What a pity that management at the Tramco nightclub in Rathmines chickened out and abandoned the “special promotion” whereby they’d offered a free drink to customers in exchange for their knickers. Responding to objections to renewal of their licence, the quisling management agreed that the knickers-for-liquor offer had been “inappropriate, undesirable and demeaning.”

However, I gather from a number of the less reputable blogs that Tramco may have been unfairly singled out. The same sort of offer of ouzo for undies, it’s claimed, remains available at a number of other night spots around the Republic. I freely confess that I hadn’t been aware of the proliferation of these panties-for-pints promotions. But then, I tend to move in rather refined circles these days where the idea of swapping your drawers for Drambuie (okay, no more) just wouldn’t occur.
Thing is, prior to the Tramco chiefs caving in, I had devised a fail-proof means of eliminating this practice of bargaining briefs (I can’t help it) for Bacardi.
The thought came to me as I wandered the aisles of the local branch of a major clothing store looking for something extraneous and suddenly spotted the price-tag on five-packs of the aforementioned flimsies... three quid!
Which at Tramco rates of exchange would work out at 60 cent a shot for the drink of your choice!
Five vodkas and Red Bull for three smackeroos!
Is there not an idea here with the potential to put paid to this inappropriate, undesirable and demeaning behaviour more speedily and effectively than hiring a lawyer to argue the case in a licensing court?

Somebody mentioned Pete Doherty as we stood around outside the Nerve Centre dragging the last toke from our psychotropic ciggies.
“He’s not Pete Doherty, he’s Peter Doherty,” came an outraged roar. “You wouldn’t call Jim Morrison Jimmy...”
Quite right. Respect.
Inside, Mr. Doherty ambled onstage before anybody noticed and, armed only with an acoustic guitar, launched into a ravishing, rambling two-hour set. Occasionally, two serious-faced young women joined him to inscribe languid circles in the air and lift their legs unfeasibly high in slo-mo gymnastic style. Expressive dancing, I’m told this is. Very good at it they were too.
“Any Dohertys in tonight?” he enquired, affecting innocent surprise at the chorus of delighted recognition. In fact, there’s little that’s Irish in him, or at least in his songs. He’s the best English folk-singer of the punk-rock persuasion that we have.
It’s hard to figure what exactly he does onstage to generate the high excitement sustained throughout. Partly at least, it’s that he seems wholly enveloped in the audience, no sense of different status because he’s on stage and we’ve paid in to see him. He’s the least remote of performers, every song intersecting with the communal consciousness that he expands beyond boundaries. It’s hardly an original thought, but there’s something truly liberating about being in an audience drawn mainly from the Bogside lustily singing that we could go to Deptford, Catford, Watford, Digberth, Mansfield, anywhere in Albion.
The last 40 minutes were like one of those parties in somebody’s basement that you vaguely remember from a lost weekend. “Do ‘Teenage Kicks’” demanded a voice from the bowels of the venue, which he did, in an atmosphere of escalating delirium. At another point, ‘Molly Malone’ for a stray Dub. And ‘Twist and Shout’ for everybody.
He’s suffered more than any other musician around from the crass stupidity and casual cruelty of the celebrity press. It is a measure of the gentleness of his soul that he hasn’t given some prowling paparazzo a puck on the gob before now.
A gig for the aesthete and the animal in all of us.

I am surprised there has been so little reaction to the revelation by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin a couple of weeks back that Catholics have been writing to him in increasing numbers, “saying that they want to be Irish Catholics and not Roman Catholics, and some even ask me to break away from Rome and become the leader of an ‘Irish’ church.”
His remarks were received with a shrug. Not even a mild hullaballoo within the hierarchy.
Maybe they have become so used to Dr. Martin’s maverick interventions that their silence signalled studied indifference. He does have form. At a conference in Milwaukee in April, he talked of his fellow bishops’ handling of the eruption of evil revealed in the Murphy Report: “The responses seemed to be saying that it was all due to some sort of systems fault... ritualistic expressions of regret... No one accountable.”
In July, responding to Enda Kenny’s attack on the Vatican following publication of the Cloyne Report, Dr. Martin declared himself “angry, ashamed and appalled... What do you do when you have groups, whether in the Vatican or in Ireland, who... simply refuse to understand? What sort of cabal is this that there is in Cloyne?”
Perhaps it’s guilt which has persuaded the hierarchy to stay schtum. But be assured that even now there are brooding figures in the Vatican pondering what to do about the meddlesome priest, some longing for the days they could have lashed him to a stake and reduced him to cinder. If they have made no move, it’s that they cannot be sure what the faithful would let them away with. Long ago, Irish Catholics lived in fear of the Vatican. Now it’s the other way round. It’s a start.