I’ve just had a brainwave: Stephen Collins could make a fortune as a stand-up comic. No, really. You start to read his column with laughter the last thing on your mind. After the first ten words you’re plunged into a glorious fit of giggling.
Like Stephen in The Irish Times last Friday. Under the sober headline ‘Irish unity is a distracting and dangerous mirage’ it takes Stephen only a paragraph to hit us with his tickling stick:
“[Talk of unity] is a dangerous cul de sac that is provoking an escalation of tension in the North”. Maybe it’s the originality of the cul-de-sac metaphor or his implicit warning that talk of a united Ireland will cause dangerous unrest, but a sucession of guffaws have to be stifled.
Until a couple of paragraphs later when he had me rolling around my hearth:
“The two outstanding features of the[Irish Times] poll are that a clear majority of people in the North do not want a united Ireland, while a substantial majority south of the Border have a frivolous and unrealistic aspiration for something to which they have given no serious thought.”
It’s a bit like “I think carefully before making important decisions, you dither and hop about like a man in need of a toilet break.” A “clear majority in the north say No to Irish unity, a bunch of “frivolous and unrealistic’ idiots in the south say Yes to something they haven’t given any “serious thought”.
It takes a worried man to sing a side-splitting song. Your pain, Stephen, is our gain. Thank you for your service to hilarity.
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