Absurd spectacles: Bertie's love of an opening lives on

PRESENT TENSE: THE SHOT of Bertie Ahern with a pair of 3D glasses was one of the pictures of the week. It had a dollop of absurdity and incongruity that made it hard to ignore, but it was about more than that because it aroused curiosity in some ("what's Bertie Ahern doing now?") and ire in others ("what's Bertie Ahern doing now!?").

The truth is that the scene had a certain tawdriness about it. This man used to consort with world leaders. He negotiated a European treaty, helped bring peace to the North, was lauded for his stewardship of a tiger economy. Now look what he’s up to, squeezing himself between the man from Sky TV and the wife of the pub owner, and pretending to ignore the photographers’ lenses. Sky didn’t pay him for the appearance, or, it says, ask him to attend. But the result was a publicity shot nonetheless. Posing with the glasses, Ahern had become a model of sorts.

The first month of 2010 suggested that you will want to get used to Bertie Ahern’s move from international statesman to door-to-door salesman. His first public engagement of the year came when he recently launched the Holiday World Show at the RDS. He has done this before, but you might wonder what he can possibly bring to such an event today. Then you realise: given the state he left the economy in, a lot of people must associate his face with a strong urge to get out of the country.

His presence at such occasions is not exactly a surprise. During his time in power, he was known for his love of an opening. No ribbon went uncut, no plaque un-unveiled. His right calf must be grotesquely overdeveloped due to the amount of sod turning he would have done.

During his tenure, it sometimes seemed that there was no petrol station or supermarket or pub or roadside burger stall that hadn’t been opened by him. At least then he could put it down to political duties. Now, it’s just down to himself. Obviously, a politician has to keep his profile up – especially the artist that we now know Ahern to have declared himself – but when the next RDS trade show comes along we could easily expect to see him at one of the slice-’em-dice-’em stalls.

But what will businesses get if they entice him along as an alternative to Glenda Gilson? He remains a box office draw. Ahern was in Fagan’s for only a short time, apparently, and left before the 3D football match even started, but his presence ensured extensive coverage, some of it outside Ireland.

But will they mind the notoriety? The picture though encouraged waggery – jokes about rose-tinted glasses and a comparison with Carl Fredricksen from Up circulated online – but there was also loud disdain from letter writers to The Irish Times who questioned Ahern’s gall to appear in such a pose and the media’s decision to run the photograph. It was, they claimed, an ad for Sky, the pub and for him. His role in it, it seems, was the least palatable.

Such a reaction is the nature of political life, of course, but as he drifts into a post-political life, are such pictures the future for Bertie Ahern? And is there a trade-off for being “Bertie” for all these years? Courting such informality always had the potential to come back as something worse than parody. And while he is no stranger to parody, he has at least managed not only to live with this but thrive on it.

During his tenure, he became a Gift Grub character, yet it only underlined his appeal rather than demeaned it. There must have been many who heard the real Bertie and the comedy Bertie and amalgamated them into one colourful and acceptable whole.

But when he pops up on a bar stool with 3D glasses on his nose and camera lenses in his face, he is in danger of overtaking the caricature at a time when increasing numbers of people don’t find it funny any more.

Is this what he had in mind when he created his website, featuring the stately figure gazing confidently towards the future? There is a precedent: the day he wore the yellow suit. On that occasion, however, he was flanked by George W Bush and Jacques Chirac. It was a very public stage on which to make a sartorial slip-up, but it was a lofty stage nonetheless. The only thing elevated about last weekend’s photo-op was the bar stool.