Election manifesto season looms - Get ready for crescendos of aspiration

It must add to the gaiety of the nation that a prospective president has advocated Bunratty-esque famine villages with pop-up bacon and cabbage stalls, and flame-haired, coleen harpists to serenade tourists as they wrestle with glutenous, imported streaky bacon.

However, that gaiety must be tempered as that candidate has also advocated the death penalty. These excitements are, for the moment at least, confined to the minor game, the curtain-raiser election, but it cannot be too long more before senior captains have to offer their manifestos.