Beardy twins

THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:REGARDLESS of how Robbie Keane's hamstring holds up or whether Mesut Ozil turns out to be the new Zinedine Zidane, the best thing about the Euro 2012 tournament – bar none – is the prospect of having the Après Match TV sketch show back in footballing action. They've scored so many memorable goals over the years.

Remember the time they did the entire commentary on the play-off match between “the Turkans and the South Koreans”? One of their most cherished series of sketches, though, has to be “The Three Joe Duffys”, in which a trio of beardy, bespectacled men make lengthy (and irredeemably melancholy) commentary on issues of no interest whatsoever. But lo, here is The Irish Times, way back in 1988, releasing its inner Joe Duffy in the shape of this wicked photograph.

Just to prove that it wasn’t in the least funny, the picture ran on a business page alongside the stocks and shares. It was accompanied by an extended report on that year’s Irish Times debate, which proposed the highly serious motion “That Trade Unions Are Becoming Increasingly Irrelevant”.

Among those speaking in favour of this proposal were the engineer and scientist Noel Mulcahy and the political economist Moore McDowell, both of whom opined – I’m summarising, but you get the drift – that trade unions had wrecked the economy and destroyed the lives of innocent consumers. Controversial, not to say contentious, stuff.

The camera, however, has captured Mulcahy (left) and Moore (right) in a classic “Two Joe Duffys” moment. Two beardy men who have both – clearly – been to Specsavers. Two cheekily comic expressions. If not for the different hair partings, they might be twins. Or, at the very least, Zig and Zag. Or yin and yang.

In real life, needless to say, Mulcahy and McDowell look nothing like each other. But look at one face in this photo and you find yourself looking in disbelief at the other, then back again, in a back-and-forth bounce that can only end by making you smile. And goodness knows we could all do with a smile. Maybe if we start with a smile, the Euro 2012 results – never mind the ongoing economic situation and all the rest of it – won’t make us weep.

Arminta Wallace

Published on June 20th, 1988 Photograph by Peter Thursfield irishtimes.com/archive