IT wasn’t the man he had travelled across the Atlantic to see. But when Taoiseach Enda Kenny yesterday found himself in the same Washington Hotel lobby as Duke Special he would have been forgiven for asking the Belfast songwriter for a rendition of his hit I Never Thought This Day Would Come.

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama will be told an “Irish welcome” awaits him if he accepts an invitation to visit Ireland when he meets Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the White House today.