John Walsh: Someone tell the President: Enda is a man's name
BTW...
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Your support makes all the difference.Enda Kenny, the new Irish prime minister, was all smiles and shamrock at the White House yesterday when he met Barack Obama and the American press. I wonder if he hissed a few words at The New York Times, which called him "Edna" last week when reporting his accession to power. "The Irish Republic on Wednesday swore in its new prime minister, Edna Kenny, after an election that wiped out the longtime ruling party, Fianna Fail," wrote the NYT's London stringer Sarah Lyall, wife of Observer books editor Robert McCrum. "Ms Kenny's center-right Fine Gael party will now govern in a coalition with the center-left Labour Party." Next day a correction appeared: "An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the new Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny as a female. Enda Kenny is a male." Has he forgiven them yet?
* Oh no. Lady Gaga's new single "Born This Way," a fervent hymn that encourages sexual tolerance ("No matter gay, straight or bi,/ Lesbian, transgendered life,/ I'm on the right track baby,/ I was born to survive...") has run into trouble in Malaysia. Homosexuality is taboo in the Muslim country and broadcasting songs with "offensive" content could land disc jockeys in, er, Queer Street. So they've played the Gaga song, but with "indecipherable gibberish" superimposed on the lyrics. I hope there's no suggestion the new version is preferred to the original...
* Visions of paradise, No 23. It's a truth universally acknowledged that being in the jungle eating goanna bollocks and chatting to, say, John McCririck on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! must be the most horrible, soul-destroying experience available to mankind. Apparently not. In the new issue of The Word, elderly DJ and perma-grinning lothario Tony Blackburn explains that the rainforest "was such an absolutely beautiful, peaceful place, and I found this inner calmness". To his fellow contestants (who included Uri Geller, Nigel Benn, Christine Hamilton and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson) he became, he modestly admits, "the Henry Kissinger of the jungle." And every evening, "I'd sit by this beautiful stream with Nell McAndrew, who, when she put her jungle hat on, looked just like Doris Day. It was magic. And to this day no-one can irritate me any more." Oh come now. Surely if we really tried...
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