SO YOU have a whole Tuesday to mess up and someone offers you a chance to fly around Ireland with Ryanair. You would rather chew off your left bicep, wouldn’t you?
Mmmh. Now try, if you will, to imagine the outcome if Cryin’air had a Stepford Wife-style implant and morphed into Sighin’air.
Lots of seats to stretch out on; luscious petits fours and coffee somewhere over Roscommon; succulent chicken Bellanaise, with wild rice and peaches as you fly through blue skies above north Cork, all served up by lovely, smiling stewardesses with a sane and rational Michael O’Leary sitting across the aisle, handing out the boarding passes with jawdropping calm and geniality.
“Surreal,” muttered a member of our party, every five seconds or so. In the unlikely event of boredom onset, we also had the rather nice Antonio Tajani, vice-president of the European Commission and commissioner for transport, on board.
By 3.30pm, the poor creature was on his sixth plane of the day and looking a tad weary. As a former journalist and one of the five founding members of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, Tajani has doubtless seen and heard things apt to melt most people’s heads.
But how we longed for an instrument to assess the contents of his as we swooped out of Dublin (after a delay involving a fuel truck detained at a security gate).
We flew into Knock, out of Knock, down to Kerry, out of Kerry and back to Dublin, all entailing much pointing at the “Yes to Europe” banner on the Ryanair plane for the cameramen, waving a ping-pong bat while being enveloped in the EU flag with Mr Ryanair, plus three press conferences in between.
During these Tajani was obliged to talk about things such as subsidiarity in English, which happens to be his third language, while repeating constantly for no particular reason that he really supports passenger rights, as a means of distinguishing himself from the infamous opponent of such fripperies sitting beside him.
Anyway, the important thing was that for this one perfect day, we were all part of the Forza Ragione (ie Force of Reason, a new party brand, patented by this reporter) and not some random “numb nuts”, “numpties”, “clowns”, “(F)Ukips”, the “failed politician who wants to be Dana” who “craves attention, respect and likes the personal PR” or – on the other hand – “one of the bunch of discredited politicians whom no one believes any more” or even members of this “incompetent, inept” Government, all as described with unfailing geniality by O’Leary.
His strategy was simple and wildly entertaining: answer a question with a scathing, funny onslaught on the numpties, always ending with “it’s the economy stupid”; then pass the baton to the commissioner for an “intelligent” answer.
Whether due to his imperfect English (he speaks three others fluently) or a smart fore-warning from perhaps Martin Territt (he’s the commission’s head of representation in Ireland), the commissioner managed to maintain an inscrutable expression, lest he be caught chortling at Ryanair’s lèse majesté.
The strategy also involves throwing open questions to the floor, then pre-empting the first question, which he anticipates will suggest that the real reason he is lashing out time and money arguing for an EU treaty is because he wants to get his mitts on Aer Lingus. His answer to his own question is that it’s about no such thing and that Aer Lingus will fall into Ryanair’s arms sooner rather than later.
Later, The Irish Timesasks him why he didn't involve himself in the last referendum if it's all so important. "I didn't care. I assumed it would be voted in . . . I enjoyed watching Cowen and the rest squirm, just as everybody else did". Ireland accounts for only 14 per cent of Ryanair's business so "it doesn't much matter to Ryanair", he says.
So why is he throwing himself in now? “Because I fundamentally believe that as a country we’re f***ed if we don’t. We’re bankrupt. The only thing keeping us going is Europe.”
Mmmh. Still not convinced that that this patriotic approach squares with the ruthless Mick O’Leary.
“Well, why do I live in Ireland? Why do I pay tax in Ireland if I’m so f***ing ruthless? I actually want my kids to go to the local national school in Mullingar. I don’t want them to have an orphan tax-exile lifestyle. The first thing I did when I made money was buy a farm outside Mullingar. My wider family are there. I always wanted to live there . . . I think you’re more focused when you have kids.”
But, he adds, there is something else we should know about Brussels, and “it’s that these f***ers have very long memories. They stuck it to us enough times.”
Example? “You can never link one with the other, but Ryanair’s offer to Aer Lingus is the only airline merger that’s been turned down by Brussels on competition grounds in 30 years.”
It’s nearly 4pm before we arrive back in Dublin, a full six hours out of the Ryanair chief executive’s day, cursing, cajoling, explaining, repeating, explaining.
There’s another press conference still to chair, with the wilting commissioner in tow. O’Leary’s courtesy, solicitousness and jocularity have never wavered; not once. Wish we could say the same of his airline.