PRIVATE DIARY OF A SUSPENDED MLA (2004)
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Saturday, November 29, 2003
Never, ever make a promise in a pub. Not, Dear Diary, that I made any last night; we were all far too shot through with good booze for that.
The celebrations began in earnest at 10pm – after the returning officer refused to do a fifth recount. Take your oil, Blunt, you BIGOT!
Then you had the speeches. I’d like to thank: the Loyalist Action Group for bumping off the Shinners’ front-runner, after nominations closed; Messrs Benson & Hedges for doing a similar job on the SDLP’s main attraction; the Derry Standard for exposing my fellow independent as a convicted pervert; and the PSNI for slapping me in handcuffs at the polling station and doubling my profile on election day. Oh, and did I mention my principal, Fr Know-All Giddens? Sit on this, you fat old git – and you can beat your Head of Languages job up your hole.
And no, you’re right, Diary, I said precisely none of the above – but if I going to be truthful here, that’s pretty much what I was thinking.
No, instead, I paid tribute to Tommy ‘Bowtie’ McGinlay, my self-appointed election agent, for all his fine work. (Three cheers for Tommy – could somebody wake him from underneath that pile of coats? Sorry, he is that pile of coats…) I then thanked Barry ‘King Size’ Barkley and my other financial backers; ‘Chiselling’ Phil Stevenson and my strategists; Susie ‘Short Shorts’ and the team who put up my election posters; and, of course, the special committee who took down everyone else’s.
I also congratulated my opponents on their fairness and decency on the hustings – and particularly whoever leaked it to the Daily Mirror that I get through more skirt than Dolce & Gabbana. I’ve the clipping framed and up on the wall.
A special mention, too, went to William Coyle, bookmaker of this parish, who gate-crashed the party to present me with a cheque for £1,000. A most gallant gesture, considering not a month ago, he laughed me out of the shop for sticking a tenner on myself at 100-1. William, however, then left the do quickly, when someone suggested that he might be buying drink.
Moving on to the press – the Derry Standard actually printed my press statements and gave me quite generous coverage for an independent, so I thanked them. But the BBC and UTV reckon that if you’re not a member of the Big Four, you have no business in politics. So when you come looking for soft-profile interviews next week, you can go fart in a large jar. (Though again, of course, I didn’t say that last bit.)
You have to throw in a couple of jokes as well. So I thanked both Alan Clark and Dana for their inspiration – Alan for showing me the real reason good-looking men get into politics, and Dana for convincing me that no-one was going to hold it against me that I’m a lousy singer.
Then, last but not least, of course, I expressed my great appreciation to those two very special ladies who are so important my life – they both know who they are. (Damned if I do but I suppose one of them’s gotta be my mother.) Anyway, this drew the biggest applause of the night, so I quit while I was ahead, and went back to the bar to buy another round for the troops.
As the night wore on, sporadic singing erupted, ranging from The Red Flag (taxi for McCann) to Four Green Fields (go party with the Provies upstairs) to The Town I Loved So Well (who let John Hume in?).
After that, someone had the bright idea of organising a limerick competition featuring the names of other candidates. And the tone rapidly degenerated. Actually, if I’m to be honest, even that was going rightly – apart from a few dubious rhymes with Nelis and Rankin. But then Tommy Bowtie got his second wind and began reciting one about the guy I beat to the sixth seat – the DUP’s Tony Blunt. So the staff at The Jack Kennedy Inn closed the bar and ordered us up a fleet of hacks. Quite right too.
But back to my opening point, Diary. Bad and all as I was last night, as far as I recall, I didn’t make any promises in the bar. Sadly, that ship sailed eight weeks ago, when a gulpin with too much stout on board announced that if that quote, unquote dog-lover goes up as a candidate, I’ll run myself. And when Tommy Bowtie played back the tape the following day, it sounded exactly like me. Thus explaining the pickle I’m now in…
The taxis arrived, and Great White Hope Number Two, a complete pro, oxtered me to the car, where she kissed me goodnight. I thanked her profusely and told her I’d add five gold stars to her chart when I got home.
The taxi then shot off, to avoid a bunch of stragglers wanting to share the fare. Indeed, I was just about to commend the driver on his skill when he braked suddenly to avoid a drunken jaywalker, and unfortunately, he upset more than the applecart. And before you could say Not Again, Mucker, Shay Gallagher, newly elected Member of the Legislative Assembly for North Derry, whirled his head to the side and sprayed the back seat with 15 pints of Guinness and two wee brandies.
Must have been all those canapés.
Sunday, November
I didn’t realise until I read this morning’s papers that last week was the fortieth anniversary of Jack Kennedy’s assassination. Though this is hardly surprising, considering I spent all day yesterday convinced that I also had been shot in the back of the head.
The last time I was at the doctor, he was very impressed by the fact that I never drink at all during the week. So he asked me how many units I drank at the weekends.
“About 30 pints,” I replied.
“Thirty pints!” he yelled. “Have you any idea how much that is?”
“Guts of 80 quid,” I told him.
Anyhow, Friday night’s taxi-driver, so Great White Hope Number Two tells me, had to be tipped pretty handsomely never to have seen me. Typical Shinner – if I’d been Gerry Adams, he’d have siphoned up the carrots and sold them off in bags.
The Sunday papers have largely been kind to me, with lots of “confounding the experts”, “breaking the traditional moulds”, and one particularly memorable “good-looking young bachelor”. (Pretty picture by-line, must drop her a thank-you card.)
My favourite was the piece in the Sunday Business Post, a Dublin paper, which, unusually, doesn’t think all northern nationalists come equipped with balaclavas and IRA tattoos. It’ll give me a decent start for my clippings collection:
Gallagher Rages Against the Machines
By Michael Harrison
The new independent MLA for North Derry, Shay Gallagher, yesterday promised to challenge the “comfortable complicity” which allows the four main parties in the North to perpetuate stagnant politics.
The 33-year-old French teacher – who has never been in Stormont and visits Belfast “only at the point of a gun” – was the last of the 108 MLAs to be elected on Friday night, after he saw off the challenge of the DUP’s Tony Blunt for the final seat.
Protocol means that Gallagher will have to take an immediate sabbatical from his job at St Fiachra’s Grammar School in Dunavady; despite the fact the Assembly is unlikely to sit until after the European elections next June at the earliest. And it is an anomaly the new MLA himself describes as “100 percent daft”.
“Jesus, I thought teachers had it handy,” Gallagher told the Business Post.
“From Monday, I will be getting paid twice as much for sitting on my backside and staring out the window, as I do for working a 35-hour week. I haven’t had this much fun since the Foyle Trust advertised for trainee gynaecologists.
“Seriously though, the main players have to start shaking themselves quickly. If we don’t get the structures up again soon, our researchers will all have blinded themselves on the free internet porn.”
Unknown
For the past three years, Gallagher has been sitting as an independent on Dunavady Council. He was co-opted into that post “reluctantly” on the death of his uncle Seamus (Shay) Gallagher Senior, who had also served in the Senate as a Fianna Fáil appointee.
But Shay Junior never intended to go any further in politics. Then, so legend has it, he got sight of the list of nominations for North Derry, drank himself into a depression, and woke up a candidate.
“Lies, all lies,” he laughed good-humouredly. “I actually signed the papers the following day – when they threatened me with the negatives.”
Despite being well known in the North Derry constituency, Gallagher, who still lives in his native Derry city, had not been expected to feature in the final six.
Sinn Féin had been strongly tipped to up their representation from one to three – they were targeting an SDLP seat and that of the independent MLA Brian ‘Collie’ Colloway. But the republicans’ decision to run only three candidates blew up in their faces when their expected poll-topper, John ‘Stumpy’ O’Rourke, was murdered by loyalists, and they couldn’t get another name on the ballot.
Then, ten days before the election, there was disaster too for the SDLP, when their main vote-puller, Peadar Naughton, dropped dead from a heart-attack. And just four days before polling, Brian Colloway was forced to withdraw from the race after a series of damaging allegations in the local press.
This left the way clear for Gallagher to pick off the fourth nationalist seat. And he easily saw off the attentions of the DUP, who realistically were always going to be 500 votes shy of a second quota.
The final returns in North Derry saw two Sinn Féin members elected (+1), one SDLP (-2) one UUP (no change), one DUP (no change) and one independent.
Great White Hope Number Two had read the report in the Business Post, and phoned to ask just exactly what is the difference between sitting on my arse looking out the window all day, and teaching. Informed her she’d just lost herself three gold stars and that GWH Number One had told me how well I looked in the Sunday Life and was shooting back up the table.
GWH Number One actually called over to tell me this in person, and is still in the shower, but Number Two isn’t to know that.
Also, a spitting-mad Brian Colloway rang to say he had never been called ‘Collie’ in his life and that a solicitor’s letter was in the post. Not going to happen, Brian. The conviction’s there and on the record. Not my fault your career went into a tailspin.
Have to cut it there for today, Diary. Radio Ulster have asked me to do Seven Days from Radio Foyle and give some independent thinking on whether the Shinners and the DUPs will ever get to talking. Me, Martin, Gregory – and some independent unionist girl from Omagh who has just been elected.
Was tempted to tell the Beeb to go whistle up a rope, but it’s not everyday you get a chance to breathe last night’s beer over the town’s two best-known teetotallers.
Pity I didn’t eat a curry before I went to bed.