AH, bachelors. Can't live with them, can't live without them. Take Frank Quilter, owner of Ballybunion's happening Atlantic night-club, spokesman for the Ballybunion Bachelor Festival, a bachelor himself and "Ireland's leading campaigner for nudist beaches". In the winter months, he explains, 1,500 souls live in Ballybunion but at Easter the town starts gearing up for a series of festivals and an influx of visitors. An estimated 45,000 tourists are expected to attend the four-day 2000 Murphy's Irish Open Golf Championship, which starts on Thursday, June 29th. The town also plans a vintage car rally, a beach party, a millennium pageant, a bird and dolphin-watching weekend and the Listowel races.
At a select gathering in a Dublin hotel this week, Quilter, who is afraid to get married "in case she'd carry half the cows away on me", explains some of the preparations which are under way. Forty tonnes of pit sand will be carted into his night-club for the beach party on Friday, July 7th. Dress is optional, of course.
Quietly listening to this description of hedonism is Dr Yosef Allan, ambassador designate of the soon to be declared Palestine State. His golfing handicap is 18, he says. Also Des Hynes, former owner of O'Donoghues on Merrion Row and a visitor to the Listowel Races since 1955, is here. Kevin Collins, an accountant, a bachelor and a golfer, is here also but he's too shy to say anything else.