Thrills and spills of Bertie's life
Ahern recalls the good old days when he was in charge
Bertie Ahern (centre) with his daughters Cecelia (left) and partner David Keoghan, and Georgina (right) with husband Nicky Byrne and their children Jay and Rocco at the launch of his book at the Mansion House in Dublin last night.
Friday October 09 2009
Our former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has a fondness for narcotics, according to himself. But more of that later.
The big room in Dublin's Mansion House was jammed to the doors yesterday evening for the launch of Bertie's buke. Eighteen months after leaving office, he finally decided to put pencil to paper and write the story of his action-packed life.
He told the room that his blockbuster deals with not only the big political stuff, but also his personal life "and lots of the questions that I totally dodged when I was asked about them so many times", confessed the original artful dodger.
There was a good scattering of Fianna Fail TDs, but former cabinet colleagues were decidedly thin on the ground. The Taoiseach popped in towards the end of the evening; Micheal Martin was an early arrival and queued up to buy a copy of the buke.
"I'm surprised you don't get a discount," remarked a woman beside him. "No, no I absolutely don't want a discount -- I want to pay the full price!" he insisted, half in jest, wholly in earnest.
Ministers and freebies is a touchy topic these days.
As usual, Bertie seemed to be three people, and was everywhere. He posed for photographers outside with his ridiculously photogenic family.
Then he was greeting guests in the hall -- a big handshake for Joe Burke -- one of the few of the so-called 'Drumcondra Mafia' in attendance. He had a quick chat with film-maker Jim Sheridan. So would Bertie's life make a good film? A romantic thriller, maybe," mused Jim. "George Clooney would have to play Bertie, and Jennifer Aniston could play Celia Larkin".
Bertie worked the room, which was festooned with giant photos of the former Taoiseach hanging out with political A-Listers -- Kofi Annan, George W Bush, Hillary Clinton, Big Ian Paisley.
Winning
"You'd swear he was running for something," muttered one suspicious politico.
Despite Bertie having made Brian Cowen his Anointed One, when it came to launching his autobiography, it seems that EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy is the Special One.
And Bertie's former Finance Minister pulled out all the stops in his speech. "Our double act was a winning formula," declared Charlie.
Then it was Bertie's turn. He thanked everyone, and gave himself and Charlie a little pat on the back. "I know people nowadays try to rewrite history. . . but the reality is that. . . throughout the years that I was Taoiseach, they were in safe hands," he reckoned.
Brian Lenihan wasn't there, but had he turned up he wouldn't have been too thrilled with Bertie's big shout-out for the public sector.
"In a period where it seems popular to have a go at public servants, I want to say I have the same view I had of them all the time -- they're great people, they deserve what they earn, long live the Irish public service," he declared.
Explaining how his banjaxed leg had given him time to write the buke, he revealed that while writing his tome, the injured limb was either "hanging off the ceiling, or it was up on the table or I'd no shoes on, trousers pulled up, effin and blindin about pain, drinking everything I could to try and kill the pain."
He paused. He didn't want to paint a picture of himself as some sort of alcoholic, so he elaborated, as only Bertie can. "I'm talking about narcotics, things like that, nothing else".
So if anything in his buke makes no sense, that'll be the narcotics talking.
- Lise Hand
Irish Independent
