NO SOONER has an English lawyer finished apologising for comments about Willie O'Dea's accent than a clock at Manchester Airport has become the latest victim of Ireland's troubled relationship with English humour.
It probably seemed hilarious when somebody in the airport's Globe bar added a "Dublin" clock to a group of those showing the time all over the world. Dublin time is, of course, the same as Manchester's, but on this clock only twice a day - because the hands were going backwards.
If anyone missed the joke - as one of Irish businesswoman Rachel Rogers's friends did - a helpful barman would chip in to the effect that: "They're all backward over there."
This had happened several times, Lancashire based Ms Rogers claimed, and yesterday (Manchester time), she had had enough. She contacted the Irish Times to complain and simultaneously dispatched letters to a range of other addresses, including John Major's.
The airport's customer relations people were mortified to hear that such an offence was lurking within the terminal's precincts. Ten minutes after The Irish Times's call, they were back on to say that a word had been had in the relevant bear.
Minutes later, they were assuring us that the clock was, like the original joke, off the wall. And with profuse apologies they protested that it had ever been in any way an officially approved joke, lurking as it did in the part of the airport managed by the catering franchise company Scandinavian Service Partners.
SSP, which runs a similar operation at Dublin airport, was equally contrite: "The clock was put up in error and has been taken down. We apologise for any offence this may have caused," a spokesman said.
The clock's part in the joke was entirely innocent. Unlike the other timepieces, which were sponsored by Guinness, the reverse timepiece was an advertisement for an English cider which has the slogan: "Worth going back for again and again." Sounds like a line from Bord Failte.