New Book on Cowen Set

I'M only in the effin job a few effin weeks and already they want to do an effin book on me! That may well have been the reaction of new Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen to the news last week that the first book on him is already being written. Why all the effin language?

Well, you all know by now that Brian Cowen uses the F-word when he's annoyed. He was caught using it in the Dail (Parliament) recently by a microphone he thought was off and it made newspaper headlines and cartoons here for days.

At the time he was under pressure answering questions about our high consumer prices. He used the un-parliamentary language, a lot of people pretended to be shocked (even people in the media!), and he subsequently apologized.

But the plain people of Ireland were not shocked. For them, it was confirmation of Cowen's down to earth approach.

He has a short temper and he tells it like it is. Like the rest of us, he uses the F-word now and then. What you see is what you get.

So he may well have used (sotto voce, of course) a few more F-words when he heard about the book that is on the way. Certainly there will be a lot of interest in this book, not least because of the publisher and the author.

The book has been commissioned by Transworld, which is part of the international Random House group. Transworld opened an Irish office in Dublin last week, the third of the international publishing conglomerates to set up local offices here. (We already have Penguin Ireland and Hachette Ireland).

It's an interesting trend. Publishing here used to be done by a lot of small local publishing houses. Now the handful of huge multi-national conglomerates that run international publishing these days have moved in here, and competition is cutthroat.

Transworld Ireland is run by the former chief buyer at Easons, the biggest bookstore chain in Ireland. He was headhunted for the job, and it was his idea to do a book on Cowen at this early stage of his tenure as taoiseach.

What is also interesting is that it was not one of the political correspondents from one of the national newspapers here who was commissioned to write this first biography of Cowen. The book is to be written by the senior editor of Hot Press, which is Ireland's equivalent of Rolling Stone magazine.

The journalist who has been given the job is Jason O'Toole, who has interviewed most of the leading politicians for Hot Press over the past couple of years. The Hot Press political interviews are lengthy and very informal (you may remember that a long time back they interviewed Charlie Haughey who mistakenly thought that all his effin language would be edited out - it wasn't and the effin interview created an effin sensation at the time).

Continuing in this tradition, O'Toole caused some controversy in May of last year when he interviewed Brian Cowen for the magazine (Cowen was minister for finance at the time). During the interview he asked Cowen if he had ever smoked marijuana, and the response he got says a lot about the kind of guy our new taoiseach is.

"Anyone who went to the UCD (University College Dublin) bar in the '70s that didn't get a whiff of marijuana would be telling you a lie. I would say there were a couple of occasions when it was passed around -- and, unlike President Clinton, I did inhale," he said.

"There wasn't a whole lot in it really -- (it was like) a Sweet Afton, as a 10-year-old, under a railway bridge, on a rainy day in small town Ireland in the late '60s. I certainly got more enjoyment out of a few pints." (Sweet Afton was a famously strong cigarette popular in Ireland in the old days that made a lot of us kids dizzy when we had our first cigarettes back then.)

This tells us something important about Cowen, and I'm not talking about the mildly controversial admission that he had smoked dope. What is really interesting about this is the totally candid answer to the question. It's telling like it is, without apology, without fear.

There's the truth, he is saying, and if you don't like it, you can eff off. It's a completely different attitude to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who dodged and weaved his way around awkward questions. Cowen takes them head on.

The other thing it tells us, of course, is that a generational change has happened in government here. Talking about whether he did or did not inhale does not bother Cowen. Smoking dope did not impress him, and trying it was no big deal as far as he is concerned. When he says he got more enjoyment out of a few pints, you believe him.

Mind you, when Cowen said this last year it made headlines in the national media. But Cowen had no problem with the journalist for putting it in Hot Press.

In fact when I talked to O'Toole last week he said that far from having any difficulty with it, Cowen has remained in contact since the interview and they even text each other now and then. "He sent me a text last September, for example, to congratulate me on being appointed senior editor at Hot Press," O'Toole said.

Although not an Offaly man like the new taoiseach, O'Toole at least lives in Mullingar, so he is a bogman like Cowen. Clearly there is a meeting of midlands minds between them.

"I think Brian Cowen is very impressive," O'Toole told me. "He is highly intelligent and very honest, which is refreshing in a politician."

O'Toole has been asked by Transworld to do a complete 100,000 word biography on Cowen, and it is likely to be a serious account as well as a lively read. Apart from writing edgy political interviews for Hot Press, O'Toole also has some background which will help.

He was a reporter for the Dublin Evening Herald in the middle 1990s, and then left journalism for a few years to do a masters in political communications degree at Dublin City University. His book on Cowen will be published towards the end of this year.

As if the news about the Cowen book wasn't enough, it was also revealed at the launch of the Transworld Ireland office last week that Transworld has signed up the former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to write his autobiography for publication in 2009.

Now there's one book that will also be interesting, not least because Albert has never forgiven Bertie for arranging to get Mary McAleese chosen as the Fianna Fail candidate for the presidency when Reynolds felt he was entitled to it and was a shoo-in. You can be sure a few scores will be settled in Reynolds' book.

And staying with the book theme this week, I have to tell you this gem which I found buried in the middle of Cherie Blair's autobiography (Tony's wife) which is way up there on my list of the worst books ever written. I finished the book only because I had to review it.

For a top lawyer, Cherie shows remarkably little depth and has nothing of interest to say about any of the things that happened during the Blair era, whether it's New Labor, British society, Iraq, President George W. Bush or anything else. Instead, the book is full of trivia.

She does reveal, however, that among their

many other achievements, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are accomplished skateboarders. As Michael Caine would say, not many people know that.

"From the moment Tony arrived in Downing Street, Northern Ireland had always been a priority," Cherie writes. "Within six months of Mo Mowlam beginning talks with Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were in and out of Number 10."

Cherie had bought a couple of skateboards for her sons while on a trip to America. Some time later Alastair Campbell (Blair's famous press secretary) told her to look out the window into the back garden (of Number 10).

"So I did. And there, to my astonishment, were Gerry and Martin on the skateboards showing the boys a few tricks."

There's more telling insight into what Adams was getting up to in Number 10. "A few weeks later I happened to be taking Ralph Lauren around and, as we came into the White Room there were Gerry and Martin. Naturally, I introduced them to my visitor and was intrigued when Gerry began talking rather knowledgeably about clothes." Obviously she is unaware of Gerry's Armani tendencies.

None of this would matter that much. Except that Northern Ireland, the peace process, the Good Friday Agreement, etc. don't get more than a few paragraphs here and there in Cherie's 400 page book And there is no mention whatsoever of Tony's best buddy, Bertie Ahern.

Mind you, Cherie appears to be a bit hazy about us Irish in general. At another point in the book she talks about the half dozen designers she settled on after she became the prime minister's wife and had to make more of an effort in how she dressed. Among them were Betty Jackson, Ally Capellino and Paul Costello.

"All British designers," she says. To make it even more confusing, she says a few paragraphs later that Paul was "a real Irish

flirt." Maybe she thinks we're back in the Commonwealth!

Don't even think of buying this book. I'm only writing about it here because the alternative would be the Lisbon Treaty, and if you think Cherie Blair is boring . . .

Sadly, there will be no escape from Lisbon in this column next week because the referendum in Ireland on this important European Union treaty is on June 12. You have been warned.