Enjoying the quietness of south-west France, with the only annoyance being Bayonne losing 26-25 to Perpignan through conceding unnecessary penalties, the tranquility of a lazy Sunday was disrupted by reading a post by Seconds Out on Bock the Robber’s website.
RTE have been running a poll on who was the greatest Irish person. This began with a Top 40 last March, from which the exclusions are astonishing and many of the inclusions simply bizarre:
1. Bono (1960)
2. Dr. Noel Browne (1915 – 1997)
3. Michael Collins (1890 – 1922)
4. James Connolly (1868 – 1916)
5. Éamon de Valera (1882-1975)
6. Joe Dolan (1939 – 2007)
7. Ronnie Drew (1934 – 2008)
8. Colin Farrell (1976)
9. Garret Fitzgerald (1926)
10. Stephen Gately (1976 – 2009)
11. Bob Geldof (1951)
12. Pádraig Harrington (1971)
13. Charles Haughey (1925 – 2006)
14. Séamus Heaney (1939)
15. John Hume (1937)
16. James Joyce (1882 – 1941)
17. John B. Keane (1928 – 2002)
18. Roy Keane (1971)
19. Ronan Keating (1977)
20. Seán Lemass ( 1899-1971)
21. Jack Lynch (1917 – 1999)
22. Phil Lynott (1951 – 1986)
23. Paul Mc Grath (1959)
24. Christy Moore (1945)
25. Liam Neeson (1952)
26. Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847)
27. Daniel O’Donnell (1961)
28. Brian O’Driscoll (1979)
29. Michael O’Leary (1961)
30. John O’Shea (1944)
31. Sonia O’Sullivan (1969)
32. Charles Stewart Parnell (1846 – 1891)
33. Pádraig Pearse (1879 – 1916)
34. Christy Ring (1920 – 1979)
35. Mary Robinson (1944)
36. Adi Roche (1955)
37. Wolfe Tone (1763 – 1798)nd
38. Louis Walsh (1952)
39. Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
40. W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)
It is presumably a poll on the greatest 26 Counties person, with the odd Ulsterman thrown in because of southward inclinations; thus John Hume and Seamus Heaney make the list, but there is no place for George Best in a list that includes the much lesser talents of Paul McGrath and Roy Keane.
Anyway, this list was whittled down to ten: Bono, Dr. Noel Browne, Michael Collins, James Connolly, Stephen Gately, John Hume, Phil Lynott, Padraig Pearse, Mary Robinson and Adi Roche; from which a shortlist of five has emerged: Bono, Michael Collins, James Connolly, John Hume and Mary Robinson. RTE’s top five are all from the 20th Century and, by contemporary definitions of nationality, one of them is a Scotsman,
As the shortlist is confined to the 20th Century,RTE’s top ten can be contrasted with the ten people from the island of Ireland who have won Nobel prizes:
Samuel Beckett
Mairead Corrigan
Seamus Heaney
John Hume
Seán MacBride
George Bernard Shaw
David Trimble
Ernest Walton
Betty Williams
William Butler Yeats
Only John Hume of the Nobel laureates made it into the RTE top ten. Stephen Gately was greater than Ernest Walton. What a great country we live in.