President steals the show at Bloom finale

LOOKING more in terror than in bloom, President Mary McAleese stole the show at a Dublin flower festival.

Who needs multi-million euro hanging gardens, when you’ve the president’s array of unusual facial expressions for free? By turns looking startled, scared, bemused and bewildered, Mrs McAleese turned heads at the Bloom festival in Phoenix Park.

Maybe she was looking so shocked because the news had finally reached her of the rumours swirling around Leinster House that her husband Martin’s elevation to the Seanad was a precursor to him running for her job as a cross-party unity candidate in November?