Erindipity Column No 2

Sunday Tribune

Longest distance
sailed down the
Amazon in a bath tub

MICHAEL Flatley may be light on his
feet but he can never be accused of
mincing – least of all his words.
Last week the all-man, superheroboxing-
champ dancer caused ripples
on either side of the Atlantic when he
launched a broadside on the new
Ireland. He told the US Ireland Forum
that:
A:) the Celtic Tiger is NOT dead
B:) we are in danger of losing our
identity and
C:) we need to shed the old image of
Ireland being a land of drunken
leprechauns urinating outdoors on St
Patrick’s Day.
Now, some may say this leprechaun
remark is ironic coming from a man
who looks like he bathes in Lucozade
and makes his money from dressing
up as an oily Celtic warrior, flailing his
legs all over the shop. (The image is all
the more arresting when you consider
that he does this while fingering his
flute.)
Erindipity does not subscribe to this
view. Michael Flatley is a National
Treasure who promotes our culture
worldwide. He is also right: we need to
ditch the leprechaunism and appear
more dynamic while retaining our
Irishness. That quirky, eccentric,
adventurous quality that made him,
for example, the...
Fastest tap dancer in the world
When he recorded a phenomenal
speed of 35 taps per second in 1998 at
the age of 39.
His remarkable feat with taps got
us thinking about a number of other
Irish people with unusual connections
to bathroom items. Two that spring to
mind are Mr Ahern and the Bertie
‘Bowl’ stadium project that went
down the toilet in 2002, and ‘Lino’
Ritchie and his Finglas flooring
showroom. James Joyce is another
one: he was the first writer to put the
word ‘loo’ in print. (Short for
‘Waterloo’, in Ulysses). There’s also
Dubliner Robert Dowling and the
bath he sailed down the Amazon.
Please do not adjust your glasses,
you did read that correctly. We’ll come
to Rob presently, but let us introduce
you first to Violet Jessop, who is the...

Most unSinkable woman ever

In 1903, Irishwoman Violet set sail for
England to become a stewardess on
the White Star Line. This career path
was to lead to her being forever
chained to the word ‘sink’.
During her years at sea, Violet was
present at two maritime disasters and
one close call. By a strange
coincidence, the ships she was
working on at the time were the ‘three
sisters’ of Harland and Wolff’s
‘Olympic Class’.
On 20 September 1911, Violet was
on board the Olympic when it collided
with the warship, HMS Hawke, off the
Isle of Wight. The latter was nearly
capsized and the Olympic was
seriously damaged, but miraculously
no one was killed.
The following April she transferred
to the Olympic’s sister ship which was
(cue drum roll) – the Titanic, which
sank mid-Atlantic on 14 April 1912.
Violet survived and word spread of
her habit of being on board boats that
crashed. Therefore, it must have been
a case of ‘brown trouser time’ for the
sea dogs of the Brittannic when they
saw her boarding their ship in 1916.
True to form, on 21 November, the
ship struck a mine in the Aegean, with
the loss of 28 lives. Once again Violet
found herself in a lifeboat thanking
her good luck – until she realised her
small vessel was being drawn towards
the ship’s propellers.
She leapt out of the boat and was
immediately sucked under the
surface, banging her head on the keel.
Was this the end of our intrepid
heroine? Was she sinkable after all?
Nope. Violet still refused to sink and
was saved by another lifeboat. She
went on to live to the venerable age of
84.
While Violet Jessop’s life story
revolved around sinks, Robert
Dowling’s will forever be synonymous
with bath tubs.
Huge-hearted Rob can boast that
he travelled the ...

Longest distance ever
in a bath tub

In May 2006 the Donabate man set
sail from the town of Iquitos, Peru, in
a plastic bath. His plan was to travel
single-handedly down the 5,471km
Amazon – through Colombia and
Brazil – to raise money for Temple
Street children’s hospital. His
singular craft – should you ever wish
to attempt this yourself – was housed
in a steel frame supported by
stabiliser tanks and powered by a
15hp outboard engine. But let’s not get
carried away with the technical
details – this was still a bath and the
only thing preventing his bottom from
getting nibbled by piranhas and water
snakes etc.
The bath idea came to Rob 25 years
earlier when he was chatting to
friends about what mad thing they all
wanted to do before they die. Usually,
these type of conversations never
make it past closing time, but with a
lot of planning and a large dollop of his
own cash, he was on his way.
The journey, undertaken with
tinned food, a GPS unit, satellite
photos and maps, started off well. The
Peruvians had taken a shine to our
naval hero and he enjoyed a relatively
trouble-free run until he reached
Colombia. There he had to contend
with the threat of running foul of
ruthless rebel group, Farc. Travelling
as quietly as he could by night, he
stole by their campfires and
continued into Brazil.
It was here, unfortunately, that his
plans went down the plug hole. But it
wasn’t a rebel or a hungry fish that
ended Rob’s journey – it was a
bureaucrat.
After travelling 804kms down the
river he was told that he couldn’t
continue because he didn’t have a
licence for his bathtub.
Picture the scene: Irishman in a
bath accosted by little man with a
clipboard and a peaked cap:
Rob: “Morning.”
Bureaucrat: “Morning.”
R: “Looks like rain.” (Smiles).
B (snootily): “Well, you are in a rain
forest. Do you have a licence for this...”
(waves clipboard in direction of bathtub)
“...vehicle? Sub-section C,
paragraph One of the Amazonian
river code clearly states that all
motorised bath-tubs must be licensed.
It’s the law, you know.”
R: “No.”
B: “Would you mind stepping out of
the vehicle, sir?”
R: “Yes, I would mind.”
B: “Why?”
R: “Because we’re in the middle of a
river...”
And so ended – if not exactly in
those words – Rob’s journey.
However, the adventure doesn’t
stop there. He is currently making
plans to return and retrieve his tub
from Colombia and is looking for
funds (Michael Flatley are you
reading this?). He’s also planning his
next trip down the Amazon to raise
funds for disadvantaged South
American children – on a jet-ski.
Rob was presented with a ‘Best of
Irish Award’ by Bertie Ahern for
promoting the nobler side of our
Hibernian nature. He then dropped
off the nation’s radar. Erindipity
believes it’s now time to honour him
properly. Dublin City Council should
erect a statue of him on O’Connell
Street and we could nickname it ‘Roba-
Dub-in-a-Tub’.
Michael ‘Taps’ Flatley is bound to
approve of any move to applaud such
a true Irishman. If we had more
people like Rob we could easily shed
the ‘urinating-leprechauns’ image.
After all, who wants to be known as
the ‘wee’ people?

Erindipity Column No 4

No 4: Best reason for
being told to hump off

TO mark the launch of Erindipity Rides
Again (Mentor Books,€15), we’ve
decided to deviate from this column’s
usual ‘template’ and give you a flavour
of what to expect from the latest
instalment in the series.
This has nothing, whatsoever, to do
with us still being hungover from the
bash in our good friend Bernard
Molloy’s super-hip Solas bar on
Wexford Street (yes, that is a plug).
The following is a short and heavilyabridged
taster from the book’s ‘Best’
categories…

Best place to get stoned

The residents of Corofin in north Clare
are the greatest stoners on the planet.
This because they host the annual
World Stone Throwing
Championships.
Every May, the tranquillity of the
Burren is shattered by the sound of
smashing glass as the locals hurl rocks
at (empty) bottles behind the Inchiquin
Inn.
There are ladies’ and gents’ events
and competitors each pay €5 for five
stones and fling them from 12 yards at
a bottle, upside down on a pole. (The
bottles, not the competitors, are stuck
on the pole.)
Once an entrant has broken the
bottle, they progress to the next round
and so on to the final.
Despite the sport being little more
than a fledgling (it began in 2000), it
has attracted participants from
Glasgow, Chicago, Germany and
London, and hundreds of spectators.
So, if you ever want to watch dozens
of men, deep in concentration,
fingering their rocks behind a pub,
then Corofin is the place for you.

Best place to see Drew
Barrymore in the nip

In 2001, Hollywood actress Drew
Barrymore told an interviewer about
one of her favourite hobbies – running
naked through Irish fields. Drew
revealed to US magazine Parade that
she’s a free spirit who likes nothing
better than to go driving in Ireland,
park her car, leg it out into the nearest
field, rip her clothes off and run
through the wheat. Note here that she
specifically mentioned wheat – not
cabbages, turnips or carrots.
(Pretty painful to fall on a carrot
when you’re running in the nude.)
Or a parsnip for that matter. While
she didn’t name any specific field, one
presumes that she’s never done it
during the National Ploughing
Championships. She also didn’t say
whether she keeps her shoes and socks
on while she interferes with the
farmer’s livelihood.
Whatever about her trampling the
stalks underfoot, one imagines that her
ponderous boobies would make some
interesting crop circles.
When the story was picked up by an
Irish newspaper it made for at least
one intriguing pub conversation:
Drinker One (reading paper): It says
here ‘Barrymore Runs Naked Through
Wheatfield’.
Drinker Two (splutters into pint):
What? Michael Barrymore?!!
Drinker One: No, Drew Barrymore.
Drinker Two (snorts): Those bloody
prisoners get the best of everything.

Best Fashion Week
(if you’re in a hurry)

The very first Dublin Fashion Week
took place in October 2005 and was
judged to be such a great success that
it is now part of the, ahem, fabric of the
capital’s sartorial life.
The organisers describe this week as
an opportunity for buyers and the
press to view the following season’s
collections.
Unlike other weeks in the year,
Dublin Fashion Week is unique in that
it lasts for only three days.
To add to this magnificent
manipulation of the space/time
continuum, it also takes place twice a
year: once for Spring/Summer, once
for Autumn/Winter.
Two weeks of three days duration
each, adding up to six days, equals
Dublin Fashion Week – the shortest
fashion week on the planet.
With this Stephen Hawking-like
ability to master the concepts of
physics, surely delivering World Peace
should be a piece of cake, ladies?

Best Place To Avoid Getting Your
Knickers Bombed by the Jerries

A: Germany
B: Any German Embassy
C: Ballsbridge, Dublin 4
During the second World War, the
best way to avoid getting bombed by
the Hun was to either get a job in the
German Embassy in Ballsbridge or
become a laundry van driver.
While the first piece of advice is
obvious, the second will surprise most
Irish people below the age of 40.
For over 50 years, the residents of
D4 lived happily under the shadow of
the biggest Swastika to be found
outside of Nazi Germany. Even more
horrible than this was the fact that it
was painted on a chimney stack.
From 1912 right into the mid-1960s
there existed a cleaning company
known as the Swastika Laundry on the
Shelbourne Road. Their fleet of
delivery vans, which were painted red
with a black swastika, were a common
sight on the city’s streets.
The laundry, you’ll be pleased to
learn, wasn’t a fascist organisation and
the Swastika it used is an ancient
Indian symbol for good luck.
It wasn’t so lucky for physicist Erwin
Schrödinger, who had fled to Dublin
from Hitler’s mob. One tale relates how
he was almost killed by one of the vans
as he crossed the road and believed he
had been the victim of a Nazi
assassination plot.
His boxers probably needed a good
cleaner after that.

Best reverse getaway

Reuters press agency reported on
what rates as the most bizarre getaway
in Irish legal history.
In January 2007, Wexford District
Court gave a 25-year-old man a sixmonth
suspended sentence for stealing
a car and a €300 fine for failing to
provide a breathalyser test. The judge
heard that the culprit had nicked the
vehicle after falling asleep on the bus
home and overshooting his stop.
What makes this case noteworthy is
that the thief’s home, on this occasion,
was Shelton Abbey Open Prison in
Arklow, where he was serving time.
The criminal mastermind made his
dramatic dash to incarceration after
missing a weekend release deadline –
and got himself arrested for trying to
stay arrested.

Best radio station to dance on

Ireland was the first country to
broadcast dancing on the radio. Do not
adjust your set – you really did read the
words ‘Dancing’, ‘On’, ‘The’ and
‘Radio’. In 1953, the state radio station
began transmitting Take the Floor, with
host Din Joe, to regular audiences of
over a million listeners.
It featured an hour of dancing to the
Garda Céilí Band, complete with
stamping feet and cries of
‘hupyeboysye’ and continued to 1965.
It wasn’t the daftest idea the radio
station ever had: that would be the 1978
one-hour special performance by mime
artist Marcel Marceau. The second
was to extend the News For The Deaf to
radio in 1984. Okay, that last bit’s made
up, but the radio dancing’s true.

Best reason for being
told to hump off

Let’s end on a festive note.
This time last year, the employees of
the Mullingar Equestrian Centre
arrived at their Christmas party and
were shocked to find the tables of food
and drink they had prepared earlier
strewn all over the main hall. The
shindig they had planned for months
was beyond salvation.
Who could have done such a thing?
Desperate druggies? Riotous kids?
The culprit – a drunken 11-year-old –
stared, bleary-eyed at them from the
debris. It was a sight, most agreed, that
you didn’t see every day, especially
given that the cross-eyed pre-teen
was… a camel.
Snout covered in mincemeat, Gus
the camel was only too delighted to
disprove that a ‘ship of the desert’ can
go for ages without a drink, by
swigging on a can of Guinness. The
dromedary, which was part of the
Santa’s Animal Kingdom Show, had
spotted the booze and grub while
someone was giving him some hay and
broke out when everyone had gone
home to change for the party.
Happily, he didn’t have a hangover
the next day. Neither did the staff for
that matter, one of whom pointed out
that Gus was “acting as if nothing had
happened”. Which raises an
interesting point: what was he
supposed to act like? Embarrassed?
Furtive? He’s a CAMEL.
Party animal Gus was, and still is,
Ireland’s first camel gatecrasher –
which is the Best (and most
appropriate) Reason for Being Told to
Hump Off at a Christmas Party.
If you don’t want us to send him
around to yours, then hump off and
buy Erindipity Rides Again.
Please???

Erindipity Column No 5

Sunday Tribune
16/12/07

Most racist ad

HERE’S a question: what do cribs, David McWilliams and mobile phones all have in common? Answer: they proved over the past week-and-a-half what a hyper-sensitive race we’ve become.
Let’s get the crib thing out of the way first. By now, you’ll know that Catholic publishers Veritas had to remove the word ‘crib’ from a Christmas radio ad on RTÉ. This, the station explained, was because advertising the sale of cribs could be seen to promote
Christianity, which is against broadcasting rules. No-one had complained about the ad, it was just that RTÉ was afraid the Broadcasting Commission wouldn’t like it.
This PC lunacy provided a nice backdrop to what happened to head boy of the Pope’s Children a few days later.
David McWilliams was slaughtered on Monday for a joke he made during a speech in Dublin where he described Mercedes drivers as “knackers”. Some newspapers picked up on the comment and decided that it was “offensive”, although they didn’t actually name any offended parties. It also wasn’t clear who was more “offended” – the Merc drivers or the knackers. And who were the knackers referred to? Were they the people who take old farm animals away to remove their hides?
Balls, anyone? ‘Knackers’ is also slang for testicles, which are, indeed, very sensitive.
One “shocked” paper appeared to give the impression that Macker’s knackers were people from the Travelling Community. This use of the word IS grossly offensive and should, obviously, never be tolerated.
McWilliams wasn’t referring to Travellers when he made his joke. The word ‘knacker’, when used by southside boys like the economist, refers to the anti-social types who hang
around outside shopping centres drinking Blunden Village Extra Skanger cider and abusing passers by. The type that revel in their lack of respect for everyone else. The type
that are in permanent danger of staticelectrocuting themselves every time they lift a metal can to their lips due to the amount of polyester they wear.
But David is not the first famous Irishman to use the ‘K’ word in public.
Actor Patrick Bergin did and the public loved it when he wrote the . . .

Second most politically incorrect
(but well-meaning) song title

This ditty was premiered on The Late Late Show in 2003 and was called, simply, ‘The Knacker’. Patrick’s knacker entered the Irish charts at number 16 and festered there
for two long months. Its apotheosis was number 11, where it stayed for one week. People actually bought it.
His song, as we said, is only the ‘Second Most etc’. Top slot in the non-PC charts goes to singer Linda Martin.
Linda has enjoyed unprecedented success over the years in the Eurovision Song Contest – a competition designed to promote harmony among the peoples of Europe.
She has represented Ireland twice in it – winning in 1992 and coming second in
1984. All that ‘hands across Europe’stuff would count for nothing if the PC police knew about a song she recorded in 1978. (They’re just about to find out.)
Unlike Patrick’s ambiguous title (he could have been singing about meatrendering
or balls) there can be no mistaking the subject of Linda’s warblings.
The song she hit the charts with was called … ‘Liffey Tinker’.
Erindipity has tried – admittedly not very hard – in vain to source the lyrics, but can recall that the tune’s heart was in the right place. It may or may not have told the story of a poor Traveller girl begging on O’Connell Bridge. Then again, maybe she was named ‘Liffey’, and ‘Tinker’ was her surname.
It really doesn’t matter as – and let there be no mistake about this – it was a craptastically cloying, sentimental piece of sludge which should have been named ‘Liffey Stinker’.
Younger readers may be surprised to learn that it was commonplace for settled people to refer to Travellers as tinkers back in the 1970s in a non-pejorativesense (although not always, of course). This was the age when Irish folk collected little tokens off tea boxes
to enter a competition for a car. It was the age of the…

Most racist, but least offensive,
racist advert

‘Buy Lyons Tea (da-dah-de-dah-dedah), drink Lyons Tea (da-dah-de-dahde-dah)… Lyons the (something, something) tea’.
This was the jingle that accompanied Des O’Meara’s animated advert for that brand of beverage. For 26 years the nation smiled as the ad’s little, spindly-legged black and white
minstrels danced across our TV screens. Nowadays, of course, they would (rightly) be considered a racist stereotype. In their defence, they didn’t set out to offend and, as there were far fewer African people in Ireland back then, there were less people to take offence.
There were plenty of old people, though, who might have been unimpressed with the…

Most ageist of ads

Monday’s Liveline switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree with irate callers complaining about phone company Meteor’s TV ad which features an old woman being thrown out of a Christmas party. Sounds horrible on paper, doesn’t it?
The old lady arrives at the house and has her present put through a scanner while the hosts examine it to discover it’s a tea cosy. She’s shown the door with her ‘son’ and leaves, saying “stuff your turkey”. The implication is that if you want to make someone happy at Christmas give them a Meteor phone.
It’s mean-spirited, unpleasant and a little shocking at first viewing but – and this is where Joe Duffy’s listeners missed the point – IT’S A JOKE. It’s supposed to be all of those things to make the viewer laugh. Even the 92-year-old English actress who played the granny phoned in to say it was all just a “bit of fun”.
The following day, it was the turn of that actress’s compatriots to take offence at us Paddies and, in particular, Des Lynam, who played a central role in the…

Most sexist of Paddy ads

Limerick man Des appears as Santa with a curvy Big Brother contestant as his helper in sports channel Setanta’s Christmas advert. One visitor to the grotto is clearly enraptured by the lady’s cleavage and mumbles that he’d like a “couple of puppies” for Christmas. As “puppies” is slang for breasts, more than 20 people complained to the British Advertising Standards Authority that the ad was sexist and offensive. Whether it is or isn’t, the Big Brother contestant didn’t look too unhappy about it.
(Anyway, surely the important message from this should be that “puppies are not just for Christmas”?)
Staying on the subject of English sensibilities, we finally arrive at the…

Most racist of Irish ads

In February, bookmakers Paddy Power took a trouncing over a newspaper ad it ran before the historic clash at Croke Park between Ireland and England. The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) upheld two complaints about the ad, including
one that it could incite racism.
The advert showed paramedics carrying a ‘player’ dressed in the English kit off the field with the heading: ‘Coming for to carry you home’. This was a reference to England’s unofficial anthem ‘Swing low sweet chariot’.
This, one complainant said, could incite racism. The other told the ASAI that the ad appeared to be relishing the prospect of injury.
Newsflash: just about everybody on this island was relishing the prospect of John Bull getting his arse kicked that afternoon. It might be something to do with 800 years of racial intolerance directed at us on our home turf.
Incidentally, the ASAI may not know that ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ is an 1862 African-American slave song. It was also an old standard of the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties.
Where else could you find an ad deemed to be ‘racist’ for using a line from one of the great anti-racism anthems?
There you have it. Almost two weeks of people taking offence over nothing and giving offence for fear of causing offence.
So, David McWilliams, if you’re reading this, say ‘knickers’ to the knacker-knockers.
And we’ll leave you the way we came in – with a Christmas-themed question.
What’s the difference between the Baby Jesus and someone who doesn’t want you to enjoy yourself?
One’s the God in a manger and the other’s a dog in the… (etc, etc, etc).


‘Erindipity Rides Again’ (Mentor, €15) has just hit the bookshelves.

Review of Erindipity Rides Again

Sunday Tribune
09/12/07

Books of the year

Erindipity Rides Again
By David Kenny
Mentor Books, €14.99, 265pp
Reviewed by Padraig Kenny (no relation)

THIS is David Kenny’s follow-up to
last year’s Erindipity, and is
another addition to an already fullto-
groaning Christmas miscellany
market. Fortunately for miscellany
addicts, this is one of the less
earnest ones, managing to strike
an easy balance between giving its
readers that little bit of learning,
while entertaining them along the
way. Kenny writes in a breezy,
chatty, and informative style,
dropping the occasional groan
inducing pun with more precision
than a scud missile, and then gains
easy forgiveness by rattling off a
potted history of everything from
spitting on babies, to Teddy’s Ice
Cream Shop in Dun Laoghaire,
with a brisk, easy tone that sucks
you in before you even know
what’s happened.
In the first 30 pages alone we have
the weaving together of Dun
Laoghaire swimming baths,
Richard Boyd Barret, a meditation
on the concept of proxemics, and
an ultimately fruitless but
enjoyable exploration of how the
99 got its name.
Like all the best examples of its
type, this is a book you pick up in
an idle moment, promising
yourself that you’ll read just a few
lines with the anticipation of
learning something new and
peculiar with which to impress
your friends. Before you know it,
you’re being cajoled into finding
out about the “best place for
Tarzan impersonations” (Kildare)
or the “biggest contract on a dog
taken out by the mob”. If these
don’t interest you, then there’s
always the prospect of finding out
about the “best place to see Drew
Barrymore in the nip’ (a wheat
field apparently. Location
unspecified unfortunately). When
you’re not being subtly coaxed by
Kenny, your primitive, drooling,
baser appetites for more ignoble
facts are being satisfied by pieces
with titles like “Biggest county for
slappers” and “Most electrifying
night with a little pussy”. For the
record, the pussy wandered into
an electricity substation in
Drogheda, causing an explosion
and a subsequent blackout across
Louth and Meath, before being
posthumously christened Felix by
insensitive ESB researchers who
marvelled at how fat the poor
deceased moggie was.
There’s a brilliant section on
O’Connell Street, which is one part
satire, and two parts history,
giving the background to almost
every monument on the street,
and revealing the true story as to
why almost all of Dublin’s major
statues have been erected there:
“Northsiders seldom like to be
reminded that southsiders live in
the real, old, original Dublin. After
more non-stop whingeing, a few
statues were shipped across the
Liffey to keep them quiet.” The
essay also references poor old
Doctor Quirkey’s Good Time
Emporium, which is slowly but
surely becoming the most
maligned Dublin institution since
Copperface Jacks. Kenny even
recommends taking a stroll down
O’Connell Street on a warm
summer’s evening to “savour the
fragrant, oily bull farts of the buses
as they set down outside the many
fine restaurants – Supermac’s,
MacDonalds, Burger King etc.”
He also offers a nice little
window into the absurdities of
Celtic Tiger Ireland. He writes a
particularly pithy and informative
piece about Ennis being touted as
the hub of Ireland’s aggressive
new IT strategy 10 years ago, with
confident promises from Telecom
Éireann that it would become
Ireland’s first Information Age
Town. Plans were scuppered by
the proviso that only houses built
between 1991 and 1998 would
qualify for a free PC. This is
quickly followed by the revelation
that along with the UK, we have
the highest toilet-roll usage in
Europe as revealed by the
European Tissue Symposium in
February 2007. Then we’re on to
the story about how a mini black
hole made its cosmic presence felt
in a bog in Donegal in 1868, and
mercifully, Kenny somehow
manages to resist commenting on
the interconnecting theme of
these two essays.
Affectionate pieces about
Dublin, less affectionate
references to Northsiders, and
references to Roscommon, Cork
and Clare, which are downright
libellous, are peppered throughout
the book. But amongst all the
puns, the in-jokes, and the dodgy
links between essays, Kenny finds
time for a nice piece on the 1916
Rising which contains a lovely
little revelation at the end. In a
book full of surprises, it stands out
as the most delightful and
unexpectedly heart-warming of
them all.

Erindipity Rides Again

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