That’s Ireland

A good few years ago I asked a bookie for odds on an unlikely event. I said, you know that kid Ryan Tubridy, who did book reviews on Poparama with Ruth Buchanan? Well, someday that kid will be interviewing US President Bill Clinton, and Clinton will tell Tubridy that he was talking to Gerry Adams, and that Adams told him that Martin McGuinness had found a new best friend in Ian Paisley, and that Adams feels left out in the cold. >>>

And the bookie said, I’ll give you any odds you like on that. And, as a bonus, I’ll give you a free bet of a million pounds that, in the same week, the Lord Mayor of Belfast will apologise to a Council worker for injuring her while trying to leapfrog over her at a fair while she was dressed as a tomato and he was wearing his Lord Mayoral chain, just after he had had posed for photos beside her with three yellow rubber ducks balanced on his head.

Well now they’ve both happened.

• RTE News - Tubridy’s Bill Clinton Interview
  
• BBC News - Leapfrogging Mayor Bruises Tomato

But I haven’t won anything, because the leapfrogging tomato-bruising Lord Mayor had only two yellow rubber ducks balanced on his head, instead of three. And I had thought the odds on that happening were far too unlikely to warrant a bet.