Brawler Brian shaping up to be a natural leader

YOU never know which Brian Cowen out are going to meet on any given day — the indolent clerk or the guy who’s surreptitiously sneaked into the phone booth to slip on his Super Biffo outfit.

Yesterday as he pranced athletically onto the stage at Fianna Fáil headquarters, we knew that it was Brian Brawl and not Brian Drawl who turned up for the gig.

And his Mission Impossible was this: BertieGate was still dragging on. FF were faring as well in the polls as the Irish Eurovision entry. Every other trick that FF tried had either fallen flat (pensions and stamp duty) or had been sidelined by BertieGate (the FF manifesto). He needed to turn it all around.