Paisley’s gift of the gab might be pure Blarney

IAN PAISLEY’s gift for fire and brimstone oratory is well known and he may just have picked it up in Blarney.

He revealed that yesterday wasn’t his first trip to Cork, for as a 22-year-old he toured the county in “a little Austin car”. It must have been quite a squeeze as they don’t call him ‘Big Ian’ for nothing.

“We went to Blarney, but I didn’t kiss the stone. There were so many people kissing it I didn’t like the look of it, so I touched it instead,” said the north’s First Minister.

Yesterday he took in some of the sights of Cobh, where he was a guest of the local Cobh Chamber.

To a lot of people’s surprise, the Free Presbyterian minister paid a visit to the Catholic St Colman’s Cathedral, where he spent several minutes admiring its architecture. The visit may indicate how much he has mellowed, as some rather astonished onlookers recounted that in 1988 Paisley was ejected from the European Parliament when he interrupted a speech by Pope John Paul II and denounced him as the antichrist.

Ironically, the Pope’s secretary at the time was Bishop John Magee, who is now in Cobh. However, the bishop wasn’t around yesterday when the 82-year-old made his unexpected visit.

Mr Paisley and his wife, Eileen, were then taken on the town’s Titanic Trail by its creator Michael Martin, who is vice-president of the local chamber.

Accompanied by a heavy Garda presence, the couple visited the Lusitania Memorial in the town square, and the former White Star Line and Cunard offices, synonymous with the Titanic’s last port of call in 1912. They then visited Old Church cemetery where many of the 1,198 victims of the Lusitania sinking are buried.

“He thought it was a terrible tragedy. He also commented on the other graves nearby, many of which belong to soldiers killed in World War I,” said Mr Martin.

“He commented on the sacrifice made by so many Irish people in that war. His wife was very interested in the history of Cobh, as was he.”

Mr Paisley attended a drinks reception in his honour in the Commodore Hotel later in the evening. A teetotaller, he has called alcohol, and particularly stout, “the devil’s buttermilk”. And there was plenty of buttermilk drank by the hundreds attending the Cobh and Harbour Chamber 50th anniversary dinner.

His speech was more akin to a sermon, peppered with parables. He said after retiring next month he was going to write a book.

Jokingly he added that it might be best to release it after he’d gone to heaven, because it could cause such a furore.