This newspaper, it seems, has done the state some service. In an extraordinary piece by Vincent Browne about the last days of Charles Haughey in Village magazine, The Sunday Times is credited with putting the kibosh on a plan by the disgraced former taoiseach to write his autobiography.
Two years ago, according to Browne, Haughey was persuaded by his family to write his life story and asked if the journalist would help. But “one Monday morning shortly afterwards”, when Browne showed up at Kinsealy with a researcher, Haughey changed his mind. “There had been a prominent piece in The Sunday Times the day before about his private life and he had decided not to proceed,” Browne claims.
We have scoured the Sunday Times’ archives for 2004 and can find no such “prominent piece” about Haughey’s private life. All we can think of is that our exclusive story in 2003 — that Haughey had reached a multi-million settlement with the Revenue Commissioners — is what disturbed poor CH. Shame about the book, though. Wonder what he would have called it. A Rake’s Progress, maybe. Or, Here Lies.
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Sue’s confidence in British justice was restored last week when three men, including former IRA prisoner Martin O’Neil, were acquitted of using a tree as an offensive weapon.
The trio had been accused of uprooting it and using it as a battering ram against a British soldier during rioting following a contentious North Belfast Orange march. All were found to be innocent. O’Neil was shown on video gripping the back of the tree but was in fact trying to pull it off other people, the judge found, while another man was holding the tree without intending to cause grievous bodily harm.
How could anybody have suspected them of anything but the kindest intentions?
Another obvious explanation is that, like Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, all three were merely hugging the tree either to feel its connection to the earth or, more likely, to comfort it after the traumatic experience of being uprooted.
The tree may also have been used to direct beams of love and joy towards the British Army and Orange Brethren. Or were they talking to the special branch?
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Le Monde's journalism really makes la difference for Haughey
Stand by for Un Grand Apologie in Le Monde, after a huge faux pas last Friday. In a piece about Charles Haughey, the French newspaper reported that “le dernier hommage pourrait revenir à Moira [sic] Geoghegan-Quinn, une journaliste qui fut sa maîtresse pendant vingt-sept ans”.
Er, not quite. Terry Keane was the journalist who was Haughey’s mistress for 27 years; Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was a Fianna Fail TD for Galway West and was appointed a minister by Haughey in 1979. Given that MGQ is now a long-standing member of the European Court of Auditors, and La Keane lived for several years in France, we’d have expected Le Monde to know “la différence”.
Sindo owners use their best in-house marketing
Forget conflicts of interest, press councils, and all that sort of media propriety nonsense: when Anne and Eoghan Harris decided to sell their house in Monkstown, their newspaper, the Sunday Independent, was deployed as part of the extensive marketing campaign. John O’Keeffe, the Sindo’s “property editor” waxed lyrical, quoted Shakespeare, used acres of assonance, and gushed that his boss’s house was the “mother and father of them all”, and “comes magnificently presented in a unique elevated position with exceptional views and marine vistas”.
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“Choose life,” simpered O’Keeffe. “Choose Monkstown; choose Trafalgar Terrace; choose Anne’s house.”
Or choose to gag at such brown-nosing; choose to ignore the hype; choose to stay away. Which is what everyone did: not a single bidder turned up to the auction last Tuesday. So the Harris Homestead is now for sale by private treaty with an asking price of €4m. Strange, given the original AMV (advised minimum value) was €3.4m. Wonder what Shane Ross, the Sindo business editor and terroriser of estate agents who quote low AMVs, would have to say about that.