Brassil clears all obstacles for TVs pat with He a ly Rae!
FF TD JUMPED 20FT RAILING AND DASHED 1KM TO FACE MICHAEL HEALY RAE DOWN ON VIRGIN MEDIA
“IT could have cost me my entrails, but I wasn’t going to let Michael Healy Rae go unchallenged”.
So said Fianna Fáil’s John Brassil following his hair-raising derring-do to face his constituency rival down in last Wednesday’s political panel programme The Tonight Show on Virgin Media One (formerly TV3) – after he got trapped in an industrial estate on the way to the studio. He gave himself plenty of time, leaving Leinster House at 10pm to make the 11pm broadcast, with the co-ordinates of the premises for his first turn in a national TV debate firmly input into the sat-nav.
“The studio is out in an industrial estate near the Red Cow, so I thought I was giving myself plenty of time in leaving at 10pm. Unfortunately the place is a maze, and I inadvertently went into a particular section of the estate following the sat nav, which told me I was at my destination,” he explained.
After half and hour driving around in circles in this part of the industrial estate John, came to only one conclusion: ‘I’d been locked in’. It was then that he took matters firmly into his own hands, parking the car up against a 20-ft spiked railing (pictured right) which he managed to vault before running a kilometre to take up his seat in time for the robust discussion that ensued.
“It could have cost me my entrails, but I wasn’t going to let Michael Healy Rae get a free run on TV as usual. He’s had a glorious run for the past three years, and I wasn’t going to let him go unchallenged when I got the opportunity.”
It might be the measure of a tough constituency or a particular clash of personalities, but Brassil did as he hadplanned, going head-to-head with his fellow Kerry deputy a number of times.
As for the car? “I got it out the next morning after 6am. That’s when I saw I had driven in a gate with an automatic lock set for just minutes after I had driven through it!” He’s taking one positive from it – his physical prowess: “My metabolic age must be well under 55!”