Bertie Ahern

Broccoli…Taoiseach…teabagging…leader…ipod…Drumcondra…Katie Holmes…these are all words that come to come to mind when we think of Bertie Ahern. The truth is Bertie is much more than these words…much much more. The picture above is himself at a Scouts Den, flanked by a ginger bloke and a woman dressed in a wicked sea scouts uniform / drag…whichever. I wonder did Bertie get an honorary Scouts badge or complementary woggle for turning up?

B to the A entered the Dail at the tender age of 25 in 1977 and will presumably fuck off to the backbenches next week. The 31 years interlude involved pints in Fagan’s (which apparently has Tranny Night on a Friday*) and not having a bank account. Not much else happened in those years except the making of an odd remix tape, which I’ll come to next, and being Taoiseach for a while.

The first time I saw Bertie, was on a night out in Vicar Street a good few years back. Ahern was at the time getting big on the dance / trip-hop scene, a scene which now acknowledges him a visionary. I can truly say I’ve never heard anything like it since.

“This is for me beatch Cowen”, he bellowed, the strobe lights got going and Bertie kicked off his DJ set with a savage remix of Shadow’s tune “Organ Donor”. Ahern just kept the place pumping for hours – it was classic. At the end of his set, he fucked an empty bottle of Bud out into the crowd capping some young one – the bouncers didn’t like that, but nobody cared. The next time I saw Bertie was a few months later. He was eating a Spar roll in Eyre Square, Galway.

I couldn’t be arsed going into detail about his dodgy goings-on, and fuck if you want a balanced, non-biased account of the bloke read the Sunday Indo. I guess if you manage to block out all the other shite and remember that the man openly admitted a while back that he took ‘political donations for personal use’, then you will probably have a fair picture of Bertie. So if someone were to ask me did I think he was corrupt, I would have to answer - does a camel shit in the desert?

On a serious note, it may be obvious but all politicians crave a positive legacy. Bertie’s (supposedly positive) legacy will be out the fucking window if former secretaries, who got paid less than slaves, keep turning up to Dublin Castle.

I reckon like Westlife, Bertie just wants to “go home”, but the problem is that he doesn't know where the fuck home is. St.Luke's, his dump in Drumcondra, Celia's gaff, who really knows? He hasn’t resigned his seat but the chap has pretty much retired. B to the A, for me, has two options now. He can hit the red Luas line everyday pissed off his tree on cans of Druids, shouting at people in suits. Or…

He can go to Rio, do lots of drugs, expand his DJ repertoire and enjoy the easy lifestyle of the Copacabana. Both are appealing on different levels, but I think Bertie should take his time on deciding. Lest we forget he gets to chill on his way to retirement 15 years before the rest of us will ever do. Plenty of time left for Alan Mahon, the Revenue Commissioners, jail, turntables, the Luas, Rio…

A bientot Bertie.

(*A few months ago, on a Friday night, I was walking by Fagan’s in Drumcondra with a mate. A taxi pulled up right beside us and a tranny wankered off his/her tits proceeded to get out. The tranny had a bit of a Lindsay Lohan, noticed and then folded his/her knob back into his/her pants, underneath his/her mini-skirt. After the tranny got out, he/she pointed across the road to Fagan’s and shouted to me mate, “Im going in there to get some cock”…and off he/she went.

True story.)