SMOKES & DAGGERS
IN A recent case in Britain, told to Smokes, a silk, questioning a defendant, was attempting to appear cool but the barrister over-reached in search of street cred. ‘Was he your BFF?’ he asked. The 18-year-old defendant looked bewildered: ‘What’s a BFF?’ After it was explained to him, he replied: ‘Nah, nah, I’m not a girl.’
DAVID NORRIS hit out this week at the ‘obnoxious habit some people have developed of putting these vast photographs of aborted foetuses up against the walls of Leinster House’. Norris recalled that during a previous referendum campaign, ‘a woman came up to me, stuck a photograph under my nose and asked what I thought of it’. Norris said he replied: ‘I think it is perfectly charming, madam. I presume it is a family photograph?’
WHEN is an Irish whiskey not Irish? When it is on the wrong side of a post-Brexit trade rule, apparently. Sinn Fein’s Sligo Leitrim TD Martin Kenny queried the Taoiseach on what would happen to Irish whiskey after next March when Britain officially quits the EU. Taoiseach Varadkar responded: ‘I am sure Bushmills will continue to wish to describe itself as “Irish whiskey”. But Kenny pointed out that EU law would mean it won’t be allowed to do so. The Taoiseach came back, a little less assuredly: ‘I cannot imagine that it would wish to describe itself as “British whiskey”, “Ulster whiskey” or anything else of the sort. Of course, this is a matter for negotiation in the context of the withdrawal agreement and the new trading relationship that will develop between the EU and the UK. I am aware of the country of origin issue.’ Does the horror unleashed by Brexit have no end?
LEO’S weekly video message has always had something of a West Wing feel to it. This week, though, it was more X-Wing. He signed off his message to his peeps, with: ‘May the Fourth be with You.’ It is a Star Wars joke (‘May the Force be with you’) that has been harnessed by tourism chiefs here in an effort to promote the Irish locations for the films. But should a Taoiseach really be trying so hard to sound cool?
THE Stunning’s Steve Wall went all Liam Neeson in Taken this week, when he heard about a Pro Life Campaign vehicle blaring music by The Stunning. Wall, pictured, declared his position on the forthcoming referendum was pro-repeal, and he took to Facebook to announce: ‘Whoever you are, I order you to desist or I will find you and initiate proceedings.’ He’s brewing up a storm, you could say.