ANALYSIS: "It's not that I want to become a TD per se". Kathy Sheridan joins Martin Mansergh on the campaign trail
Admit it. You were thinking that Dr Martin George Southcote Mansergh doesn't quite fit the mould of your average, rural, Fianna Fáil TD. In fact, you were wondering what the hell he's at, this éminence grise to three Taoisigh with his aura of country house eccentricity. Weren't you ?
You and George Bush, too. "I'm not dropping names, but when I was in the White House", he says, in that leisurely way of his as we elude another 53 snarling farmyard dogs, "Ambassador Egan told George Bush what I was doing, and he came over to me and said, 'are we suffering from some mental incompetence?'"
Hmm. And are you? "I do think a democratically elected politician is a higher form of political life than a political adviser"
And no, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown would not be a more worthy sanctuary for such high-mindedness.
"There's an awful middle-class snobbery vis-à-vis Fianna Fáil in Dún Laoghaire Where I'm coming from, paradoxically in view of my background, I'm better suited to here. I wouldn't have had the emotional commitment to somewhere else. It's not that I want to become a TD per se, but I would like to be of service to this part of the country Tipperary town has been neglected and that's a general view."
The Manserghs, he says, have roots in Tipperary going back 300 years. And the Southcotes, who hooked up with them way back, have been around "since the Restoration, in 1660".
Still, on the strength of this canvass around Donohill, near Tipperary town, he wouldn't be regarded as a neighbour's child exactly. One woman warmly invites him in, presses him to have tea and only then asks, "who are you?" But once they cop on, they are clearly honoured to have Dr Mansergh, celebrated broker of IRA ceasefires, recipient of a Tipperary UDC civic reception in 1998, come to call.
The fact that one of his key backers today, Bernie O'Doherty, is a great-niece of Dan Breen, helps. A lot. Dan was born and buried in Donohill and was the last Fianna Fáil TD to represent this part of south Tipperary.
And if you're thinking now that Dr Mansergh makes an even more unlikely candidate, well, Bernie seems content enough. Martin showed his credentials by speaking at the Soloheadbeg Ambush commemoration a few years ago, for instance, and our route takes us by the old Breen homestead, a shrine to Dan kept by his niece Teresa Nagle, where Martin signs the visitors' book.
"It's time for a change, time to move on," says Bernie. "You'll still find some of that old narrow-mindedness because of Dan's involvement in the old IRA and Martin's - eh - kind of English aristocratic background But Martin was very much involved in the peace process and it would be brilliant to have someone local in the Dáil."
Though quite relaxed - "the candidate is neither perspiring nor shivering", as he puts it - there is an endearing awkwardness about his canvassing style. He pauses beside a couple of uniformed schoolgirls in Donohill. "Did the bus drop you here?" he enquires politely. They nod. Silence. "Well, lovely uniform you have anyway". The girls look wary. Silence. "Oh, dear, you are looking at me very suspiciously," he murmurs ruefully, as his team collapses into hilarity.
He has a leaflet - scrupulously, a page each for him and Noel Davern - and a card. "Here's the leaflet," he says with slow deliberation to each voter, "and my card. So you know where I am."
It would be very easy to forget that somewhere in there, is a man who has made himself indispensable to Fianna Fáil for 20 years.
Bernie says there is a sense that "between his high profile and the fact that he's at the pulse of everything going on with Bertie", that he could be the man of influence the area needs.
And that's an image he's able to foster with the best of them. In Garryshane National School, for example, in consultation about its expanding needs: "I'll get in touch with the Department of Education straightaway and send it personally to the Minister, in a way in which he will actually receive it, and not be spirited away by some civil servant"
He meets a publican, and says: "We didn't put the tax too much on drink - except for cider, and I was the sole person on the Tax Strategy group to oppose the raising of tax on cider." An odd boast - until you recall that Bulmers is in the constituency.
And in this week's Nationalist, there's priceless publicity about a grant of €200,000 for a sports centre. "The good news," it reads, "was communicated personally by Dr Martin Mansergh." Of course.
Will it pay off? He admits that the odds are heavily against him. And he knows that "Dublin-based journalists" think he's a write-off.
"But they might get a wee bit of a surprise next week."