Best of a bad lot

Despite the spartan conditions the hacks were forced to work in at the Stormont talks, they managed to see the lighter side. The elaborate but rather draughty tent laid on by Mo Mowlam to accommodate the world's media was rapidly nicknamed the "Marquee de Sade" but as the journos came to appreciate the full rigour of their conditions it was renamed the "Marquee de Very Sade". As one wag quipped: "You can't have a circus without a tent." Other pastimes the hacks indulged in to while away the long hours included making up humorous songs about the weighty events being enacted in Castle Buildings. Top of the charts at this writing is the country-and-western classic: "If I said you were a Cross-Border Body would you hold it against me?"