MEDIA WATCH: Deaglán de Bréadún checks the Taoiseach's mid-race position
As if there weren't enough hazards in life, we now have to worry about being knocked down by a speeding Taoiseach. It looks like Bertie Ahern should carry a Government health warning.
The Formula One FF leader was given an on-the-spot ticking-off on the Pat Kenny radio show. After the earful he got from a woman listener, who rightly took the whole matter very seriously, he will now have no trouble distinguishing between Mondello Park and the N11 to Wexford.
Roadrunner Bertie was told to set a good example as "chief legislator of this country". He instantly slipped into his Great Conciliator persona: "Nobody should be above or beneath the law and neither am I." But the citizenry should send a message to Bertie and all politicians: mess up the economy, neglect the health services, run down the education system, but please don't step on our blue suede shoes or run us down when we're crossing the road.
The unkindest cut of all was when Pat Kenny told the Taoiseach: "Whatever about your skilled driver, there were a pack of journalists behind, trying to keep up, and I'm not sure about their skills."
See? Whatever happens, the media get the blame. And I have mild reservations about the collective noun "pack" for our noble profession, which broke the news about Bertie's "Michael Schumacher moment".
There's a free spin in the Taoiseach's Merc for the reader who comes up with a more suitable word. An "insight" of journalists, perhaps?
Mince pies and custard pies, that's what this election is about. The media are in a feeding frenzy, so to speak, over Celia Larkin's reception, with mulled wine and "warmed" mince pies no less, at the State guesthouse in Farmleigh. Meanwhile Ruairí Quinn and Michael McDowell could use a custard pie in the face to ensure election success.
The PDs are conducting a show-and-tell campaign. You don't like what Magill magazine writes about Mary Harney? Throw it in a dustbin for the benefit of the TV cameras. Wanna send a message about economic success? Go to Prosperous, Co Kildare.
The ultimate stroke was when McDowell scooped the top slot on the RTÉ news by shinning up a ladder with a poster to warn about one-party government (not PD government of course).
The only thing missing from McDowell's campaign is a custard pie.
No doubt members of the self-styled Global Pastry Uprising are already staking out the site of the Triangle in Dublin's Ranelagh while the Attorney General parades ostentatiously up and down, giving the come-on to any likely-looking subversive with a cardboard box.
Like Jeremy Beadle, McDowell popped up again during Sam Smyth's Sunday Supplement on Today FM. Is there no getting away from our colourful chief law officer?
If Michael Noonan was smart, he would be parading McDowell's constituency rival, Frances Fitzgerald, all over the TV screens, but I can't remember the last time I saw her.
Dublin South East without a Fine Gael TD would be like the Vatican without a Pope. And I know John Gormley, the local Green deputy, has a bicycle but has he got a ladder and a dustbin? If not, try the Attorney General.
Noonan soldiers bravely on with some style and intelligence but more and more resembles a man sent to climb Mount Everest without an air tank.
Ruairí Quinn may end up like the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, with so many TDs in opposition he won't know what to do.
Meanwhile, Today FM had the best quip of the campaign so far when a caller said there should be a Sinn Féin-Labour government, called "Guns and Roses".