Charlie McCreevy, who got an Irish divorce last week, is shown above with two aspiring contestants for next weekend's Ballybunion Bachelor Festival. The Minister for Finance is big in Co Kerry, indeed he is one of the favourite people since he played golf there last September with Bill Clinton. But when the organisers asked him to launch the festival in Dublin's Planet Hollywood on Tuesday they didn't know of his new status. Neither did he refer to it in his prepared speech, but then the speech was never delivered (so scared, it was said later, were his minders that news of the court hearing would leak that he was whisked away after some hasty photographs).
The script said the winner of the famous game with Clinton was still as closely guarded as the third secret of Fatima but "in my opinion it was me". But then he didn't tell us that.
Ballybunion's Frank Quilter spoke about the World Periwinkle Picking Championship. Marine biologists, he said, believed Ballybunion produced "the most fertile, healthy and sexually active periwinkle in the world. They have an extra spring in their step since the visit of President Clinton."