For St Patrick's Day next year, let's bring the world's leading politicians here, instead of sending our own abroad – sounds good, doesn't it? But be warned: an A-list guestlist for our national party won't come cheap, writes Rosita Boland
PRESIDENT BARACK O’BAMA, come over here to us next St Patrick’s Day, till we get a right look at you. You need a day out. We’ll present you with your shamrock up there on the viewing platform in O’Connell Street. Our politicians would be only too delighted to see you, and it would save them their annual trip to the airport. And if you can’t make it, maybe you could send over Joe Biden instead, and he can look for his roots in Co Mayo while he’s at it.
You see, we’re thinking about making a few changes to our annual national holiday. Or rather, the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation (ITIC) is hoping that we might make changes to it. This week, the ITIC’s chief executive, Eamonn McKeon, suggested that instead of the annual migration of our senior politicans to strategic points around the world on March 17th, we should invite senior politicians from around the world to Ireland. He would like to see a few million euro spent to get them here. He mentioned that they’d be looking for “heavy hitters”.
Well, we already have the most famous heavy hitter of all time coming to visit us next month, Muhammad Ali, who will be going to Ennis in Co Clare to look at his ancestral home. Maybe we could keep him in the country until next March, with the help of the nice people from the ITIC. After all, the back pages of this newspaper are coming down with hotel deals whereby a hundred and something euro will get you a couple of nights BB with a dinner thrown in. Ali could do a lovely tour of the country taking advantage of all the deals, and judging by the number of calls the Clare Heritage Centre received this week from members of the public claiming to be related to him, he wouldn’t be short of a few offers of dinner on the nights the hotel deals don’t include them.
Of course the drawback with Muhammad Ali, famous as he is and no offence to him, is that he’s not a politician. And it’s really those lads we’re after. So that would put former boxers on the B-list. The names mentioned by McKeon this week were the current American vice-president and the French minister for culture, Frédéric Mitterrand.
McKeon talked about a multi-million-euro party. It wasn’t clear if that sum of money was to go towards the fizzy drinks and sandwiches, or towards funding speakers and high-profile people to come over here instead of staying at home and drinking green beer. They don’t come cheap, these famous politicans. Or more correctly, former famous politicians don’t come cheap.
Have a look at allamericanspeakers.com, a talent and celebrity network. You’ll find plenty of familiar names and faces there, from Bill Clinton and chatshow host Conan O’Brien to Eddie Murphy and Jack Nicklaus. Listed prices for their appearances go up to $200,000 (€140,000), and after that, it’s fees on application. George Mitchell, the current American special envoy to the Middle East, is listed as being in the $50,000 (€35,000) fee range, plus. An erudite bargain, when you consider that Paris Hilton has been getting anything up to $300,000 (€210,000) merely to turn up to parties.
On the same website, Bill Clinton’s price is available on application, which means he costs more than $200,000 (€140,000) an appearance, the highest price range listed. In the same financial stratosphere is George Bush senior, who is described on the site as bringing to the White House “a dedication to traditional American values and a determination to direct them toward making the United States a kinder and gentler nation”.
So who would be on the national wish-list for a party of “heavy hitters”, featuring high-profile politicians from around the world? For advice on the menus and the wine lists, how about French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, although we’d probably also have to budget for Carla to come over with him as a minder, just in case he took it into his mind to go jogging in the Phoenix Park and inadvertently missed the party as a result.
For marketing input on how to get maximum publicity out of a day off, it would have to be Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin. His widely published holiday pictures this year showed him bare-chested on horseback in Siberia, fishing and swimming the butterfly in an icy river. How about we send him down the Liffey to see how he does.
And for those who’d like something different from the pom-poms of the imported cheerleaders and the hyperactive Irish dancers, an invitation should go to Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He knows a thing or two about festivals, carnivals and dancing. He could teach the whole city to samba. Now that would be money well spent.