Ahern proves a hit on YouTube

BERTIE Ahern has followed in the unlikely footsteps of Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton by gaining international internet fame via a homemade video portraying him in a shameless light.

Thankfully, the YouTube clip of the Taoiseach is merely vulgar — featuring his self-pitying obsession with money — and does not stray into the obscene territory which so boosted the notoriety of Ms Anderson and Ms Hilton.

In echoes of this week’s extraordinary Dáil outburst in which he claimed his €310,000 salary left him “poverty stricken” compared with other world leaders, Mr Ahern bemoans the fact he cannot buy some of the “smashing houses” he has seen on his way to the event filmed.

“In my area you couldn’t buy them — not on a Taoiseach’s salary anyway,” he says.

It is unclear when the video was shot, but Mr Ahern did not find the cost of Drumcondra houses a laughing matter during cross-examination at the Mahon Tribunal in September.

However, evidence given to the tribunal that £30,000 intended to refurbish the Taoiseach’s home had been stashed overnight in a hotel wardrobe did bring an air of comedy to proceedings.

Let’s hope internet fame brings better luck for Mr Ahern than his notorious peers. Ms Anderson was last seen being grappled to the ground in the Borat movie, and Ms Hilton spent time in jail. The clip is at: tinyurl.com/2k2pnh.