The Epitome of Panache

I see that Father David O'Hanlon CC is now being hailed as a new David, as in the Biblical tale of David and Goliath. Mr Frank Flanagan, chairman of the Christian Centrist Party, has been doing the hailing.

The youthful Father O'Hanlon sprang to fame last year when he criticised the former president, Mrs Robinson, for her mode of dress when attending a private audience with Pope Paul. He was completing his licentiate in patristic theology in Rome at the time (Father O'Hanlon, not the Pope), with Female Dress and Morality as a subsidiary subject.

Now a curate in Kentstown, Navan, and presumably a licensed patristic theologist, Father O'Hanlon has upset some people by insisting that "a person of integrity who tolerates contraception. . .cannot possibly in conscience become or remain a Catholic".

Anyway, Frank Flanagan welcomes the new David: "Like St Patrick at Slane, he has lit his fire at nearby Kentstown. His first Goliath was our then head of State, Mrs Mary Robinson, when he pointed out the error of her ways in Rome (when she met the Pope)."

I am not aware of any clash between St Patrick and Goliath, but let it pass. And perhaps Mrs Robinson is unaware of having been toppled. But as a Biblical nitpicker I cannot let pass, even on extended metaphorical grounds, the notion of their being more than one Goliath.

The whole point of the story in the Bible is that the Philistines arrived to engage in battle with Saul; Goliath stood forth to invite single combat; and nobody was willing to engage him until David came out and disposed of Goliath with his slingshot - a rather unsporting means of attack, in my opinion. Demoralised, the remaining Philistines were then easily defeated. No second Goliath materialised from their ranks.

When writing about Father O'Hanlon and his doings, perhaps Frank Flanagan might be better off with images of Don Quixote tilting at windmills. There are plenty of those among what Mr Flanagan describes as the "Father Trendies, the Reverend Dissenters and the self-styled compassionate and `understanding' liberals".

To keep the Kentstown curate company, Mr Flanagan might even envisage himself in the role of Sancho Panza. The pair could then ride furiously off together in all directions, like Leacock's knight, just to confuse things further.

Right. Now to less dreary matters. I read the other day that the renowned singer Tony Bennett, he who inadvertently left his heart in San Francisco, began his career as a singing waiter in New York. He said: "You had to learn the songs on the spot, as people requested them. The other two waiters were Irishmen, very avuncular. I'd meet them in the kitchen and say, quick, can you give me, uh, I'll Get By, then I'd run out and sing it. God, I loved every minute."

Well, this is reasonably accurate, though as one of the two Irish waiters referred to, I don't understand why Tony thought of my colleague Michael and myself as "avuncular". I doubt if we were more than a couple of years older than him at the time.

Still, we were always happy to help out. I myself recall standing in the kitchen and sharpening a carving knife while simultaneously running Tony quickly through The Mountains of Mourne, O Sole Mio, The Whistling Gypsy Rover and Funiculi Funicula.

In return, Tony - who was then plain Antonio Bendetto, just another wannabe star of Italian origins from the working-class area of Astoria, New York - would regularly help us out with recipes for some of the more exotic Italian dishes demanded by the restaurant customers.

I would sidle over between songs and say: "Quick, Tony, how do you prepare tartine burro e alici?" Or it might be rigatoni al'amitriciana, or spaghetti Alfredo. Then Michael or I would race back to the kitchen and help our rather inadequate chef run it up.

In many ways, after Tony moved on, our little restaurant's fortunes faded and prospered in very much the same way as Tony's career. Our fame grew through the highball years of the 1960s, but the 1970s were bleak: our food wasn't voguish and we still couldn't get a really top-class chef.

And then, in the mid-1980s, we found ourselves centre-stage, in a reinvention of cool, when our food became, like Tony's great romantic interpretations, the epitome of panache.

Indeed, we served the classiest panache in New York.