Paddy’s self-respect washed away in drool of royal visit

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

It’s official – we’re a nation of arse-lickers. West-Brit arse-lickers.  We’ve always suspected it but the Royal visit confirmed it.  The arrival in Galway of Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, brought out the collective arse-licker.

The fawning over the duo at NUI Galway, Marine Institute and Druid Theatre was quite spectacular. The collective drool that dripped from the mouths of Galway’s star-struck dignitaries and officialdom was so great, the Council could have issued a flood warning.

It was embarrassing stuff.

They couldn’t help themselves; the drool just gushed at the very sight of an unelected, future king of a foreign land.

Most of you – those who aren’t ‘into’ curtseys or doffing caps – couldn’t care less about Charles or Camilla. But officials and hangers-on and media fawned at the feet of the Royal couple.

Politicians led the fawning: they posted nauseating selfies and updates on social media telling how they stood beside/saw/shook-hands-with/licked-the-backside-of the next King of England.

Was it for this, etcetera, that the men of 1916 died? Independence to drool over our neighbours’ elite?

Pull yourselves together, people.

NUIG was beside itself, too. It ‘live streamed’ the visit and even changed its Twitter profile to a photograph of the Royals smiling on campus. At least it used to be known as Queen’s college. Others had no such excuse.

RTÉ, for example, went berserk with its blanket coverage. And whoever writes press releases for the Marine Institute went into overdrive with the phrase “His Royal Highness”. We counted nine references to “HRH” or “His Royal Highness” in their despatch to media.

Seriously lads, even Charles would be mortified.

But at every turn during the visit there was a snout itching to get as close to the Royals’ bottoms as possible. Falling over each-other, they were.

It’s an historic visit. And it’s very welcome. Let bygones be bygones.

But there was no need to be slobbering over them.

We engaged in the favourite pastime of a nation with an inferiority complex: lapped up Johnny Foreigner patting us on the head and telling us how great we are.

Maybe you could understand it, say, if the Queen was here; or if they sent over Prince Harry – at least he’d be a bit of craic – or his older brother, Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton.

Anyway, let’s hope Charles and Camilla had a good time and go back to England and Wales and tell all their subjects to come visit us. We’re all for welcoming visitors, and certainly the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are deserving of a ‘ceád míle fáilte’.

But do you really need to flush away your self-respect in the process?

Maybe we could regain some of that dignity by sending Clarence House the inevitable Garda over-time bill for the hundreds of additional Gardaí on security duty.

When Daniel met Charles

One man who certainly wasn’t slobbering over Prince Charles at NUIG was Daniel Higgins, son of Michael D. Maybe it’s because he’s used to meeting VIPs, but Daniel played it cool.

In the Aula Maxima, student Daniel, who was introduced to Charles as the president’s son, explained his research project.

“It was all very nice,” Daniel told his Facebook friends. “But just before he goes I say, ‘I recently saw Prince Harry on the television playing soccer. He’s doing great things for red haired people!’”

The Prince replied, “Yes. Did you find inspiration?”

Daniel’s response? “I tap my head and go, ‘I like Harry but I’m actually golden blonde sir, golden blonde’”.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.