Make a date to spend year with the Bachelor Pint Pullers of Ireland

THEY are young, free and most definitely single and for your convenience ladies, they have been compiled in neat calendar format for you to peruse at your leisure.

Ireland’s hottest barmen are the latest in a long line of quirky calendar photo-shoots set to take the world by storm.

The Bachelor Pint Pullers of Ireland calendar is the brainchild of US husband and wife team Joanne Gray and Will Cook. More than 10,000 copies of the 2003 edition will be distributed to shops in Ireland and the US, where demand is already high.

The couple, fresh from their successful calendar series in the US of the lobster fishermen and women of Maine, toured Ireland last year to capture some of the finest specimens of Irish manhood working in bars the length and breadth of the country.

Mr July, or 22-year old Ritchie Fitzsimons from Birr, Co Offaly, has been the butt of some major slagging in his hometown, particularly from some of the regulars at Whelans bar who have put his glossy picture up behind the bar.

“I’m getting an awful slagging about it, even on the hurling field when I’m training, but it’s a bit of craic,” he said.

“Mr July, that’s all I’m getting now. I’ll never hear the end of this.”

So is he ready for the swarms of American lovelorn ladies lusting for love, rushing to catch a glimpse of his good looks or snare him for good?

“I’ll have no problem dealing with them. I’m wide open to any offers,” he told the Brenda Power show, “even nuns.”

Barry Mulligan from Mayo, soon to be forever known as Mr May, said he never thought he would be a calendar pin-up boy, and is not quite ready to be inundated with marriage proposals from women desperate to get their hands on a brawny Ballyhaunis man.

“I’m definitely not ready for that. I’m already getting the barricades out. I’m glad I did it though, it’s a bit of fun,” the 33-year-old said.

No longer referred to by his friends as John O’Connor, Mr December from Youghal, Co Cork, seems to be having the most fun from his brush with celebrity. Mr December said he was “kind of kidnapped” into having his picture taken. “We were just chatting at the bar, but it was two hours before any calendar was mentioned,” he said.

Since he found out he made it to the calendar, people in his local, the Anchor bar in Youghal, don’t call him by his first name anymore, just by his month.

While he thinks it’s all a bit of fun, his son Oisín is not so impressed. “He now thinks I’m even more uncool,” John said.

Joanne Gray and Will Cook, now living in Ireland, got the idea from the Lisdoonvarna Bachelor Festival and decided to invest all their money into printing a calendar featuring the lobstermen of Maine.

“The calendar proved so successful they went back to Maine last year and did another calendar featuring the lobsterwomen.

So watch out ladies, they are planning to do a calendar on the barmaids of Ireland for 2004

Anyone interested can contact: [e-mail].