The harmless guy in the pink shirt takes the hit when his halo slips

THE night Mick Wallace announced, on Vincent Browne’s TV programme, that he was morphing into a politician, I was seated immediately to his left at the big table.

In advance of going into studio, whispers in the make-up room in TV3 suggested that Vincent had a Big Scoop. Mick was going to Announce on the programme that very night. But shhhh, you’re not supposed to know. Nobody’s supposed to know.

“Who’s Mick?” I asked, trying to get a purchase on the magnitude of what was happening.

“Mick Wallace,” someone said, as if no other Mick were possible. As if Mick Clifford, Mick McCarthy, Mick Hanley, Mick Flavin, and Mick Byrne didn’t exist. This Mick was the defining Mick, and I’d never heard of him.

“He’s running,” someone said, putting their finger to their lips.

I figured, at that point, it might not be a good idea to query what exactly he was running. Could have been a business or a marathon or a poker game, for all I knew, but then, when it came to this definitive Mick, it was self-evident that I knew the sum total of nothing and was going to have to wing it.

Somebody muttered the word “developer” in a way that sheared it free of all negative connotations. This man in the pretty combination of pink T-shirt and white hair was a developer? Who would have thought a developer would ever have so positive an effect on the presenter’s mood? Because Vincent seemed to be in great humour altogether.

But then, you never know, when Vincent gets into high good humour, whether it’s because he has a really interesting guest or because he has road-kill on the panel, ready for a good chew, and there’s always the possibility the road-kill is you.

Vincent in good humour is as fascinating as meeting a boa constrictor that can purr. Worthy of scientific study. From a distance.

Not that Mick Wallace looked like shaping up to be either an interesting guest or road-kill. He seemed pleasant, if a bit under -informed about how the political system worked. He didn’t seem noticeably up to speed on the stories of the day either, although you probably don’t need to concentrate on the stories of the day if you’re about to become the story of the day, as he was, by running for the Dáil in the general election in Wexford.

Just making all the tired old noises about changing the system and bringing new blood and fresh thinking to politics is enough, on such a night.

He wasn’t joining a political party, he confirmed. He was going to do it all on his own, so he was.

And so he did, greatly helped by the amused hands-off attitude of media. It was as if he was a candidate running for a job as mascot, rather than TD. Everybody smiled on his incoherencies and let him off any hook that looked like coming near to him. Wasn’t he a nice fella, all the same? Wouldn’t he be fun to have in Leinster House? Sort of the joker in the pack, you know? Sure, don’t we have an oversupply of guys with political philosophies? Isn’t it time we had someone in the Dáil with a big hippie head on him?

AT a time when anybody who had ever developed as much as a shed came under intense scrutiny, Mick Wallace came under no scrutiny at all. His shrinking status as a millionaire was sympathetically referred to, his past status as a true millionaire alluded to with admiration. Never mind he had become a millionaire based on a solid family business, at a time when a reasonably copped-on gerbil could get rich. He was a brand. The nice fella in the pink T-shirt with all the hair. Harmless.

Nobody checked back on magazines like Business & Finance, where, it has been established in recent days, he had given an interview about his planned use of a hitman to collect debts owed to him. Even if they had, the chances are that it would have been presented to him on TV as an endearing bit of colour, rather than a detailed statement of intent. The Halo Effect was in full glow over Mick’s shining white head. He could be excused for stuff that would have nailed the head of a Denis O’Brien or an Ivor Callely to a door, seal-fashion. Because (all together now) Mick was harmless.

Combine the Halo Effect with local hero status, and you get the Sean Quinn Syndrome, which exculpates the central figure from any wrongdoing because, well, because he was into the local football team and gave employment and never got above himself and was (cue chorus) harmless.

In that context, lying to the Revenue Commissioners is understandable, if somewhat shortsighted. Mick says he did it because he genuinely believed he could pay off the VAT bill he underestimated by a million or so. Which rather begs the question as to why he didn’t sit down with the Revenue, lay out the details of his income and out-goings, and do a deal with them.

They have had a fair amount of practice, in recent years, in dealing with developers who got themselves into trouble by overreaching.

Mick doesn’t seem to have thought through the consequences of his sizeable fib. Assuming the rising economic tide lifted all gerbils and — in the next decade or so — he found himself awash with cash all over again, it was unlikely that the Revenue would have been warmly welcoming if he turned up on their doorstep to say “Lads, I misled ye just a bit — to the tune of a million or so — a couple of years back, but I know ye won’t take it personally and here’s the money”. Especially since the company which would have had to generate the money had gone down the tubes.

But all of that fades into soft focus compared with Mick’s threatened hit-man use. Lest you missed it, Mick told B&F, back in 2005, that when another developer didn’t seem ready to pay him money they owed him, he took action.

“I knew of a guy who made a living out of a gun,” he told the magazine.

Hell of a claim, for a harmless Wexford lad, to “know a guy who made a living out of a gun”. Unless, of course, the guy was out in the fields at dawn gunning down bunnies to supply whatever butchers currently sell rabbits in large numbers. Although, as Mick went on, rabbits didn’t seem to figure in his threats to the developer, which proved to be remarkably effective, albeit, it would seem, at the cost of double-crossing the hit-man. Mick leaked his hit-man access to a colleague of the debtor, who instantly saw the light and paid up. Mick’s account says nothing of the hit- man’s attitude to being excluded from this golden circle.

Now, here’s the rub. If you’re a TD who goes bankrupt, you lose your job.

But if — according to your own words — you make creative use of the services of friendly hit-men, the Dáil has no protocol for firing you.

Interesting democratic values we have in this country.