No Love Lost

"TOMMY!" I shrieked to Tommy my cat, "What a brilliant show Gerry and Sean put on today!" "Smashing!" cried Tommy. "You would never think the two lads hated each other's guts. I was talking recently to Mickey Bradley," said Tommy, "at a flea market. He was buying and I was selling. And Mickey Bradley told me he has to search the two lads every morning before they go into the studio, to keep them from killing each other." "Can that be true?" I cried. "You know what a fibber Mickey Bradley is--He goes round Stroke City telling everyone he was in the Undertones." "Be that as it may," said Tommy, "But Mickey Bradley told me in the past six months, he has confiscated, guns, knives, small hatchets, stun grenades, darts, batons, Acme, anvils, pikes, dirks and catapults from the two amigos." "Gun powder and buttermilk!" I yelled. "What an example to set for the little hoodies, who are suffering terribly with BO during the warm weather." Tommy sprayed a tin of silence around the room. After it began to wear off Tommy said, "Where did that Somalian radio station go? You know the one that used to play country 'n' western music? The Somalians really dig Hugo Duncan and Pio McCann." "That station was shut down," I said. "The Somalian authorities found out that it was a pirate radio station." Tommy looked at me and said, "How many people in Northern Ireland will get that joke?" "Not many," I replied, "But they'll be rolling in the aisle in Cullybackey." "Ah, Cullybackey!" said Tommy, "A hot spot for slap-stick, satire and every niche and nuance of comedy." "Did you know Tommy?" I said, "That in the middle of the square in Cullybackey, there is a life size bronze statue of Billy Dainty. And underneath on the plinth it says, "FOR MAKING US LAUGH." "That must bring a lot of tourists to Cullybackey" said Tommy. "Not really," I replied. "You see the man who made the sculpture was visually challenged and the statue of Billy Dainty is the dead spit of--Mussolini!" "Crikey!" yelled Tommy, "Old Benito El Duce himself." "Got it in one, my fine feathered friend," I said. "And the tourists, especially the American tourists, think that Cullybackey is the last outpost of Fascism left in Europe." Tommy took up the stance of a statesman and said "Yes, say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains run on time. There he was, every morning brushing leaves off the line with a brush. I wonder what happened to Mussolini?" said Tommy. "I'm not quite sure," I said. "The last I heard he was hanging round Rome at the end of the war." "You can't keep a good man down." said Tommy. "Poor Billy Dainty has passed on," I said. "There he was in his local pub, being his usual jovial self. "Lads" he yelled. "Lads, did you ever hear the one about the.......?" Then he gave a gurgle, shuddered all over and fell down dead." Tommy wiped a tear from his eye with a table tennis bat and said, "We shall never see Billy again." "No, we will not," I replied, "And we will never hear the cracker of a joke he was going to tell either."

All this and more have I seen in the green room of Hearts and Minds, where a shirt-sleeved Noel Thompson was cleaning the blood off the walls with undiluted Jeyes Fluid.

But none of the blood was John Hume's. John only spills his sweat. Sound man Johnnie!.