Malachy McCourt, the actor brother of Frank of Angela's Ashes fame, was in great form as the MC for the huge Sinn Fein rally in New York's Roseland Ballroom to greet Gerry Adams last Saturday. Showing that he had absorbed the indoctrination sessions from his Northern father, like being woken up in the middle of the night as a child to sing Kevin Barry and swear to die for Ireland if needed, Malachy made the sober-suited Adams and Martin McGuinness sound like Alliance Party moderates. Addressing the Sinn Fein supporters as "fellow terrorists" (with heavy irony, of course) he asked them to welcome the MI5 and MI6 secret agents in their midst. "We Irish can count, you know."
The genial, white-haired Malachy also enthralled the audience with grim jokes about how Henry VIII and Randolph Churchill died roaring from syphillis. Then he introduced Adams as a "terrorist for peace" but Adams sounded tame when he said they would be "sending the RUC redundancy notices". He rounded off the night with a spirited A Nation Once Again which drowned out Gerry's low key "Tiochfaidh ar la".