Dog day afternoon for leader who hasn’t been in hiding

IT WAS a dodgy day for the Taoiseach to be seen receiving €1,000 in a bookies.

Thankfully for Mr Ahern Paddy Power did not deliver the stake for the charity wager in a briefcase, but electronically.

“I’ve not been in hiding!” a decidedly grumpy Bertie tersely announced as soon as he came out of hiding.

It must have just been a collective mirage then, when he bizarrely refused to take questions after his election launch and then disappeared for the rest of Sunday.

The low profile had certainly not improved his humour when he surfaced at Croke Park to angrily face down the latest sleaze allegations to swirl out of the now temporarily silent Mahon tribunal.

By the time he got to Paddy Power’s for the guide dog fundraiser bet, his PR team had obviously reminded him there was an election campaign on and he had to at least be seen to be nice to people, even reporters.

It was classic bounceback Bertie as he hugged voters and even came unnervingly close to kissing a cute little dog called Quando.

Though, in another dicey moment, it all came close to ending in tears as the inside of the tiny bookies bulged with cameramen, flunkies, journalists, guide dogs, very cross body guards and disgruntled looking regulars.

As photographers moved in to photograph photographers photographing a dog-hugging Taoiseach, the deafening melee was suddenly silenced with a loud thud as someone precariously perched atop a stool lost his footing. Everyone turned to look — even the guide dogs — then the shout went up “It’s only a snapper!” and we all turned back to Bertie and Quando as the scramble to touch the Taoiseach began again like some surreally cramped Mexican wave.

As everyone squeezed out of the tin-can-sized turf accountant’s, blinking into the sunlight, Quando looked strangely worried. Let’s hope the poor little puppy had not heard the story about the lamb Margaret Thatcher once famously kissed during an election stunt. It died within days.

Then Mr Ahern was off again to no less than a public question-and-answer session. Finally answers to questions!

But when the answers came they merely raised more questions.

Apparently, he called the election at dawn on a Sunday because he suddenly realised the two previous times the Dáil was dissolved while the president was abroad were emergency situations. If only someone had told him before.

So the answer was that the dash to the park in the dark was nothing to do with Mahon or bad polls.

Which begs the question: Just how stupid does he think this country is?