Deaglán de Bréadún: I was mildly dismayed to read in an interview recently with a leading international banker that he rejected the description of himself as "gentlemanly".
Paul Bateman from the firm, J.P. Morgan Fleming, who manages assets worth $870 billion, told the Financial Times: "That implies weak". He went on in the same vein: "I'm well-mannered certainly, but also direct, determined and strong".
No doubt Mr Bateman is a fine individual, but there is a slight hint of the Gordon Gekko philosophy here. This was the character played by Michael Douglas in the movie, Wall Street, who tossed off such aphorisms as "Lunch is for wimps" and "If you need a friend, get a dog".
Since I was encouraged from a very early age to behave like a gentleman, if I could, it comes as a disappointment that a giant of the business world regards gentlemen as wimps.
Over the years I have met an outstanding but limited number of people who would qualify, without equivocation, for the description of "gentleman". The longtime editor of this newspaper, Douglas Gageby, belonged to this category. But woe betide anyone who considered him weak. He had the courage of a lion.
In answer to one particularly dire threat against the paper over an item about conditions under South Africa's apartheid regime, he sent a one-line missive: "Do your worst". With Gageby on the bridge, you would sail into uncharted waters in deepest fog without a qualm. Direct, determined and strong? Darn right, but also a true gentleman.
Another example of more recent vintage was Senator George Mitchell, who chaired the talks in Belfast leading to the Good Friday agreement. A stranger from a strange land, he came into a situation where feelings were raw and nerves badly frayed after 30 years of senseless killing. Ulster folk are the finest in creation but, frankly, many of them think tact is what you hammer into a carpet.
Mitchell brought patience, civility, good cheer and sheer downright niceness to the negotiating table, when others were obsessed with perfecting their "exit strategy". He achieved the unique distinction of being equally respected by unionists and republicans. This American gentleman had previously been a judge and majority leader in the US Senate and now chairs the giant Disney corporation: these are not jobs that usually go to weaklings.
In my formative years, our local sporting heroes in Wexford were the Rackard brothers, Nicky, Bobby and Billy. These legendary hurlers brought joy and colour, not just to their county but to virtually the entire nation as they led the Wexford team out of the doldrums to all-Ireland victory at Croke Park. But if you asked anyone to identify their most prominent characteristic in addition to sporting prowess you would almost certainly get the reply: "The Rackards are gentlemen".
Wexford are still playing Cork, as we saw yesterday, and despite occasional highly publicised lapses the sport of hurling remains, by and large, an object lesson in fair and even gentlemanly behaviour under tough and trying circumstances.
It may have something to do with being an amateur game, and possibly the academic Lincoln Allison was correct, in his article about doping and the Olympics on this page last Thursday, when he said professional athletes "are not gentlemen and cannot be expected to be".
The very word "gentleman" has regrettably acquired an aura of quaintness in recent years. The world of learning, education and even politics are badly polluted by jargon and simple, traditional words like "gentleman" are too often associated with plus-fours, monocles and gin on the veranda.
The feminist revolution has virtually banished the word "lady" from the language but, although "gentleman" would probably be frowned on as "gender-specific", I doubt that many women would complain if more males behaved like gentlemen.
At secondary school I was obliged to study John Henry Newman's essay, "What is a Gentleman?" which was taken from a series of lectures he gave in Dublin in 1852. I doubt if anyone reads it any more, unfortunately. He wrote: "It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain".
Cardinal Newman went on: "He is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd". In addition, a gentleman "submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny".
I can go along with nearly all of that except for the bit about being merciful towards the absurd. How could one report on politics in that case? And Newman sets the bar too high when he says that a gentleman "never defends himself by a mere retort" and has no ears for any form of gossip.
For the moment I'll stick with Oscar Wilde's dictum that "A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally".