O’Donoghue fails to strike a chord as rocking minister

THERE he was, our doughty Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, out standing in his own field.

Yet John O’Donoghue, the rock of Caherciveen, looked decidedly sheepish as he made like Bryan Adams on the grounds of Muckross House in Killarney on Monday.

It was all part of a bizarre publicity stunt to generate media coverage for the town’s Summerfest next June.

The Canadian rock star is the headline event for the month-long festivities.

The minister wielded the guitar like a hurley and, pictorially at least, he seemed to be playing a few chords.

The only thing was it happened to be an electric guitar and there wasn’t a plug in sight.

The photograph of the rocking minister appeared in yesterday’s Irish Examiner and generated huge interest.

The Marian Finucane show even sent out an APB to listeners, offering a €100 voucher for someone to dream up a suitable caption.

“We got an incredible response,” said a spokeswoman for the show. “People were really taken with the whole thing.”

The idea for a caption contest came from the show’s presenter, the effervescent Fergus Sweeney. He is filling in this week for Marian Finucane.

“He looks like a big man who has been asked by his wife to hold her handbag while she is in the changing rooms,” said Fergus, clearly relishing his week of hosting the show.

“He is saying ‘I can hold my wife’s handbag but I hope to God none of the lads see me’,” said Fergus, prompting dozens of entries to the competition.

There were two winners of the impromptu competition and they both got a voucher for €100. David O’Brien offered: “It could be worse - they could have caught me on the fiddle.”

The other winner was Leo O’Reilly’s: “Being a minister, I knew I would have to pull strings but I never expected I would have to bloody pluck them.”

Maybe rock guitar just isn’t the minister’s thing which probably explains why Mr O’Donoghue’s attempts to play D-sharp major ended up looking very much FF-flat minor.