On May 16th the general-election campaign is in full, if rather dull, swing. My day is to start peacefully enough, covering a press conference and then taking a portrait of the writer Rosie Boycott for this magazine.
I have just arrived at Herbert Park, to meet Boycott, when the picture desk rings with the news that Michael McDowell, the tánaiste, is about to climb a lamp post in Ranelagh - again. The significance of the planned sequel is immediately obvious to me, not least because I photographed the original stunt in 2002.
I head for Ranelagh. When I arrive the quiet cul-de-sac is filling with photographers and reporters, but also there, quietly locking his bicycle, is John Gormley, chairman of the Green Party and a constituency rival of McDowell's. The rest is history. McDowell arrives with supporters and prepares to unveil his latest poster, but, as he tries to make a speech, Gormley, annoyed at what he feels is a misleading PD election pamphlet, challenges him. It is loud, it is undignified, but it is great entertainment.
Capturing the full surreality of the encounter is difficult. It is an eyeball-to-eyeball engagement, with only verbal punches. I shoot the scene from every conceivable angle, including from the top of a ladder, but I think the image that works best is the one here: Gormley gesturing with the pamphlet, McDowell with a restraining hand, the media scrum all around.
The debate eventually runs out of steam, and everyone is on the verge of getting bored when, in an icing-on-the-cake addendum, the Fine Gael candidate Lucinda Creighton arrives at a lamp post opposite and starts unveiling yet another poster. Never has a stunt been so outstunted.
Is the event a tipping point? Gormley wins his seat and becomes a Minister and leader of his party, Creighton is elected, and McDowell loses his seat and is out of politics and back in the Law Library, getting paid more handsomely for his verbal encounters.