Biking backwards to be first past the post in the local election race

IT WAS one of those pictures that made you laugh, then roll your eyes to heaven. Very definitely not the kind of shot a candidate-to-be would want taking up half a page in a local newspaper. The picture showed a man in a long formal overcoat. A very Fianna Fáil overcoat, no offence to Louis Copeland.

On his face, an expression of fierce concentration such as you might expect of a man doing complicated equations in his head. His bottom planted firmly on the handlebars of a bicycle he was riding backwards down a beach.

What, any political adviser might ask, was the point? What did this picture convey about a man who was planning to be a political candidate in the local elections that were, at that time, several months away?