I met with Ian Paisley briefly the other day. His often firey persona has been a dominant theme in Northern Irish politics since as far back as I can remember. He is greyer and thinner than he once was, but his spirit and wit is still impressive for a man knocking close on 80.
I asked him what he thought of A Long Peace?, our think piece on the future of Unionism of Northern Ireland. After pinpointing which of the many reports he’d been bombarded with in the last few months it was, he replied, “Aye, it wasn’t bad, I suppose”. I asked him if I could quote him on that, and he immediately qualified it by saying, “Well, what I mean is that it didn’t make my heckles rise! If you know what I mean?”
A slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to remove the wrinkles in Slugger’s technical carpet. You will need to know about the comments policy to stay off the fightin’ side of me and there is a bit of background about me here. You can email me using this spam-proof link if you really need to, and Slugger is @sluggerotoole on Twitter. But above all, remember, Play the ball and not the man.