Joker Kenny’s flushes out success with toilet humour

THE look of uncertainty across Enda Kenny’s face suddenly gave way to relief. He’d done it at last. He’d said something funny and the realisation hit him like a train.

You could almost hear him thinking: “My God! People are actually laughing with me, not at me! Yes, I’m cool!”

Even the rougher boys on the Fianna Fáil benches were chuckling. Enda had gone from head nerd to one of the gang in a few seconds. This was the day things were going to change. No one was going to steal his dinner money, or flush his head down the Dáil toilets again. Oh no. He’d made it. Enda the humour extender was born.

Sure, he had to nick the lame joke from a dead US president, but Enda could not have looked more pleased with himself as he surfed the warm wave of approval for him sweeping around the chamber.

Even by Ronald Reagan’s standards it wasn’t a classic, but it did the job on a wet Wednesday in the Dáil, despite its scatological nature.

Wondering whether a tripling of the bill for the Health Minister’s special advisers to €666,000 represented value for money, Mr Kenny said: “This government is like a baby’s alimentary canal in that it has a huge appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”

In other words, the Government is full of something you would more usually find in Galway’s drinking water.

Thankfully, you won’t be catching Enda at any open mike nights at the local comedy club, but his interjection represented a masterclass in biting political satire compared with Labour deputy leader Joan Burton’s first outing at Leader’s Questions.

Standing in for Eamon Gilmore, Ms Burton had a golden opportunity to sweep away all those tired, sexist jibes about women being too worried about knitting and their appearance to run the country.

Go on Joan, you’ve got a major bus strike to hit the Government with — prove the misogynist bigots wrong, sister.

“It’s a rainy day out there and many women like me are having a bad hair day because there is no public transport,” she informed a perplexed looking Taoiseach.

This is a man who has steadfastly refused to take responsibility for the state of the health service, did she really expect him to feel guilty her Farah Fawcett-style flick wasn’t up to its usual standard?

Joan was clearly not best pleased with the way Bertie Ahern delicately brushed her hair aside, and she rose again to remind him the rain-ravaged women of north Dublin, many of whom were now sporting distressed tresses, were angry.

“Most people out there are not interested in a jet or a yacht, they would just like to see buses and trains and more Luas trams,” she told him.

Amazingly, Mr Ahern resisted the temptation to deliver yet another self-pitying rant about why he deserved a big boat and palace like his buddies Mr Bush and Mr Sarkozy.

Instead he pretended to misunderstand Joan’s concern at delays in the Transport 21 initiative, attempting ridicule with: “Deputy Burton asked about the Luas I promised. It opened about three years ago and 30 million people are travelling on it.”

Mr Ahern didn’t quite follow this by rolling his eyes to the ceiling and shrugging: “Birds, eh? You gotta love ’em,” in the style of a 1970s Sid James Carry-On character, but that was what he meant.

Enda was still giggling to himself about how great his own joke was, but Joan and her hair did not look amused.