Excerpts from the secret diary of George Lee

THE secret diary of George Lee aged 46-and-three-quarters continues to record milestones.

“Hurrah for me! I finally made it onto the front bench! I ran in as soon as the doors opened for Taoiseach’s Questions and just sat there before anybody else got a chance. Enda looked a bit bemused when he saw me – but then what’s new?

“I did some colouring while he started shouting at the big gruff man across the way. It was just me and Enda for ages and ages, we were real buddies, then this blondie one – Lucinda Creighton they call her – flounced in reeking of Armani and ambition, I can see I’m gonna have to watch her, there’s only room for one diva on this side of the house, baby.

“Anyway, her and Enda had a right to-do at some party meeting recently, so it was all a bit chilly, but at least it meant she knew her place and sat on the row behind us, so it was still just me and Enda up front. It was great, like we were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, except, maybe if I was to compare myself to an historical figure it would probably be someone more like, oh I don’t know, Jesus? And Enda would probably be more like the birdie dance kid.

“But, apparently, Enda got so worked-up in the row with Lucinda he even said the f-word. I nearly said that word once at RTÉ, but Dobbo threatened he’d put me over his knee if I ever did it on air – they all got a bit sensitive after that time Anne Doyle went off like a docker with Tourettes syndrome live on the news.

“The grumpy bloke across the way is fond of the F-word as well, but he and Enda were both keeping a lid on things, probably because they know I have now descended from the Olympian mountain-top of RTÉ and pledged to heal the nation and single-handedly drive out the snakes of capitalism, so they are a bit in awe of me and that.

“It was all going great until that little big bully Richard Bruton came in and told me to get out of his seat. Ooooh, he was really cross and said I was being very bold.

“I was well upset, so I decided to punish them all by boycotting Leader’s Questions later on in the day. Yeah, let’s see them try and run a functioning parliamentary democracy without me in the room, see how far they get with that one.

“Richard said I was sulking, but he’s just jealous because I used to be secretary general of the UN, or a reporter on the telly, or whatever I was before the people demanded I saved them.

“I wasn’t sulking, I wasn’t, it’s sooo unfair! I was just making them suffer by having to do without my presence for half an hour – and it certainly seemed to work because they all pretended not to notice when I calmed down and walked back into the chamber.

“But by then, the so-called shadow cabinet had hogged the front bench, so I had to slip into the second row, but I made sure I sat right behind Richard and gave him a really hard stare.

“Then after all the trivial time-wasting about hospitals and schools and that stuff, the House finally got round to debating something of real importance – my office, or rather why I still don’t have one yet. The indignity!

“Enda really went off on one about it, bless him. He’ll do just fine in the top job until I’m ready to take over in the autumn – and guess who’s going to be made spokesperson for toilet cleaning in that little reshuffle, Richard.

“Anyway, I’m sleepy now and going to pop under my Sharon Ní Bheoláin duvet – it’s really tiring saving the world from itself and re-moulding it in my own image.”