Court sketch / Frank McNally: One of the longest-running libel trials in Irish legal history came to a very abrupt end. Beverley Cooper-Flynn must have had high hopes for her appeal to the Supreme Court. But by her own estimation afterwards, they were gone in 60 seconds.
That was the time it took the five judges to announce, one after another, that they'd found against her. Yet the Mayo TD, a woman for whom the term unflappable is not quite adequate, betrayed no reaction. She just stared straight ahead into the middle distance, where a €2 million legal bill faces her.
To the judges' left, where Charlie Bird and George Lee sat, it was all smiles. RTÉ's chief news correspondent had flown home overnight from Bogota, after reporting the case of the Colombia Three. But as part of the RTÉ Two, his euphoria dispelled any jetlag.
Outside, a beaming Mr Bird declared it among the best days of his life. Then, sounding like one of George Lee's Budget broadcasts, he spoke of the €50 million in tax returns arising from RTÉ's National Irish Bank stories, and of the €1 billion recovered as a result of other reports about other banks. These were the fruits of "good, honest journalism," he said. When he retires from RTÉ, maybe the Government will make him chairman of the Revenue Commissioners.
He felt no animosity towards Ms Cooper-Flynn, "or anyone else who has been through the pain" of a long libel trial. But if he shared the TD's pain, the legal bill was all hers. And when the Mayo TD emerged after a consultation with her lawyers, she admitted that it was "not a good day, financially - definitely not".
From her sunny demeanour, however, you would have struggled to identify her as the loser. In a performance reminiscent of Barry McGuigan after he won a world boxing title, she thanked her lawyers, her family, her friends, the people of Castlebar, the people of Mayo, and everybody except Mr Eastwood. She had no regrets, other than that the judges had not shared her opinion, she said.
Her impromptu press conference was interrupted when a smiling Charlie Bird shook her hand. "Beverley . . . " he said, in an unusually short broadcast. "Charlie . . . " she replied, smiling back.
Despite the result, she told reporters, she was "relieved" the case was finally over.