38 Comments

• curtisjohnson | Jul 28, 2012, 05:35 PM EDT

  In the words of Edmund Spenser: "For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish"

• laytruman | Jul 27, 2012, 10:00 PM EDT

  I would like to remind MPPM that Irish writers won four Nobel prizes for literature in the last century. Irish monks brought learning to Europe in the dark ages. Ill-educated Brits like Thompson will always hate the Irish. Let them hate, they will never beat us. I would also like to say to the West-Brits who defended Thompson's remarks that they are seriously deluded and in my opinion do not deserve to call themselves Irish. We are a way better educated nation than they will ever be. Thompson's remarks are just the surface of a centuries-old hatred for the Irish and not a harmless joke at all. You have to have lived in Britain to understand. I would also like to say to our friend who defends Northern-Irish/British paramilitary thuggery that he needs to reread his history Erin go Brach

• aliceschesya | Jul 26, 2012, 08:43 AM EDT

  It's not funny. There's no excuse. This is not the playground where we have to pretend it's funny in order to survive. This is a prominent representative of British sport at the time of the Olympics. No nation should put up with these slurs any time, but NEVER at the Olympics and NEVER an intellectual beacon like Ireland. Anyone with half an education in Britain should at least know the hugely disproportionate contribution of Ireland to literature. In fact these sort of slurs backfire on the British people showing a distrust and a resistance to learning.

• seanomelb | Jul 24, 2012, 08:37 PM EDT

  watch it Young Pike we hear in Melbourne are reading your boring comments.Canadianirish we live in the richest countries in the world.What we have in common is a low unemployment, good wages, great healthcare,no mass murders and a high standard of living some of Yankee types are just jealous or ignorant.

• hancock | Jul 24, 2012, 02:04 PM EDT

  If it wasn't for hockey nobody would even know about Canada.

• bob40wil | Jul 24, 2012, 11:52 AM EDT

  Sorry ProudCanadian but your country is a coat tail hanger, always has been and always will be.

• YoungPike | Jul 24, 2012, 11:00 AM EDT

  "Irish" jokes used to be a mainstay of British humour, just as the Poles were the butt of jokes in the USA. However, the rise of alternative comedians and political correctness have made such humour obsolete. Maybe Daley Thompson has been stuck in a 1970s shrine with Jim Davidson, surrounded by his gongs from yesteryear!

• hyattsville | Jul 24, 2012, 10:16 AM EDT

  Ummmm he is an athlete not a diplomat. It was clearly meant to be a joke which fell flat. Thompson is notorious for putting his foot in it ie refusing to carry the British flag at previous games, wearing a T-shirt referencing Carl Lewis’s rumored gayness another time. What is funny to me is that such a to-do is made about this on a site which is littered with anti-racist comments from readership on any given day. Honestly!

• beaumax99 | Jul 24, 2012, 10:02 AM EDT

  People who make comments like this have deep seeded hatred for the nationality that they are making these comments about. They are racists and racists are dangerous people. How would he like it if someone said something about Blacks...I am certain if a white person made this comment, he/she would have been slammed all over the world.

• patto69 | Jul 24, 2012, 06:51 AM EDT

  It is the casual nature of the insult. He believed it was acceptable, but he is wrong. He has been a fairly anonymous character of late, best that he returns to that status.

• MPPM | Jul 24, 2012, 06:47 AM EDT

  Racist or not, the truth is that Irish people are not very good at grammar or spelling. This is not even a joke, it's reality

• merefalow | Jul 24, 2012, 06:06 AM EDT

  if we cant take a joke like this we arent Irish anymore,who are the worst for taking the mick out of us, we are,this wasn't a strictly racist joke,iv,e made the same comment loads of times,i hate the bloody Olympics,iv,e vaguely heard of delay Thomson,HE,S JUST WON THE TOUR DE FRANCE OR SOMETHING,be tragic if the guy is banned for such a light hearted remaRK,LIGHTEN UP PEOPLE,AND WATCH BORIS DOESNT BURN HIMSELF.

• YoungPike | Jul 24, 2012, 06:03 AM EDT

  Kevin: Having never been to Canada I don't know if it's the dullest place in the world. I thought Australia was the dullest place!

• Kevin Longan | Jul 24, 2012, 12:57 AM EDT

  Wow, ignorance abounds! If the situation would have been reversed the Irish person would be handed their head on a platter but because this moron is half-black he'll probably get a pass. As an aside to proud Canadian, what has Canada ever done but ride on America's coattails? It's the dullest place in the world unless freezing is a sport.

• curtisjohnson | Jul 23, 2012, 10:59 PM EDT

  Yes, the idiot probably doesn't even realize the origins of his own name. It's doubtful that the british establishment will impose any substantive consequences to this slur - the institutional bias seems to be against the Irish as well as, ironically, nationalistic englishmen.

• seanomelb | Jul 23, 2012, 06:17 PM EDT

  SeamusMor was flippant and amusing in making his point.Belphagor is stuck in his usual pro British groove there's no report of Daley making a personal apology and we have the usual west Brit suspects making idiotic excuses. BTW how did a Nigerian come to have an Irish name?? maybe that's the biggest joke of the day.

• Belphagor | Jul 23, 2012, 06:08 PM EDT

  They guy made a faux pas and he has apologised, he didn't go outof his way to deliberately castiagte Irish people and I wasn't offended by it. He was making a joke against the spelling of the Tattoo which I can appreciate. I hear Irish Jokes all the time and they are funny, life is too short to worry about something as wee as this. This week was 40 years after the biggest bombing the IRA ever carried out, with 22 seperate bombs going off in Belfast, killing 9 people and injuring over 120. This was a big story back in the day but it also had a major turning point in the history of the troubles.In the three months after Bloody Friday the UDA in Belfast alone saw over 7000 new recruit and the UVF recruited just over 5,000. This also planted a seed in Loyalist psyche that the IRA were deliberately targettig innocent protestants and from then on, in their minds, attacks on innocent Catholics were jutified. This story has ben all over the Britih and Irish news for the past 5 days but Irish Central haven't reported on this, I wonder why. They would prefer to post non stories, non news.

• JBRAFTREE | Jul 23, 2012, 05:26 PM EDT

  Murph, 'Yall in trouble again, this time with Canada!! Don't know what 'ya said, but why in the hell would the torch bearer let the tatooist misspell the word anyhow???

• Paddy O Power | Jul 23, 2012, 04:50 PM EDT

  Must have been Daley Thompson who said that!

• DanOLoingsigh | Jul 23, 2012, 03:23 PM EDT

  Thank the Lord we never, ever see national, religious, or racial stereotyping on IC...

• ProudCanadian | Jul 23, 2012, 03:06 PM EDT

  Bob40wil truth hurts doenn't it. It is ok for an American to write stupid statements on here but lord help the person who critizes them. Yes I have a country to be very proud of thanks and where are you yanks economy wise? That's what I thought. Y'all come back now ya hear.

• EamonnDublin | Jul 23, 2012, 02:19 PM EDT

  Perhaps the tatoo artist was black, Mr. Thompson? Éamonn, Dublin, Ireland.

• DrTrelawney | Jul 23, 2012, 02:17 PM EDT

  Murph, you say: "Seamusmor sounds Irish to me and the way his spelling is on this blog it makes one wonder if HE ever went to school" Oh, please tell me you're not that thick. This is clearly a gag.

• occassio | Jul 23, 2012, 01:58 PM EDT

  People of color who make these irresponsible remarks need to look back to their cultural history. Mr. Thompson is the son of a Nigerian father and Scottish mother. Does he think that his mixed heritage, his success in sports and his celebrity status give him the imprimatur for such remarks? Slave trade was a major export from the Nigerian coast for over 300 years. Mr. Thompson needs less mouth and more education. He is too smug and an embarrassment to both his parents.

• LiamScanlan | Jul 23, 2012, 01:51 PM EDT

  Having grown up with in the 60s and 70s with a constant flow of denigrating, slapstick Irish person jokes on British TV we got in Dublin, I must say I carry a chip on my shoulder now about these anachronistic put-downs when I hear them. They belong with wife-beating, corporal punishment, Noddy characters and drunken docker talk.

• Daytonavejim | Jul 23, 2012, 12:33 PM EDT

  I forgot that England had any Olympic Heroes

• Sparklet | Jul 23, 2012, 12:03 PM EDT

  I may be wrong, or may just have read an incorrect report on this, but I understood that the implication was that the pronunciation of Oylmpic sounded Irish.

• bob40wil | Jul 23, 2012, 12:02 PM EDT

  Proud Canadian, maybe you should drop the Proud part, you didn't do yourself or Canadians proud with your statement.

• bob40wil | Jul 23, 2012, 11:45 AM EDT

  We're making way too much out of this. I hope Daley Thompson keeps his spot - he has certainly earned it.

• pilib04 | Jul 23, 2012, 11:33 AM EDT

  hermitTalker, what pray tell would Bloody Maggie Thatcher know about "the veneer of civilization?"

• hermitTalker | Jul 23, 2012, 11:04 AM EDT

  seamusmor was using irony. Sad that as was noted already Mr Thompson seems to have decided that racist, ethnic insults of the Irish are acceptable on the BBC. Not to long ago they were and still are against Catholics for certain topics. Fuzzy wuzzy comments and that attitude are still acceptable even in the upper classes. As Mrs Thatcher said on one occasion "the veneer of civilisation is very thin." Each of us has a lot of work to do to become fully human and civilised, and some ethnic and religious groups do not help their own cause.

• ProudCanadian | Jul 23, 2012, 10:58 AM EDT

  Murph46 you have slid to an all time low with your first post. Everyone knows that Americans can't speak properly let alone spell. Mr Thompson should have known that the tattoo was American

• NYCsheridan | Jul 23, 2012, 10:56 AM EDT

  Murph46, are you too dense to see that Seamus was being sarcastic with his spelling? And what is this crap about most Americans tracing their family history back to Ireland, "true or not"? You think that tracing a family back 150 years is a difficult thing to do? Why the anger?

• maryosullivan | Jul 23, 2012, 10:43 AM EDT

  Can Thompson be oblivious to racial slurs directed at blacks ? I believe Thatcher's husband referred to them as "fuzzy wuzzys". And that's one of the more civilized comments Nice going, Thompson. one would have thought you would have learned to keep your slave mentality under wraps at fifty-three.

• mayoman | Jul 23, 2012, 10:39 AM EDT

  Did Thompson himself apologize for the dumb comment? Or was it only the BBC's Baker and Jones who apologized?

• Murph46 | Jul 23, 2012, 10:31 AM EDT

  As a black ,he should be most cognizant of racial slurs.Ban him!

• Murph46 | Jul 23, 2012, 10:16 AM EDT

  If the tattooist was Irish or was of Irish descent, as is likely the case as most Americans love to trace their family history back to Ireland, whether true or not, then will the BBC and his complaining critics offer an apology. I say well done Daley for speaking his mind. Seamusmor sounds Irish to me and the way his spelling is on this blog, it makes one wonder if HE ever went to school or wants to call himself Irish.

• SeamusMor | Jul 23, 2012, 10:01 AM EDT

  That was a stoopid remark and I hope he is bared from liting the Oylimpic flaym!