Norris ready for the ‘kitchen heat’

PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Senator David Norris said he was prepared for the ‘kitchen heat’ of the campaign when questioned by reporters about the controversy over an interview with Helen Lucy Burke.

“I am very good at withstanding the heat, I have been there before. But I didn’t realise there was a celebrity chef thing, and I was going to have filthy language, plates, knives, crockery thrown at me, and tantrums all over the place,” he said.

“But I’ll get over that too and people will see there will be all kinds of nonsense going around and that this is another part of it. There is a lot of this stuff coming out and it’s all either misquoted, wrong or misunderstood.

“I’m not saying I wasn’t rather foolish to allow myself to be quoted in that situation by someone I knew only as a restaurant critic. I should have walked out. I should have done the rude thing said ‘sorry, that’s not the kind of questions I want to be asked’.

Mr Norris said he was told a presidential campaign can be the dirtiest campaign. He was speaking at the Tipperary International Peace Award ceremony.

Managing director of Special Olympics Europe Mary Davis, who has also entered the Áras race, said she hoped the campaign would not be a dirty one.