To be sure

Happy St Patrick's Day to my excellent Irish followers, the three ems, Mark, Molly and Marek.

And Happy St Patrick's Day also to all the bandwagon-jumping people out there who use March 17th as a great excuse for nipping down to your local Irish theme bar and drinking Guinness til you fall over.

As regular readers of this blog will know, my usual tipple is a nice can of Cobra, in fact I don't really like Guinness that much. However, as it's St Patrick's Day I've got myself a four pack of Heineken.

I know it's German or something, but it comes in a green can, so at least it looks Irish. And on this day of days, dats half der baddle.

Maybe Jenifer Walker Shannon and my other American followers are also out celebrating. I know, for a FACT, that pretty much every American claims to have Irish ancestry. Even Barack O'Bama has Irish roots. He doesn't look especially Irish, but then neither did Phil Lynott out of Thin Lizzy.

Or Paul McGrath.

But then Tony Cascarino looks more Irish than Barack, Phil and Paul put together, and he wasn't Irish, even though he played 88 times for the national football team.

I've heard of an American drink called the Irish Car Bomb. It's a pint of Guinness and whiskey, with a Bailey's depth charger. OMG!!! A few of those and maybe you really would feel like one the unfortunate victims of car-based explosives.

Seriously though readers, I think that American drink is in pretty bad taste.

You would have thought that the Americans could have renamed that drink the Basra Car Bomb or something similarly topical. But then, they don't really go in for hard drinking in Afghanistan and if there's one thing the Irish are famous for, apart from fighting, it's drinking.

They're also famous for winning the Eurovision song contest. Indeed, the land of the blarney stone holds the record for the most number of wins, having won the contest seven times—including three times in a row in 1992, 1993 and 1994. Maybe Terry Wogan was pulling a few strings! I expect they'll win a few more now that Graham Norton is hosting the festivities.

The Nolans, Boyzone, Westlife and the Commitments all hail from the Emerald Isle. Not to mention U2 and famous pop tramp Bob Gandalf.

Not bad for a country of only a little over four million peeps.

Ireland is also famous for its legendary crack problem. Only, and get this, a night of good crack is viewed in a positive light over there. What a crazy bunch.

I'm going to end today's post with a gag from my fav Irish comedian, Tom O'Connor:

So little Eamonn had returned from Sunday School and his mother asked what he'd learned that day.

'Well,' he said, 'Father O'Malley told us how Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.'

'Indeed,' said Mother. 'And what exactly happened?'

'Well,' went on the little fellow. 'Moses got all the people together and loaded them into buses, lorries and cars. They drove off into the desert at night time and it wasn't till the morning that the Pharaoh found out they'd gone. When he realised what happened he was angry and he gathered all his army together, tanks, halftracks, jeeps and everything.

They chased after the Israelites and they caught them at the Red Sea. Moses had built a pontoon bridge and he'd thrown it across the water and his people were just starting to cross when the Egyptians came up firing their rockets and anti-tank missiles and completely destroyed the Pharaoh's army. Then the people crossed the bridge into the Promised Land.'

'Wow, what a story,' said the mother. 'Is that what Father O'Malley told you?'

'Well, no,' replied Eamon. 'Not quite. But the way Father O'Malley told the tale you'd never believe it!'

;-)