A FEW years ago, I interviewed Trevor Sargent and put it to him that the Green Party had gradually come in from the margins to become more populist and more politically palatable to potential partners. No way, he responded.

I’M sorry but I know that lately we’ve been forcing-feeding Bertie on you like Brussels sprouts on a reluctant nine year old.

FIANNA Fáil is almost a unique phenomenon in world politics. In every election for well over 70 years, it has been returned as the largest party.

FOR 18 months, when a series of opinion polls showed the Government parties doing badly, the reaction from Fianna Fáil ministers was predictable.

IT was July, probably around the mid to late 1970s. My mother piled us children into the car, drove down to the pier in An Spidéal in Galway to buy a few freshly caught salmon from the trawlers and half-deckers as they returned.

IT’S often been said — and never more than in the last month — that Bertie Ahern is a lucky general. By this they mean that when his anorak was being given its Teflon coating, they laid it on thick and fast.

IN between all the empty debate and petty disputes and rows and static and scandal and point-scoring and personality disputes and constituency infighting, you get rare reminders politics can still concern itself with — to paraphrase Otto von Bismarck — the art of the possible.

POLITICS has evolved so much in this country that if you want to get ahead in public life, all you need to do is embroil yourself in a spot of bother.

AT the crucial moment of their investigation into the Watergate scandal, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein told Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee that Deepthroat had confirmed the conspiracy ran to the highest levels of the White House.

HOW does a Taoiseach shoot himself in the foot?