Are ye right there, Michael

MICHAEL McDowell is Irish politics answer to the heroine of Arabian Nights, the young woman who stays her own execution by telling the wife-slaying king an even more incredible yarn every night for 1,001 nights.

Whenever political demise is imminent for the PDs, it is to this demure yet enterprising figure that his desperate colleagues turn. In 2002, he stuffed his catapult in his back pocket, shinned up a lamp post and took a couple of pot-shots at the bully boys of Fianna Fáil.

This time round he has regaled us on a daily basis with a sensational tale of exploits and derring-do. He's got a good three months out of Sinn Fein.