Nice Things In The World

By Charley Brady

I had hoped to do a nice happy column this week-and that will come later - Shock! Horror! - but out of the blue comes Fine Gael's MEP Gay Mitchell to change all of that.

I've never hidden the fact that I wouldn't join any political party in a fit, but despite my admiration for Ireland's very hard-working Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, her Trojan work here and indeed for the party's leader Enda Kenny, along comes a gobdaw like Gay Mitchell to lecture us once again on why we were all very naughty boys and girls because we voted against the Lisbon Treaty.

In case you may think that I'm exaggerating, here we go with Mitchell the loud- mouthed, in- your-face character who comes straight out of Central Casting of an Idiot: "Let me just put this to you about referendums - do you know that the people in Germany voted for the Third Reich and that the people outside Caesar's palace voted for the Crucifixion of Christ?"

Where do you start with this guy? He is actually suggesting that the people's right to hold a vote be taken from them and just let the supposed intellectuals push it through on our behalf instead be put in place.

Apart from screaming very loudly in to his ignorant ears: "Try to get your historical facts right before you embarrass yourself and us?" then what do you actually do?

I've a few suggestions, most of them involving heavy black masking tape over his mouth so that he can never ever open it again, but instead let's move on to some more of his thickness.

Trying to make sense of the Treaty is, he says, impossible to the "lay person".

On and on this arrogant clown goes: "It's not undemocratic. The reality of it is that to put a referendum to people on a detailed document like Lisbon is really asking for trouble because the majority of people cannot be expected to read the treaty."

And yes, there's more: If we don't find a solution then apparently we all "take the consequences." Me, I just love being threatened.

He then went on say about businessman Ulick McEvaddy, who campaigned against Lisbon - and who I have always found to be a decent, gracious and honourable man: "We have to put people like you in your place."

Really? He has a place? Well, it seems as if we're back into the class system of the England of not too long ago.

In one fell swoop of breathtaking arrogance this overpaid eejit manages to boot out democracy, compares us to Nazi Germany and then talks to us as if we are uneducated peasants and to just put the icing on it he tells us to know our place.

Well, I happen to know "my place" and that place is to speak out loudly against little baby fascists like you and your ilk.

For the last time, YOU work for US, it's not the other way round.

When you fall into the very large cracks in society that people like YOU have created, don't be expecting a hand up from the little people like me.

When George Orwell wrote that if you want a vision of the future then it is to imagine a boot stamping on the human face forever, it's guys like you that he had in mind.

Know our place? The sheer bloody arrogance of you.

Trying to get into a happy mode again, let's go back to last night (Monday).

I was in my favourite bar, Glynn's, head stuck in a book as usual when, with a groan of dismay from me, I heard the young lady behind the counter switch on The Rose of Tralee contest.

I thought, "Oh no, time to get out before I hear somebody else bleating on about world peace and the work that they did in childcare".

But, guess what? I actually enjoyed it! Yes, you heard that right: I actually enjoyed it. The girl who took my attention was a lady from San Francisco.

Lovely, totally unpretentious and on top of that her parents looked like the kind of people you wouldn't have a problem spending a few hours with (especially when her dad put a tiara on his head).

She was natural and certainly won us over. She started out by announcing that she had recently seen Pierce Brosnon and was now "officially in love with him". That was great, since I like the man himself. I like his acting, his very quiet way of giving to charity (unlike the annoying Bono) and now I have to make a confession: I'm in love with his wife, the beautiful Keely Shay Smith, a most talented and lovely former journalist who is, as you guys say, to die for.

No offence, Mr. Brosnon, but if you are ever silly enough to lose her then tell the gorgeous lady that my address is Oranmore, County Galway.

It's never going to happen, mind you, as when I see photographs of the two of you, you always look so happy together.

Can't say I blame you. It's just so nice to see such a fabulous couple enjoying each other's company. Now, if you could just introduce me to the divine Meryl Streep all would be well in Brady's world.

Still in happy mode, what has everyone got against Tom Cruise? I personally thought that it was great to see him jumping around and proclaiming his love for his wife.

Sure, his religion sounds as barmy as a box of rattlesnakes, but how is that different to the nonsensical beliefs of Ireland, where we supposedly believe that a fella can walk on water or rise from the dead after three days in a tomb? Let's be honest about this: the first of the Gospels was written around sixty years after the death of the Christ, so he probably had just gone for a paddle that day.

You know how a story gets so exaggerated after ONE day, so sixty years? Give me a break. Between Scientology and the rest of the world's religions I see absolutely no difference. But, each to their own.

Anyway, I could forgive Mr. Cruise for anything after "Rain Man" and the sublime "Interview With The Vampire" from Irish director Neil Jordan.

Go for it, Tom, don't mind the begrudgers; and I'm looking forward very much to your forthcoming "Valkyrie".

As for the money grabbers Bertie Ahern and his ex-mistress Celia, we'll have to wait -no doubt with baited breath - for next week.

Same bat-time, same bat-channel!