An Irish Spring?

Ireland’s Taoiseach in waiting, Enda Kenny, seems keen to link his victory in Friday’s election to the situation in the Arab world. Declaring victory, Kenny told reporters that ‘obviously there’s been a democratic revolution here. People did not take to the streets, they took to the ballot boxes’. Though Fine Gael’s victory is certainly historic, Kenny has perhaps misunderstood what a revolution is. Ireland has been a democracy since 1922, which hardly makes for a valid comparison with the sudden end of Egypt’s decades of despotism. Neither did the people of Ireland take to the ballot boxes in revolutionary numbers. Though turnout was higher than in recent years, it was lower than at any election between 1948 and 1987. The only thing ‘obvious’ about Ireland’s ‘democratic revolution’ is that there has not been one. It is, however, a better tag line than: ‘We won the election, but not amazingly, and have replaced a party that is ideologically identical to us because most of it’s former voters voted for parties that were not us’.

The Scientific Method

Unable to find some haemorrhoid cream (?), Jenny Frost was reduced to rubbing potatoes into her skin on tonight's Snog Marry Avoid?. Fortunately though, the old wives tale is correct. Jenny's objectively analysed sample of one determined: 'I think I look much better… so it is true, potatoes reduce the bags under your eyes’.

Everything but Korea

He may not know where Germany is, but Justin Bieber has his head screwed on when it comes to politics. ‘I’m not sure about the parties,’ he recently told Rolling Stone magazine, ‘but whatever they have in Korea, that’s bad’. It may sound inane, but at least it avoids the leftist claptrap usually fed to music magazines by the likes of Bono and Bob Geldof.

Though politics is not his strong suit, Bieber is certainly a skilled diplomat. When asked in the same interview which types of girls he liked Justin replied: 'I like a girl with a nice smile and who’s funny. As far as looks, my taste is dark hair.' The teen idol quickly qualified this though, saying ‘I don’t limit myself. I like girls with blonde hair, too. I like everything'. Keep your hopes up girls! Bieber is a man without standards!

Does his own jokes

Mirred in scandal he may be, but no one can deny Silvio Berlusconi is great entertainment. 'I have always made it so that every woman feels, how should I say, special' he recently told reporters when refuting allegations that he paid a child for sex. There really is no need to read a double entendre into that one: the use of 'how should I say' makes him sound like Frankie Howard in Up Pompeii! Still at least the writers of Up Pompeii! had the good sense to make Howard's Lurcio a slave. Such a character could not have been believable had he been an Italian leader, could he?