We had a little mishap a couple of weekends ago. Someone forgot to change the batteries in Padraig Flynn's smoke alarm, and while sleepwalking through a performance on The Late Late Show he managed to set fire to himself.
He appears to have come to his senses in the car on the way home and attempted to pour some water on the flames by "partially retracting" what he had said about Mr Gilmartin's health.
In the end, something close to a cupful of water got thrown at the growing conflagration. It didn't work. The next day Tom Gilmartin stoked things up with comments in relation to Bertie Ahern, understandable given Mr Flynn's smug appearance the previous evening. By the end of that day all of Mr Flynn's 6 4["]
frame was burning nicely, his prospects of being returned as European Commissioner having long since gone up in smoke.
This was the most crucial point in the current crisis. The house of Pee (all three of them) was already too far gone to rescue, and Bertie and friends needed to realise that. In a situation like that any fireman worth his salt would have ensured that the fire could not spread. And the easiest way to do that would be to deny it any more fuel.
In this case that meant pointing out that all of this would be resolved at the Flood tribunal, that everyone involved would explain what had happened and then shutting up.
Bertie then needed to go trawl through his diaries, find out how many times he did meet Mr Gilmartin, talk to Mr Flynn, get the facts straight and explain them all to Mary Harney. She would then be able to say the PDs are happy members of Government and this whole thing gets sorted out in one go at the Flood tribunal. But Bertie, being the helpful person he is, tried to put out the flames by throwing a bucket full of petrol on them. I am mystified as to why the Taoiseach decided to get involved in this battle of the diaries with Tom Gilmartin.
Yes, the press would have been hitting him with the customary "the people have a right to know" argument. And, of course, the people do have a right to know. That's why we have all these tribunals. That is now the correct forum in which to clarify what has happened. He would have had to put up with a brief slump in his popularity until the Flood tribunal was concluded, but nothing terminal.
One of the peculiarities of this crisis is that no one has any right to point the finger at the customary target and say "This is all the work of the media". The media have been happy to warm their hands at this particular fire, but they didn't start it, nor have they done much to feed it.
Having decided to get involved the Taoiseach has, in my view, made two further major mistakes. Claiming one meeting and then finding three more was not a smart move. In fairness, it is close to impossible for a politician to remember every meeting 10 years ago. I certainly couldn't tell you how many times I met any individual a decade ago. That's why we keep diaries. And that is what he should have checked first, before making any statement.
When he said that he could only remember one encounter but that he would check his diaries he was being naive to expect the newspapers to interpret that as anything but a contradiction of Mr Gilmartin's claims.
RTE's Prime Time then offered him another bucket of petrol. Again he seems to have assumed this was water and threw it on to what was now a fully-fledged bonfire. The authoritative performance that was required was not delivered. The reassurance that his partners in Government desperately needed was absent. And finally the Opposition had to force a debate in the Dail.
Bertie finally got his fireman's hat on and damped down the flames. He fought his way through the smoke and brought some clarity to the situation.
The Opposition didn't manage to land any comprehensive hits. Although I suspect the Opposition was not all that keen to do him and the Government any serious damage. It realised the situation had moved from the spontaneous combustion of one Commissioner to a blaze that threatened the Government's future. And that would have meant an election.
As Pat Rabbitte put it there was "a general sense of relief that we're not heading into an election in this weather". It wasn't just the weather that they were concerned about. Labour and DL have to get themselves sorted out following their merger and realistically wouldn't be in any shape to fight an election for a year.
Fine Gael has been doing badly in the polls, and has been less than effective in opposition. And the Progressive Democrats have been suffering from the loss of identity that often afflicts a minor party in coalition with a much larger one. They have been unable to maintain their grip on their traditional moral high ground and are aware that forcing an election through moral indignation would not go down well with the public.
By the end of Wednesday I would have put money on the Government surviving for at least another 12 months. But there was one more bucket of petrol waiting.
Mary Harney decided an appearance on News at One would give her the opportunity to clarify her party's position and demonstrate that the PDs were still the Government's gamekeepers. She ended up giving the impression that they had stumbled across some poachers, that there might be more of them out there and that they hadn't decided whether to team up with them or throw them out of Leinster House.
Going into any encounter with the media without having worked out your position clearly beforehand is asking for trouble. Ms Harney an O'Rourke, a good interviewer but not a Paxman in the terrier department. He asked her the obvious questions and in the process she managed to quote Tom Gilmartin, "things coming down the tracks"; state that her relationship with the Taoiseach was damaged; and make it clear that her party's support for the Government was sitting in the "pending" tray.
Nonetheless, there is still a good chance this whole thing will burn itself out. The Flood tribunal will, inevitably, fan it back to life, but hopefully will also bring it to an end. This is Padraig Flynn's problem and should not and need not have turned into a potential funeral pyre for this administration.