Recent events have exposed depths beneath the image of a simple, hard-working man, writes MIRIAM LORD
THERE MUST be more to him than meets the eye.
Nope. What you see is what you get, says Bertie Ahern, determinedly one dimensional.
A hard-working man, of simple tastes and interests, still knocking around with pals from his schooldays. Don't try and look for hidden depth and meaning, because there is none.
He's just plain Bertie, a regular bloke with an unusual job.
Is that all there is? Maybe he's right, and there is no other Bertie Ahern. Apart from the makeover efforts of the style consultants, nothing much has changed over the decades. To this day, he remains, outwardly, as courteous and approachable as the rising star who became Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1986.
When he got to the Mansion House, he was nearly a decade into his career as a TD. Ministerial office would come the following year. Even then, strangers smiled and called him "Bertie". His marriage was already in difficulties, but there was never any public indication that all was not well in his personal life. If he was under stress, he never showed it in public.
Back then, a young reporter on his way from a function happened to glance into the back of the Lord Mayor's Mercedes. It was in such a mess, strewn with papers and food wrappers, he returned later with a photographer and wrote a story about it.
"Poor old dirty Bertie!" screamed the opening line of the article in the Evening Herald. Lord Mayor Ahern laughed it off, not in the least bit annoyed, admitting he was a terribly untidy person but would try to do better in the future.
Over 20 years later, as the Mahon tribunal heard heart-rending yarns about Ahern's accommodation problems following his separation, that story of the Lord Mayor's lived-in Merc came to mind.
Whatever about his private life, Bertie's career was on an upward curve. He was a popular minister for labour, a born negotiator. High office didn't turn his head. Other politicians lose the run of themselves when they acquire staff and a title and flunkies to flap around them. Not Bertie, who looked like an unmade bed but knew the office cleaners by name.
He wasn't one for getting notions. He already had them: to remain unassailable in his constituency, leader of Fianna Fail and Taoiseach. Not that he ever let on. That might look a bit presumptuous, and he had lots of willing acolytes to do that on his behalf.
And (almost) everyone liked Bertie. There was nothing showy about it, but he was good at his job. Christmas drinks in his department were always a relaxed and enjoyable occasion, what with such an easy-going minister in charge. We remember him one year, chatting away to a journalist by the door. As they conversed, she started flicking bits of fluff off his jacket. They continued talking, all the while, the reporter brushing the lint from his shoulders, tidying him up a bit.
Bertie didn't seem to notice. Neither did she, until it was pointed out to her later. "I didn't realise. I mean, it was Bertie. He needs looking after." As it turned out, Ahern was more than well able to look after himself. For whatever reason, he was soon attracting, and accepting, sums of money considerably in excess of his ministerial salary from sources other than the Paymaster General.
Poor old dirty Bertie.
But to his adoring public, he was still Nanook of the Northside, with the tousled hair, scuffed shoes and trousers pooling in folds around his heels. Ahern's anorak was as famous as he was. In Finance, when he was finally forced into a more stylish form of, eh, anorak, a pub bought the original at a charity auction, framed it and hung it on the wall.
Bertie went from strength to strength.
You had to like him. Humble, ordinary Dub. Very good to his mother. A Northsider, as was Charlie Haughey, but nothing like him. Not for Bertie the big house, the yacht, the island, the racehorses. Charlie's Northside successor lived in an ordinary house in the suburbs, wouldn't give you tuppence for vintage champagne and didn't care who made his shirts as long as the tail wasn't sticking out.
It just didn't enter anyone's mind that he too might have had a little weakness in the money gathering department.
Just in case people weren't fully sure where he stood on the issue of people like Charlie accepting money, he declared in 1997: "The public is entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, officials and, above all, ministers . . . We should not require of others, what we are not prepared to practise ourselves." At the time, as it turned out, Bertie wasn't in a position to issue any such guarantee.
No matter. He threw himself into his work. The electorate loved him. Bertie Ahern, politician and man of the people, no job too big and no job too small. It wasn't long before the modest, unassuming Dub was elected leader of Fianna Fail. Finally, inevitably, his hard work delivered its reward when he became Taoiseach.
But closer to home, some of his Fianna Fail colleagues were privately calling him "The Rat in the Anorak".
Was it when he went into the Department of Finance that he started to collect those friends who have no connections with his schooldays, or his early days in politics? The type of men who own private boxes at Old Trafford, or who have their own jets or who are, well, stinking rich? He likes the company of rich men. Maybe it's because he enjoys being with achievers, people who, like him, are successful. But he is careful. Bertie has his image to protect.
Budget day mornings were always a little awkward. The tradition, long discontinued now, was to have a photograph in the evening paper of the finance minister enjoying breakfast at home with his family. In Ahern's case, this was tricky, as he was separated from his wife and in a second relationship with constituency worker Celia Larkin. This was rarely spoken about.
Bertie would pitch up in the dining room of the Gresham Hotel, his friend Joe Burke in tow, and pretend to have breakfast.
He always ordered a kipper. Just the one. And a pot of tea. He would look up from his fish, fork in hand, grinning over the teapot, while the photographers worked away.
Later on, before his budget speech, he posed for more photos on the Leinster House plinth with his briefcase, his two daughters and his grey-haired Mammy. There was always a kiss for the proud Mammy from her equally proud son.
Then there were the girls, Georgina and Cecelia. A little taller, a little older each year; quiet, slightly bashful sisters, tolerating the limelight for the sake of their dad.
Sunday was their day, and they were often photographed together at football matches in the afternoon. Always with Dad, but never in the company of Celia Larkin, the woman who, Bertie would later tell the Mahon tribunal, was his life-partner.
"Lovely manners, like their father," the mammies of Ireland would say approvingly when they saw the girls.
Then they grew up and became successful young women, and part of the ongoing soap opera that is Bertie's life. He broke up with Celia Larkin when he was Taoiseach, but they remain friends and fellow tribunal witnesses. His wife Miriam (they never divorced) entered the picture again, as a good friend. He is sometimes said to be in a relationship with the widow of his best friend. It has often been reported that on his deathbed, he asked Bertie to take care of his wife.
It's a good story that's never been denied, but nobody really knows if it's true. All part of the Bertie brand.
Bertie has beautiful nails, for an apparently avid gardener. He once mentioned that he assembles his own hanging baskets, and so, the image of a simple guy pottering around his back garden was added to the picture.
He takes the occasional pint, in moderation. Bass-drinking Bertie was born. (He likes a glass of white wine too, but wouldn't be caught dead drinking one in public.) Then there's sport. Football mad. Aside from politics, it's the only subject that appears to interest him. People who have known him for years will say that in all the times they have spoken, the conversation has never deviated from banal chat about the Dubs or Manchester United. At a stretch, he can manage "how's the hard-working man/woman?"
The Dublin Northsider tag never did Bertie any harm. Nor did his accent, or his sometimes confusing relationship with the English language. He mixed up his words, often on purpose, and it was funny. "What's dat dey called me? The Telethon Taoiseach?" He was easy to mimic - in an affectionate way. Again, it contributed to the image. He didn't mind. Even when he sometimes showed a glimpse of his inner gurrier, he didn't mind. He once called an Opposition deputy a "waffler". Not exactly a stinging put down. But that toothless barb has entered the Bertie mythology, to prove that volcanic depths lie beneath. All grist to the mill.
Is it a reverse snobbery that gets some supporters worked up about the way people make fun of him? Bertie always knew better. Skewing his sentences and mispronouncing big words never did him any harm, and when he wanted, he made himself perfectly understood.
You couldn't fall out with the man. No matter what might be said, or written about him, Bertie never showed displeasure. A mark of his time at the top has been his unfailing courtesy, even to his most enthusiastic critics. His handlers and local lieutenants were never as even tempered. They often made no secret of their attitude to journalists - to be tolerated or despised, depending on the circumstances.
Perhaps they served as the Bertiesque equivalent of the picture of Dorian Gray - while he floated, gracious and serene, above the political rough and tumble, his loyal team channelled the anger and frustration, the impatience and resentment. If there was unpleasant work to be done, harsh words to be spoken, they did it. And then the boss would come out, wreathed in smiles, disarmingly asking after the health of everyone's mammy.
On a personal level, he never missed a trick. A number of years ago - it was just after my dog died - I was with a few friends in a city centre pub. Bertie, as it happened, was in the adjoining snug. He sidled around the partition and sat down.
Without any preamble, he whispered, "I had an oul' cat meself. Loved de oul' thing. It was terrible when he died, terrible. Still miss him." Only Bertie could get away with that, and he did. But somewhere along the line, he changed. Perhaps he was getting too used to life at the top. But the bitter word began to rear its head. In recent years, Bertie Ahern has taken to complaining that he doesn't always get the recognition be deserves.
"I've worked my political life to bring this country up off its knees of being an underdeveloped third-rate country that nobody cared a damn about, that was rivelled (sic) with violence," he complained to Joe Higgins in the Dail. He grumbles about how much he is paid. When talking to the public, he shrugs about the way the media never give him credit.
And latterly, as he appears to be sinking more and more into denial of past deeds, he complains that he has been unlucky. Unlucky that his murky financial affairs when was minister for finance were uncovered as a sidebar to another story.
"If you dropped him off the top of Liberty Hall, he'd land on his feet," Pat Rabbitte once said.
His luck had to run out sometime - but maybe it doesn't matter that much. The public expect their politicians to have feet of clay. Bertie, with his track record, may yet recover from his harsh landing.