Cool Brian bigs up his Appetite for street cred

IT’S a long way from Mrs Flannery’s Folk Club in Tullamore to the Highway to Hell for Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who had teenagers around the country cringing yesterday when he tried to get down with the youth, talking music and his preference for Guns ‘N’ Roses over AC/DC.

Hot on the heels of his promise to improve communication and connect with the people, the man, who once smoked a spliff as a student, climbed on to the 2FM roadcaster in Drogheda and tried to recover his inner street cred.

But any attempts to speak the lingo of the youth of Ireland were about as successful as Jedward addressing a conference of economists on the subject of subordinated debt.

Teenagers tuned in to catch the sounds of Dizzee Rascal rapping Hold ya Mouf or Wot U On instead were treated to the mumbling “aiight” of the Taoiseach, whose political speak and economic jargon was a whole new language.

“I remember years ago in my home town of Tullamore there was a thing called Mrs Flannery’s Folk Club. Basically it was a small little corner of a small bar of a small hotel. That was the facility. It was a great unique atmosphere but it wasn’t a commercially viable proposition in the long term,” he said. Poor Mrs Flannery.

“Music is an important antidote to a lot of the stress-filled days that people like I have to pursue,” he told the youth audience, after launching the National Guitar Festival in Drogheda.

And they should take advantage of the many new music venues opening up around the country which, he said “give people the opportunity to enjoy a night’s entertainment and basically have something other than the concerns of day-to-day requirements”.

Despite beginning to sound as confusing as them, Mr Cowen said he would not go to see Jedward “no matter how bad things get”, adding that “everything is an acquired taste. My music tastes are more of the time in my 20s and 30s rather than up to date”.

Cowen was more of a Paul Brady and Chieftains fan in his time and particularly liked the “electrification that came with the folk idiom”.

Then his words became more confusing than a Dizzee Rascal rap remixed with a Jedward interview when the Taoiseach retreated into his lingo of political jargon and techno-economic-speak.

“Whilst we have big problems in the economy and all of that, people’s life is more than just the economy, it’s more than just your job for those who are in work. People have a wider cultural need, whether you’re in a recession or whether the economy is striving ahead at 6% growth rates,” he said.

At this stage, DJ Will Leahy must have become concerned that bored teenagers were tuning out and declared: “Just in case you think you have made a mistake you haven’t switched on the News at One, I’m definitely not Sean O’Rourke. The Taoiseach is here with us in the Roadcaster!”

And so the Taoiseach had a choice of hearing guitar music from AC/DC or Guns ‘N’ Roses.

Trying to avoid AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, Mr Cowen chose Guns ‘N’ Roses.

The broadcaster quite kindly chose Sweet Child of Mine, resisting the more appropriate choice of Appetite for Destruction.