SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

ALAN SHATTER appeared on TV3’s Tonight Show on Tuesday to discuss the Garda whistleblower crisis. But the caption on the Virgin Media’s onscreen TV listings insisted we were watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. How true. WE WERE reminded of Rudyard Kipling this week. His immortal line, ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you’ sprang to mind when we saw that BBC news had posted a headline on its website reading: ‘Irish PM “to resign” amid crisis.’ They meant to say ‘deputy PM’, of course. But on such mistakes have wars been fought. As it turned out, Leo kept his head, although poor Frances lost hers. SPEAKING of Kipling, Alan Partridge, pictured, once offered a helpful summary of that poem: ‘If you can do X, Y and Z, then basically Bob’s your uncle.’ KEVIN ‘BOXER’ MORAN is committed to his job as junior minister for the OPW and flood relief. Long after the TV cameras had gone, Boxer, pictured, returned to Mountmellick with a van full of antiflood equipment and dehumidifiers. Given that local TD Charlie Flanagan was preoccupied with other matters, Boxer’s efforts were very much appreciated by locals. Expect poor Charlie to follow shortly to apologise in person to everyone in the constituency. ONE of the more interesting features of the architecture of Government Buildings is that while they reside in separate buildings, the offices of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste overlook each other. Do you reckon the officeholders ever wave over at each other? We’d like to think they do.