FRUIT GUM, FRUIT PASTILLE    by Perkin Warbeck

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Just as there is the concept of The Fruit Gum Border and the Fruit Pastille Border, Esteemed Blogmeister, so also is there the concept of the FG treatment and the FP treatment by RTE when it comes to politicians from north of the Black Sow’s Border.

The Hard Treatment, the Soft Treatment

We were treated to a meritorious example of the latter as recently as only yesterday on the News at One , ( a RTE Flegship Programme )when a deferential combination of Tomm.ie Gorman and Yawna ‘Pardon Me’ Lawlor combined to duet on ‘Softly, Softly in the Stilly Day’ on the topic of Arlene Foster and the post- Fossil Foolish Fuel Furore.

What we got was less Wood Pallet and more, erm, Woody Allen: The Pale Imitation.

Sez Yawna:

– Tomm.ie has been speaking to the First Minister.

Sez Arlene:

-Politics is a tough game and I understand that very well. But you know, I always say that the mark of a politician is not what he or she does during the good times but what he or she does during the challenging times.

(One almost expected Tomm.ie O’Gormo’s inner Perry Como to come in a-crooning a duet with Arlene in the key of F on ‘For the Good Times’. But no: not a dicky b. from TOG on the toggle box despite the fact that he had been talking to Arlene on the Debt of a Chieftainette.)

Instead, the way News at One played it, Arlene was allowed to go on a solo run, as toe to hand, she pretended first to go right, they went left, then right again:

-I tend not to walk away from difficult tasks.

Anything else, Arlene, alannah? (Still no dicky b. out of Tomm.ie).

Sez Arlene:

-Other people walk away, in other political parties, when the going gets tough. I don’t walk away.

Re-spect. Indeed, RTE-spect.

Sez Yawnya (in a clearly over-awed tone of sisterly admiration):

-So Tomm.ie: she is not going to walk away.

(And then, the kicker)

-The lady, it seems, is not for tuning.

(Just where oh where does Yawnya dig up these rubies? And it to be still a Monday).

Hmmmm.

Mention was made above of other ‘people walking away, in other political parties’. It would be churlish for The Perkin at this m. In time, going forward, to suggest a name of o particular N/S politician who stubbornly refuses to walk away but rather than the Fruit Pastille Treatment for which he tends to get the Fruit Gum Treatment. Bearded like, when on the line, then.

Which curiously enough segues neatly into to the Woody Allen rather than the Wood Pellet element. In his early Take the Money and Run riot of a fillum an early scene features the Brooklyn comic gnome as a wannabe bank robber. He nervously slips the teller a note and as far as he could tell, the note read:

-Hand over ten thousand dollars: I have a gub.

Similarly with Tomm.ie of RTE. Instead of writing ‘gum’ he wrote’ pastille’.

Mind you, the newsprint wing of RTE was up to the same mála cleasanna/ bag o’ tricks as recently as, erm, today. When The Excitable Boy of The Unionist Times (for it is it!) took great umbrage:

-Still no shame helping yourself to other peoples’ money !

Is Fintan O’Toole (for it is he !) ranting about the Post-Fossil Foolish Fuel Furore (see above)?

Well, no, actually. Rather is the devil’s bit in the small print of the subheading:

-Irish News and Media pensions scandal shows there is no unsuccessful face of Irish Capitalism.

Hmmmm.

Now, there are those aficionados of Oscar Wilde who will react to the debt knell of the Indo hawk-eyed hack’s nest egg attack in a similar manner to the tune the old OW nearly died laughing from on his reading of the death of Little Nell.

But, thankfully, The Perkin’s innner Dr. Sigmund Schadenfreude is not one of them.

Rather will he draw the attention of good and faithfhful reader to the Fruit Gum reaction of The Excitable Boy of The Unionist Times to this week’s Calamity Janey Mack which landed at the front door of the Super Egos of Independent House.

By way of contrast to the Fruit Pastille reaction of the same Excitable Boy to last week’s Austentatious Stalk of the same IH.

Best, perhaps, the best way to bring this topic to a close is by purloining a phrase from the last line of The Excitable Boy’s inner Id in his homily of today:

-We don’t do outrage.

Quite.

Indeed, quiet ! youse down at the back of the class.

As these thingies tend to come (and go, if not grow) in threes, perhaps it is truly meat and dust to finish with a reference to another august institution upon which The Excitable Boy’s inner Ego left his FOT prints:

-The Abbey Theatre / (erm) Amharclann na Mainistreach.

The last item in their recently published programme for 2017 is a clear instance of keeping the very best wine till last:

-Two Pints.

To tour: performances in pubs across the country (sic).

Read on:

-Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, take the piss. They talk about their wives , their kids’ pets, their football teams. Two Pints distills the essence of Roddy Doyle’s comic genius.

Hmmm.

Wouldn’t have happened in The Excitable Boy’s authoritative tenure of office as the Artistic Fuehrer of the same House of Thespos. The use of the p-word, that is. The p-word ending in two s’s rather than just one s.

But it is the f-word in the press release which concerns us more here, being of more relevance to the topic du jour: that of the Hard approach, the Soft approach.

Which f for football word could it be that is namechecked here. ? A no-brainer, as they say in the Empah of the Empty Headed. Roddy Doyle, being the comic genius whose essence has been distilled into the two pints of the title, is of course, the Uber-Dubalin man.

We know this because he is not shy in wearing the blue gansey of his favourite football team. That would be the blue gansey of Dubalin, so? Well, no. As the National Theatre of the Free Southern Stateen is talking about f for football here, rather than b for bogball, the team du jour and indeed, team of tous des jours of Roddy Doyle is, of course, Chlelsea.

That will account for one of the Two Pints’ teams; it would require a Spoiler Alert if one were to state that, in all probabiltiy, the other team will turn out to be Crewe Alexander.

Hmmmm.

Haven’t they of late been having a spot of bother more commonly assumed to be the sole preserve of the RC Clergy? For which unpardonable transgression they were dutifully and suitably punished in the form of the unpardonable:

-Father Ted.

Hmmm.

Now that the RC Clergy have been given the old Fruit Gum treatment, perhaps the omens are sufficiently auspicious for the Footie Clubs of the Premiership to be given the same FG treatment. And as it was a Mainland tv station which did the honours the last time perhaps it is the turn of RTE to take the gig and the umbrage this time.

It ought to be a doddle. Considering we have the writing talent, Roddy Doyle; and also, the fact that the names of the two main characters were purloined (as an in-joke ) from the murky world of footballing turkeys :

-Ted McDougall.

The real T Mc D , during the 60s and 70s, scored for no less than a (gulp) score of clubs (ranging from Liverpool to Andover via the likes of Man U, West Ham, Budapest and Detroit) even as he picked up the Golden Boot along the way.

Note the prolific number of clubs footie players are transferred between; reminiscent, perhaps, of the clergy of a particular denomination being, erm, transferred between parish and parish?

Little wonder his Golden Boot was used for putting into the RC Clergy.

Now that the, erm, GB is on the other foot, The Perkin’s inner gherkin is only too happy to suggest a ready-made title for the new side-splitter of a Fruit Gum series:

-A Further Ted.

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