DEMOCRATIC Unionist Party conferences are utterly predictable - the debates and general talk are of no surrender, British and Irish treachery, Ulster Unionist Party spinelessness, smash the IRA, laments for the good old days of the B Specials, that sort of thing. But they are, at least, energetic and entertaining.
Willie McCrea, gospel singer, Mid Ulster MP and bete noire of most nationalists, told a good joke on Saturday. It was about a "little Roman Catholic boy called Patrick" who found a sash left behind by one of the Orangemen on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown in July.
Patrick wore the sash around his house. "Where'd ye get that?" his mother screamed. "I got it on the Garvaghy Road."
"Put it in the bin immediately."
On his way to the bin his father spotted him and screamed, "Where'd ye get that?" "I got it on the Garvaghy Road."
"Put it in the fire immediately."
On his way to the fire his granny saw the sash and screamed, "Where'd ye get that?" "On the Garvaghy Road."
"Put it back where ye got it immediately."
And poor Patrick sobbed to his granny: "I've been an Orangeman for only half an hour and I've been re routed three times."
It brought the house down. And then there was Sammy Wilson. The nude holiday shots of Sammy featured in the Sunday World earlier in the year not only embarrassed Sammy but DUP members as well, many of whom come from staunch and puritanical Presbyterian stock.
So, it was a testing time for Sammy. Could he reinstate himself in the hearts of the faithful? He decided that targeting Gerry Adams and John Hume might do the trick. The SDLP leader had aided and abetted in "sanitising" Gerry Adams, he thundered.
"He has turned Gerry Adams from a scoundrel to a superstar, almost unaided, by trying to propagate this idea that he is a dove.
"Well, I have not heard him coming, but I have heard him doings plenty of shrieking as vulture like he descends upon the province of Ulster. Because of those efforts the Gerry Adams Roadshow has got on the road. And now we have Gerry going about like a pop star - Gerry and the Peacemakers.
"They have taken it to London, they have taken it to Washington, they wanted to take it to Australia, but Australia wouldn't let him in. We used to send convicts to Australia "now they are sending them back to us ... And I know a fair number of boys who would like to send him down under."
Then there was the fringe loyalists who" seeded the" only politicians, aside from John Hume, who believed Gerry Adams, according to Sammy.
"A more inappropriate name for a group of politicians I have never heard. John White, David Ervine, Billy Hutchinson and Gary McMichael! The fringe loyalists! They haven't got a wisp between them" - this a reference to the follicly challenged nature of some of the leading loyalist representatives.
"Fringe loyalists! Is Willie McCrea a punk rocker?"
And the audience roared with delight, their whoops and hollers of laughter a testament of forgiveness for Sammy. He was back in the told. As Sammy proclaimed from the rostrum, his leader smiled on with the benevolent air of the biblical father watching the return of his prodigal son.