SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

WE TRY not to laugh too much at misprints (people in glass houses, etc). But this week’s residential property section of the Irish Times delivered one too good to ignore. The second paragraph of the lead story (if you’re going to make a mistake, make sure it’s primetime) referred to the ‘gentile Dublin 4’ suburb of Ballsbridge. Jew couldn’t make it up. KILKENNY’S Jackie Tyrrell this week told a curious tale of drug testing in the GAA. After the 2013 League final in Nowlan Park, his name was picked out of the hat for a drug test. After an hour of drinking water, Tyrrell, pictured, was still unable to pee. The tester said that in his experience, some lads go quicker if they had a beer. So the pair, Tyrrell still in his tracksuit, headed off to McGuinness’s pub, jammed with drunk Tipp and Kilkenny supporters. Three quarters of the way through his first pint of Guinness, nature called and they returned to the stadium so he could deliver the sample. But what Smokes wants to know is, who paid for that pint? SENATOR Neale Richmond helpfully tweeted the turnout for the leadership ballot at the Leinster House polling station ‘as of 8.25am’ on Friday. It was only 20.5%. But it proved, even had the Fine Gaeler not already declared his voting intention, that early riser Neale was one of Leo’s get-up-early-in-the-morning men. SMOKES hears that an assortment of Fine Gael TDs who have enjoyed no promotions in all the seven years of Enda Kenny’s reign have set up a group called ‘Justice for the Forgotten’. Perhaps they need a tribunal? DEPARTING from a Seanad debate, Michael Noonan cast quite the chill as, responding to the bouquets, he noted: ‘Who knows? I might come back to haunt the place in the future’, perhaps as part of a taoiseach’s eleven. The mood turned even darker when the Finance Minister, left, added: ‘I do not know when an election will be called but any prudent senator or deputy would need to have their wicks trimmed and oil in their lamps’.