NO doubt about it, Jackie Healy-Rae - to borrow that glorious tribute to Richard Harris - is a circus of a man, writes Kathy Sheridan.
He can gallop straight from a cracking treatise on Everywoman's innate unsuitability for local politics ("I can't see a woman busy with home duties able to give the time") to a poignant summation of a typical county councillor's selfless life.
"I know a man," he told The Irish Times gravely, "who spent the last four weeks on council business and only got back to his real job yesterday." Strewth.
A humble councillor? Flat out on council business for four entire weeks? What in the name of Feargus Flood was he up to for all that time?
And what class of a "real job" does he have that he can afford to drop it for a month at a time?
And unless all belonging to him are dead and he lives in a four-star hotel or, alternatively, has a regiment of little FF elves to clean the fridge, scrub the loo, boil the boxers, iron his jumpers and chat the children, how can he possibly avoid home duties for a month?
Jackie, that man is in urgent need of jail, hospital treatment, hosing down or a monument. Shouldn't we be told?
But maybe I missed something. Statistically, the chances are that he has living dependants and shares a house, without benefit of elves. So how does he do it?
Ah. Maybe he has a live-in woman, a WIFE even? And maybe she does everything for the great man, down to boiling the boxers and scrubbing the loo (i.e. "home duties")? Got it now, Jackie.
One might quibble and say that chances are she also has living dependants and shares a house, without benefit of elves . . . and has a live-in man, a husband even? But that instead of the tough option of looking mournful at funerals, bawling schoolyard insults across the council chamber and chewing her arm off to get her name in the local paper, she gets to wash his socks, keep the kids out of jail and make the tea for waiting supplicants (on the off-chance that the Boss Himself is home).
But sure that's how God made 'em. Uniquely designed for "home duties", she. Congenitally equipped to save the world, he. You know it makes sense.
And now that we know at last, thank God, what a councillor's workload truly entails, the only remaining mystery is how on earth a man like Jackie - our mightiest, most vocal proponent of the dual council-Dáil mandate - can do the two jobs and survive. These are giants of men, of course, but remember Jackie's glum summation: council duties can disappear a fellow for entire months, even to the exclusion of the real job and home duties.
Now, I ask you, is it fair that they have to sacrifice themselves on the double by doing both that and the Dáil job?
Give the chaps a break, I say.
"Between the county council, the health board and very many different committees, you could be busy from eight in the morning until 10 at night, not to mention the funerals you would have to go to," lamented Jackie. "I just can't see a woman with the time to do it."
Never despair, Jackie. Just apply a little lateral thinking. Why should you, poor lamb, have to do two horrifyingly demanding jobs when the women do only home duties?
So make them do one of yours.
As the council is only pin-money for mighty men anyway, I'd start with that. Yes, I know - training women to that standard is the challenge, but let's face it, they do have a few brain cells (God knows why) and with the odd kick up the transom and judicious use of time, they could be adequate. You know what they say about monkeys - if 1,000 of them had 1,000 typewriters for a 1,000 years, they could reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare.
NOW, for the training programme. . . I'd start with a trip to the Flood tribunal. This would entail some turgid, mannish stuff about Section 4, election "expenses", brown envelopes, odd places and names to remember - car parks, pubs, prominent builders, Mr Big, Mr Insatiable. But as a crash course in the art of the possible, it's essential. Also there might be mileage and the little ladies could use an hour in the smoke to go shopping.
Pick the right day and they could take in a council meeting on the way home. Big thing here is to acquaint them with the local reporters. Once the,er, debate begins, the lassies may seem a tad bemused by the level and volume of it, but they'll soon get the point.
The next big challenge - these are only women, mind - is to show why hogging personal credit for something that had absolutely nothing to do with you, is abso-bloody-lutely vital. Get your claim in first. Obviously.
Then there are the funerals, the clinics, the cumann meetings, the convention-rigging . . .
Listen, tell you what. I'll run the course (for a small stipend). Being a woman and sort of reared in the game, Jackie, I know the score. Feeling better? Now, about your home duties . . .
ksheridan@irish-times.ie