LAST UPDATE | 9 Oct

“AN OLD GAG about arrogant, dictatorial leaders” was how one Irish comedy legend described a joke that is doing the rounds after last night’s box office Fianna Fáil meeting. 

Micheál Martin’s leadership remains intact after the meeting but Scrap Saturday’s Gerry Stembridge was among those whose ears pricked up when Sean Ó Feargháil shared a story that has long been ascribed, perhaps wrongly, to Charles Haughey.  

Martin’s eating of humble pie for the disastrous decision to select Jim Gavin as Fianna Fáil’s presidential candidate may be enough to save him but it has reopened old wounds. 

The whole affair has rekindled complaints from Fianna Fáil TDs about the Taoiseach’s top down approach, and Ó Fearghaíl outlined this to the meeting by way of an old tale told about Haughey. 

RTÉ’s political correspondent Micheál Lehane got wind of the story last night and Ó Fearghaíl was asked on Morning Ireland today to repeat it. 

“There are many stories told about the late, great Charles Haughey, one of the stories was that on one occasion he took his Cabinet to one of his favorite restaurants and arriving earlier than anybody else, he was welcomed by the maître d’ who showed him to his table and gave him the menu,” Ó Fearghaíl said. 

Mr. Haughey made his selection and at the end of it, the maitre d’ said, ‘Well, Mr. Haughey, what about the vegetables?’And whereupon Charlie responded, “Well, they’ll have the same as I’m having.”

“My point is that for a period of time, it would appear that the parliamentary party have been the vegetables. We have been told what to do, what to think, and we haven’t been taken seriously,” Ó Fearghaíl said. 

The former Ceann Comhairle did not personally vouch for the accuracy of the Haughey story, merely saying it was a story told about the Fianna Fáil colossus. 

Feeling My Age / Vimeo

As many people have since pointed out, it’s very possible that this story started out as a sketch on Spitting Image, the satirical British television puppet show that was at its zenith in the mid 1980s when Haughey was also in his pomp. 

The famous sketch pretty much plays out exactly as Ó Feargháil tells it, except that Margaret Thatcher is the all-powerful premier and not Haughey.

Indeed the origin of the story may go back even further, with a quick trawl of the internet showing that former Spitting Image writer and impressionist Steve Nallon has said that the sketch was based on an “old joke”. 

“The vegetable sketch is so old a joke I was against even doing it but John Lloyd said it was only a quickie so the sketch went ahead,” Nallon tweeted back in 2020, referencing the comedy producer behind everything from Blackadder to QI. 

“By the way, I used to get £25 everytime it was shown, but sadly those days are over,” Nallon added. 

In order to double check whether there was an Irish connection to the joke, The Journal asked Gerry Stembridge, co-creator of the hugely successful radio satire Scrap Saturday, had he ever heard of it. 

Stembridge knew the vegetable joke well and had made the Spitting Image connection himself when he heard it on radio this morning.

The joke was never used by Scrap Saturday but Stembridge added that jokes like that often take on a life of their own, and that Ó Fearghaíl may even be in on it.  

“It is very common for people to take jokes from one source and apply it to another and it must have seemed like a perfect CJ (Haughey) anecdote,” he said.

“I suspect Sean Ó Fearghaíl is aware that it is only a joke, but he may have heard it about Haughey and is unaware of the Spitting Image original. I would have thought that the more important point is that a Fianna Fáil elder is now reconfiguring an old gag about arrogant, dictatorial leaders to make a point about Micheál Martin.”