Little Lady nods to Big Fella as duke eyes drink

THE Big Fella from West Cork and the Little Lady from across the water quietly battled to dominate the Taoiseach’s office in their own way.

Indeed, the shadow of Michael Collins fell heavy throughout the second day of Queen Elizabeth’s visit, first making its mark in a brooding oil and canvas hanging high on the wall between Enda Kenny and the British monarch as she was received at Government Buildings.

One of Mr Kenny’s first acts in the hours after he became Taoiseach 10 weeks ago was to remove the old painting of de Valera which had previously been lodged above the sumptuous fireplace by his desk to make room for the more Fine Gael-friendly figure of the former IRA director of intelligence.

As a signatory of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty which partitioned the island, the threads of Mr Collins’s life work are woven tightly through the national story — and deep into the itinerary of this royal tour.

His ghost was there again at Croke Park where British troops had indiscriminately massacred 14 people in the crowd in reprisal for the orders Collins gave for the assassination of a dozen government agents the same day, Bloody Sunday, in 1920.

The Queen’s presence at the stadium was almost as startling as the sight of the ceremonial commander-in-chief of the British armed forces bowing her head in respect for fallen members of the Fenian Brotherhood and the old IRA at the memorial to the nationalist dead 24 hours earlier.

But if the whirlwind symbolism and pace of the tour left the royal couple ready for a stiff drink, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had earlier resisted the offer of a “perfectly pulled pint” at the Guinness gravity bar.

Her majesty was never likely to go for a creamy draft of porter as her favoured tipple is gin and Dubonnet with ice and a slice of lemon, but Prince Phillip hesitated longingly before moving away.

However, it looked like the couple could have done with some fortification when they were then subjected to Ryan Tubridy talking at them like they were a couple of auld ones who had just shuffled in from the OAP home as he showed then the view of Dublin.

“We’ll have a look at Farmleigh — where you’re staying,” he told the duke as if he imagined that fact had already slipped the elderly couple’s memory.

The ubiquitous RTÉ host once claimed to be related to royalty after appearing on Who Do You Think You Are? but on more than one occasion the stony look her majesty and the duke had in response to his machinegun speed whitterings seemed to be more like: “Who the hell do you think you are?”

It must have felt like the day the royals were trapped between the Big Fella and Mr Small Talk.