South America is an exciting place, what with the Irish diplomatic corps - that is, the Ambassador John Campbell and his entourage of three - being robbed at gunpoint and their car hijacked, and the Argentine peso in a state of collapse. Yet as the South Atlantic waves crashed against the shores of Rio's Copacabana beach after midnight on Friday of last week, the thoughts of the Taoiseach and his team - on the balcony of their hotel overlooking one of the world's most famous vista - were never far from home.
The chief executive of Enterprise Ireland, Dan Flinter, fresh from spearheading Irish capitalism's entry into Brazil, proved that enterprise never sleeps. He collected entries for a sweep - at $10 dollars a head - for those who dared to choose the four winners of the GAA football championship matches that weekend.
Many put their money down: civil servants, Garda personnel, foolish journos and even Bertie Ahern himself. But when the weekend's combat at Croke Park was over, two people had chosen the four winners: Derry, Galway, Westmeath and the Taoiseach's own beloved Dublin. They were Bertie himself and Det Insp John Gantley of the Garda Emergency Response Unit, who accompanied Ahern for security reasons.
Flinter - a man who knows a thing or two about risk capital - had thought of just this eventuality and had put a tiebreak question into the equation. Each of the dozen or so entrants had to pick the winner of the British Open Golf Championship and, as Gantley's choice, Colin Montgomery, finished ahead of the Taoiseach's favourite, Tiger Woods, Gantley scooped the pot. The journalists, though, got the unmissable headline opportunity: "Taoiseach beaten by senior Garda."