A day of two Biffos and Enda’s live gig

THE searing heat and dust storms swirling through the white tent city gave the National Ploughing Championships the look of a refugee camp as Brian Cowen descended from the skies in his helicopter.

But the Taoiseach was not here to hand out food aid, he was here to pat bullocks. The first to feel Mr Cowen’s smack of firm government was Maximus in the Charolais tent.

Maximus seemed blase about meeting the political elite and certainly behaved better than the heifer next to him. She showed her disdain for the paparazzi melee the Taoiseach had tossed her into, by letting out the most enormous addition to Ireland’s greenhouse gas pollution as soon as Mr Cowen had slipped away.