SIDELINE CUT:Brendan Mullin, who could leave the field at the end of a muddy Five Nations game looking as manicured as Richard Gere on Oscar night, was the man most frequently branded with the Steve Silvermint moniker, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THE TRANSITION from the sporting to the political field is nothing new in Irish life but it was, nonetheless, a surprise to hear the legendary if exceedingly dated “Steve Silvermint” – “the cool, clean hero” – name checked in the Dáil this week.

Who is this alliterative man of mystery, where did he come from and when is he going to appear on the Vincent Browne show?

First, the background: there was a time when any Irish sports star who managed to play reasonably well and cut a bit of a dash was invariably labelled with the Steve Silvermint tag.

The name springs from the cartoon strip hero that the people behind Silvermints devised for a television advert back in the mid 1970s, denoting a lantern jawed tough guy who bears a startling resemblance to Don Draper and who, after popping a sweet in his mouth with a debonair flick of his thumb proceeds, in keeping with the rampant gender stereotyping of the decade, to effortlessly save a damsel in distress.

“Oh Steve,” she coos afterwards to which Steve replies: “Not me, baby! The mints.”

The advert was one of those classics that stayed with those who saw it and the name plainly travelled with its audience through the years that followed and was used to describe anyone who was vaguely suave, handsome, rich, talented, French or, generally speaking, an enviable bastard.

To give a picture of what someone was like, people would say, “He’s a real Steve Silvermint” and leave it up to yourself to decide if this was a good or a bad thing.

The phrase – not surprisingly – gained most cachet among the rugby fraternity, who are loath to pass up the chance to popularise a cliché that rolls easily off the tongue.

Pretty much anyone who played rugby for Ireland between 1977 and ’95 and could fit into a 32in cummerbund for the endless silver-service dinners that defined the life of the rugby international in that era was certain to have been described as Steve Silvermint at one point or another.

It was, loosely speaking, a compliment in that it implied the Steve in question had not only the ability to score the kind of tries that would leave Fred Cogley and Nigel Starmer-Smith groaning in ecstasy but that he would do so in a way that made it seem not a particularly big deal.

He would score the try then jog elegantly away and, as Warren Zevon would sing, “his hair was perfect”.

This was not to imply he was in some way aloof or indifferent to the cause of the team, simply that he accepted he was the guy whose role it was to add a touch of class at the business end of the generally agonising (and infrequent) build-ups to Irish tries.

He was the kind of guy who would score three tries on a weekend, do an enviable turn on the dance floor whenever Freak Out came on the sound system and then return fresh as a daisy to his career in international finance on Monday morning.

Whether the man actually popped mints of any make or not was irrelevant.

Brendan Mullin, by virtue of being a prolific scorer, an Oxfordman and someone who could leave the field at the end of a muddy Five Nations game looking as manicured as Richard Gere on Oscar night, was the man most frequently branded with the moniker.

But there were many others: Paul Dean, Tony Ward, Conor O’Shea, Richard Wallace, Niall Woods, Rob Saunders and Eric Elwood are among those rugby men from yesteryear who would have had the comportment and clean-cut image to qualify for the name tag.

None of the Irish football heroes of Jack Charlton’s era truly fell into the Steve Silvermint category.

Mark Lawrenson, with the sleeves rolled three-quarters of the way up and his cool-as-a-breeze temperament, would have fit the bill but the Serpico-style beard he wore in those days made him ineligible.

John Aldridge might have qualified but I am pretty sure you are not allowed be Steve Silvermint and have a Scouse accent, unfair as that might be.

In the GAA, examples of Steve Silvermint types are also extremely rare and to describe someone as such generally held sinister undertones.

In fact, it was the next step to being described as a “Fancy Dan” – the kind of guy who played with his collar up and liked to irritate short-fused corner backs with crowd pleasing, unnecessary flicks and shimmies and who always lived in mortal danger of receiving the kind of knuckle sandwich that the original Steve Silvermint delivers in the advert that has never quite left the Irish subconscious.

Still, the name fell away during the Celtic Tiger years when pretty much everyone fancied himself as urbane and suave and a “winner” in the Silvermint mode.

The trench-coated guy became redundant and passe and was more or less forgotten about and the significance of his name was usurped by more modern sounding phrases such as “He’s a total lege’’’, etc.

But like many a sports star before him, Steve Silvermint seems to have swapped his prowess on the sporting field and discovered a new lease of life in government.

Jack Lynch may be the most distinguished member of the cast who moved seamlessly from sport to government but from Jimmy Deenihan to Dick Spring to Seán Flanagan to John O’Mahony, many have followed in his footsteps.

And it was a real blast from the past to hear Michael Lowry, in his passionate self-defence in the Dáil, hurl the famous Silvermint name across the room in the direction of Fianna Fáil benches, when he declared that Micheál Martin’s image as the cool clean hero of Irish politics may transpire to be not quite what it seems.

The barb would have been more memorable had it not already been applied to Mr Martin by Labour’s finest Pat Rabbitte some six years ago but it will be an eternal regret that the Corkman did not come back with the only possible riposte: “Not me, baby. It’s the mints.”

It is no accident that the Silvermint name should have its revival now.

This is a mixed up time.

The sweet itself – championed by no less than Noel Gallagher as one of the best things about Ireland – has resolutely fought for its place on Irish sweet counters through the years, always placed alongside the redoubtable mint with the hole.

And it is only a matter of time before the character it inspired once again becomes the most common way of describing those sports stars who are just that bit slicker and quicker than the rest and when those who remember the original advert will wonder just what decade they are living in anyway.