Saturday 26 February 2011

A Plastic Paddy

Regular readers may, by now, have picked up on the fact that I am a bit of a Plastic Paddy.  My mum is Irish, my dad was about 99% Irish (I think I had one half-English Great Grandmother) so, even though I wasn't born there, I feel a great affinity for the country and take an interest in it.  Also, unless you have lived under a stone for the last decade, you will have noticed that the good old Celtic Tiger has lost most of its teeth and is now a shambling wreck.


One of the things that most appeals to me about the Irish is their sense of humour (TS and I can quote great tranches of Father Ted verbatim) and their predilection for plain speaking.  Back in November, this was the front page of the Irish Daily Star:




For those unfamiliar with Irish politics, the guy in the centre with the microphone is Brian Cowen, the then Taoiseach and the others are his cabinet. It would be interesting to see how a similarly bald headline about our own coalition government would go down in politically correct England!


And talking of plain speaking - how's this for the view of the man on the street?


Made me laugh, anyway...



6 comments:

  1. I think the newspaper moguls are too deep in the pockets of some political parties to be brave enough to have a headline like that, but if they did the papers would fly off the shelves. LMAO

    Love Father Ted! xx

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  2. I think you're right. And over here, you'd be taken to court for hurting someone's feelings or something...we're a bunch of wimps!

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  3. I've an Irish mammy as well :) and I love the useless gobshites headline. Ps have you seen Mrs Browns boys on BBC1? comedy about an Irish mammy xxx

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  4. I caught the end of Mrs Brown's Boys the other night, so I have set the rest of the series to tape - right up my street!

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  5. One of the trips I have on my list of things to do before I die is to visit TedFest. I absolutely love FT, just up my street humour-wise.

    And I think I'm probably the only person in the world that can't claim an Irish ancestor. How very provincial.

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  6. Delighted to meet another Ted fan and never mind - you can have one of my ancestors if you like - God knows there's enough of them to go round. BTW, remembered first home address and hit Google Streetview with great excitement. There's a sodding great tree in the front garden - you can't see a thing except a little bit of roof. FML!

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Oh go on - say something for God's sake...