Not taxing your car, parking it where you like, staying in the pub as long as you like and not paying service charges were among the advantages cited yesterday by the financier J.P. McManus of having the Freedom of Limerick City conferred on him. That was according to his friends, he said.
Bill Whelan, the composer of Riverdance, said that he looked forward to parking his car on double yellow lines "beside J.P.'s chopper".
At City Hall yesterday, the two, who grew up in Limerick, were back in town for the ceremony, joining the ranks of Charles Stewart Parnell, John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II, Bill Clinton and 52 other recipients of the award since 1877.
The difference, according to the Mayor, Cllr John Ryan, was that they were both from the city and, with a year between them, had both done the Leaving Certificate in 1968. "There must have been something in the water that year", he added. "They have preserved the ability, praised by Kipling, of `walking with kings and keeping the common touch'. "
The sport of kings also featured. Cllr John Gilligan remarked on Mr McManus's long-term and profitable love affair with the horse. You could forgive a horse - Istabraq - which only stumbled once a year and then only at the last hurdle.
Earlier, Mr Whelan had borrowed Derbhile de Paor's baton to conduct the Boherbuoy Brass and Reed Band through New York, New York.
Andrew O'Byrne, a piper with the Corpus Christi Pipe Band, played The Minstrel Boy and Let Erin Remember and the Limerick Wind Ensemble played an octet by Franz Krommer.
Limerick was a lively, musical city to grow up in, said Mr Whelan, who grew up with a grand piano, a Wurlitzer manual organ and a recording system in his home in Barrington Street. Any resemblance it had to the city portrayed in Angela's Ashes was gone.
"Limerick has had mixed media coverage over the years. Sometimes I have found myself in strange places around the world defending it", he said. "It is alive. That is what makes me proud to be here today with my fellow Limerick men."
Mr McManus congratulated the corporation on the transformation of the city. "Beautiful buildings are fine, but it is really the warmth and friendliness and welcome the people of Limerick extend to visitors that make a lasting impression."