TIK TOK

SIMON HARRIS MAY well be the Tik Tok Taoiseach in waiting but news that actor Hugh Grant has ambitions to enter politics has started a flurry of rumours that the star of Paddington 2, Notting Hill and Love Actually – where he played a young Prime Minister – was approached by Fine Gael’s men in mohair suits and offered the leadership of the party and thus that of the Irish Republic, in advance of Simon Harris’s sudden coronation.

“Hugh is the kind of guy Fine Gael desperately needs,” insists commentator Dan Black of the Cork financial weekly, Busted Flush. “Talented, attractive, humorous, with a posh voice that can cut diamond and a devilish stare that will bring back the lost voters of rural Ireland. A kind of Ivan Yates with hair, if you know what I mean. He would have been perfect to lead the party. Hell, he’s English, for God’s sake. He’d do brilliant in West Cork and South County Dublin. Indeed, everything south of the Liffey would be his for the taking. And what would Northern Unionists make of it? They’d be cheering. Posh English boy in charge in Ireland again. Just as it should be.”

Alas, it appears Grant politely refused the offer, saying that he found he was watching television.