday’s edition contained this immortal sentence: ‘The man at the forefront of the “slim kitchen” movement is Dr

Brian Wansink.’ AFTER being accused of calling the gardaí ‘dogs’, Ruth Coppinger claimed her canine metaphor was a reference to The Bard’s Julius Caesar that, unfortunately, sailed over the head of Joan Burton. She tweeted a picture of her notes, which did, indeed, contain the phrase ‘unleash the dogs of war’ – a garbled version of the play’s ‘let slip the dogs of war’. God be with the days when John Wilson and Dick Burke used to trade classical Latin quotes across the Dáil!