After Che Guevara, who is next to be on a stamp?

I WENT into the post office and they were gone. Completely. Che Guevara had sold out, writes Colm O’Regan

Not for the first time in his death. I think the pinnacle of Che Guevara merchandise was when he was on T-shirts in Penneys. Although, in fairness, the T-shirts were probably made in Vietnam, so there was a certain solidarity between countries invaded by America. This time, it was Che Guevara stamps, marking the 50th anniversary of his death at the hands of Bolivian soldiers.

While the debate rages about whether he should be on a stamp or not, I prefer to discuss who is next. I don’t mean who is next to be executed by the Bolivians, but who is next to be on a stamp.

The first obvious person is the man who saw more stamps than a Late Late Show postal-quiz giant crate sifter: Arthur Murphy, presenter of Mailbag. He has been back on radio in the last while, but, as yet, no telly. There’s no substitute for a letter read out on TV. And a new Mailbag would be a pleasing antidote to modern telly. With its stripped-down simplicity, an Ireland’s Own graphic design style on set, the bearderati would love it. Two letter readers, holding up the letter, but, really, they’re reading it from the auto-cue. And letters only, no emails, both to force people to write letters again and to entice the demographic who are likely to spot that Pierce Brosnan wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. And any letters with a hint of post-modern irony would automatically be excluded.

Next up for a stamp is our version of the unknown soldier: The Man Who Fell On The Ice On The News. He was a symbol of lots of things — falling, ice, people who claimed the snow that year was a rebuttal to global warming (people who don’t know the difference between climate and weather), but, also, he was a symbol of a dark time. We were all walking along, minding our own business, and then, suddenly, the cold subprime winds blew and we were all forehead down on the pavement of life, with the whole world watching us go viral.

In the same vein, we have to commemorate another terrible fate that has befallen so many people in this country. The terrible potato curse that has brought many to their knees and still haunts the land. I’m talking, of course, of The Potato Wedge On The Floor Of The Deli Area. At last count, approximately 4,000 people have slipped on potato wedges and sued the supermarket for ‘big money’. It could be part of a general personal-injury claim series, with stamps depicting neck braces and He Who Must Not Be Named representing defamation (Once ‘legal’ had checked it out, of course). We wouldn’t want An Post getting a solicitor’s letter, not even if it had one of the new stamps. We are an agriculural country and now farming is fashionable. Young people take selfies of themselves in front of round bales. Machinery like Transformers stalks the land. But before the birth of cool, there was Big Bertha: the oldest cow in the Guinness Book of Records. Every so often, throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, she would appear on television with her familiar, brindled pattern. She was 48 when she died and had 39 offspring. So, not too dissimilar a life to what Irish women had foisted on them for most of our history.

Long before there was Pint Baby, Big Bertha was another ordinary decent celebrity drinker in Ireland. She used to get whiskey, before leading the St Patrick’s Day parade in her village, to steady her nerves. Who among us wouldn’t take the same approach? Arthur Murphy, fallen heroes, public liability claims, and an old cow — it’s what Che would have wanted.