Ballot Capers: Gerry Adams gives us the creaks

Creaking at the seams When the major topic of conversation post-programme is a creaking floorboard, you can take it that audiences were not gripped by the final leaders’ debate of the election.

That suspicion is borne out by data from the daily #GE16 social tracker produced by public affairs company PR360. It reports that during the first hour of the programme there were 26,253 mentions of #GE16, down from 37,263 in the first hour of the previous debate. There were also 23,312 mentions of #leadersdebate, down significantly from 70,313 by the first hour in the last debate.

Meanwhile, Gerry Adams has fessed up to being the man behind the creak. The weird noise so captivated viewers that it had its own Twitter account by the time the talking stopped.

Speaking to reporters gathered in the National Gallery yesterday, Mr Adams casually dropped the bombshell that he was to blame. Apparently a seam running down the stage close to where he was standing made the noise every time he shifted in certain way.

Loan application

Despite questioning the accuracy of polls showing

Labour

doing badly and her own Dublin West seat at risk,

Joan Burton

sounds a little less sceptical in a letter sent out to constituents this week. “Dear friend,” it begins. “Local surveys suggest the election for the final seat in Dublin West may go down to the wire. So on Friday the choice will be between myself and either

Ruth Coppinger

or Sinn Féin. It is quite a stark choice.”

She goes on to write: "You can beat the opinion polls by giving me your No 1 vote." Sounds suspiciously like a loan application for Fine Gael votes to us.

Will it never Enda?

The nation will breathe a huge sigh of relief at 2pm today when the broadcasting moratorium on election coverage finally kicks in. Any remaining desire to hear just a little bit more about the recovery and how it should be kept going was surely extinguished by the Taoiseach’s last-gasp blitz of radio and TV last night and this morning.

First, Matt Cooper had an extensive one-on-one on Today FM. Then UTV Ireland proudly announced Enda would be giving it his "final TV interview" yesterday evening. Not so fast, shouted TV3, pointing to its own "last major interview" first thing this morning. Expect Enda to pop up on every radio show that will have him before lunchtime, finishing with one last, breathless call to Joe Duffy at 1.55pm.

Literature award

We’ve seen all sorts of election “literature” over the past three weeks, but step forward Fingal Independent candidate Fergal O’Connell, who wins Ballot Caper’s “Proofreaders Not Necessary” award of the campaign.