SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

FIANNA Fáil and Fine Gael united to see the French Parliamentarians off by three tries to one at the pre-match friendly. Alan Farrell of FG was the man of the match in tandem with FF’s Jim O’Callaghan. Leo Varadkar is said to have, er, tried very hard.

SENATOR Michelle Mulherin, right, had a solution to leaking via mobile phones from FG party meetings. Ms Mulherin said it might ‘be more efficient to ban TDs and senators from FG party meetings. They’re the ones doing the leaking, not the phones.’

WHERE exactly does Noel Rock stand? Having called for Enda to go, he then applauded his decision to stay this week. And after giving an interview praising Enda, our hero shouted that he was now ‘dashing off to a fundraiser for Leo’.

THIS gem, spotted by RTÉ Prime Time’s David McCullagh, involves a 1967 news report headlined ‘Rocket age predicted by Mr Childers’. Transport minister Erskine Childers was answering a question from Senator Garret Fitzgerald about the impact of cross-Atlantic traffic on the national airline’s profits. He said: ‘The American companies anticipate that some time in the 1980s or 1990s the production of a hypersonic plane flying at 10,000 or 15,000 miles an hour, rocket-assisted, across the Atlantic bringing a passenger in 10 minutes from Shannon to New York… They will be in space outfits and probably put in racks in the plane and will be sedated with a tranquiliser.’

AMERICAN Actor Ed O’Neill, left, of Married With Children and Modern Family fame, spoke during the week to 2fm’s Stephen Byrne about his fascination with Michael Healy-Rae. ‘I went by his town, you know. I saw the photo of him, when you drive in. And as you’re leaving he’s saying goodbye, come back, because he owns the pub. And when we were going by he had a thing going where he was trying to get the blood alcohol level raised because he wasn’t selling enough Guinness. Oh my God, I get such a kick out of the guy!’ We all do, Ed. We all do.