Cowen is a dish much better served au naturel

BRIAN COWEN continued his summer in hiding yesterday – by addressing the Seanad.

The upper house is the perfect place to go if you don’t want anyone to take any notice of you.

It’s a bit like a very expensively funded day room in a retirement home for the politically aged.

Strangely, the Taoiseach resisted the temptation to shout at them like they were auld ones: “Oooo, it’s nippy outside isn’t it, dear? Yes, I’m the Prime Minister, No, really, I am! I’ve come to talk to you. Yes, then, you can have your nap before Home And Away comes on. You like Home And Away don’t you, dear? Yes, it’s one of your favourites...”

The Taoiseach’s only scheduled public appearance this week – the first of nine he and fellow TDs get to spend away from the Dáil this summer – saw him attend the upper House to talk about the North, which as (bad) luck would have it suddenly became relevant again with the eruption of rioting and violence the previous night.

The speech started off predictably enough: “blah, blah, condemnation, blah, blah resolve...” and Mr Cowen sounded as bored reading it as the audience looked listening to it.

Then something unusual happened, Mr Cowen concluded the prepared text and then spoke off the cuff for several minutes.

He suddenly sounded animated and engaged and spoke with eloquence and authority.

He said that the Good Friday Agreement had shown the two old enemies that “politics was for a better purpose” and they were now locked into a “common journey regardless of the destination”.

Mr Cowen seems to come alive when freed from the strait jacket of his script writers and should really release his inner Biffo more often if he is to stand any chance of continuing in office.

It was a similar story last autumn when he gave an impassioned address without notes, delivering the only memorable – or actually relevant – speech of his premiership.

However, this Government’s inability to get ahead of the news cycle was highlighted again by that event, as the only recording of it was done on an aide’s muffled tape recorder as no one was informed it would be a key event.

Now, of course, letting Mr Cowen go all natural may not always be a good idea given his love of salty language witnessed by the infamous “get those F**kers...” incident captured on the Dáil microphones. But a flesh and blood Brian is a far better option than the lifeless jargon-laden Brian we are so depressingly used to.

Mr Cowen even tried to make a virtue out of a necessity by stating the economic slump would bring the two economies on the island closer together.

Well, as his is just about the only Government west of Zimbabwe to think ramming-up VAT and income tax is the best way to get out of the recession, he has certainly given a massive boost to our Northern cousins as fleeced-out Southerners pour across the border for their booze and just about everything else.

Anyway, the senators were very excited to have a visitor and most of them even managed to stay awake for the address, which just leaves the question: where will Mr Cowen – seemingly intent on becoming the invisible man of Irish politics – pop up next?