Did I ever tell you I once met Miss World's legs?

I once met Miss World’s legs. Rosanna Davidson’s. Her knees to be exact.  It was a surreal day, a few years back, when I took a jaunt down to a nearby car dealership. Lotus had just started selling its sports cars in Ireland and I thought it would be nice to have a look at its new Elise, and maybe get a test drive.

When I got there, the very nice saleswoman told me that Rosanna Davidson (who had been crowned Miss World a year or two before) was arriving for a photoshoot, but yes, a test drive would be no problem.

As it happened, I had just managed to shoehorn myself into the driver's seat of the tiny Elise R-111 (they are about the height of a pedal car) when she came along. Well, her knees at least, because that is all I could see from where I was sitting, peeking out of the car’s little slit of a side window. 

I went out for the test drive with the saleswoman in the passenger seat and we passed Miss World on the way back as she was walking towards town after finishing the shoot. She noticed, waved, and gave us a  big smile as we drove past. Not every blogger can say they’ve been waved at by Miss World now, can they? That's about as glamorous as it gets in the world of blogging, I’m afraid.  The reports in the showroom, by the way, were that she was very nice and pleasant.

But what about all the stuff in the gossip pages? A €60,000 trip on a private jet to somewhere or other with a developer, whose company owns the very building that Nama is based in. It seems the same developer once had Pavarotti sing to him and his friends on one of his birthdays.  Ah yes, the Irish elite – such class and taste!

Now I wouldn’t be one for celebrity tittle-tattle. I’ll admit my life is boring enough, but it’s enough to keep me occupied all the same.  But you really have to marvel, that even when the developers’ loans are being taken on by the taxpayers – who are being hit from all angles, assuming they still have jobs at all - that this elite does not even have the grace or PR sense to tone it down a bit. Do they still think it’s 2006?

Sure, due to the secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding Nama, it is not currently possible to comment on the state of each developer’s relationship with the bank's loan book - sensitive information, you see.  But you’d have to wonder if any developer has possibly been unscathed, given the scale of the collapse. And you’d have to wonder if any of them will really have to change their lifestyles, even when it is all done and dusted.

Probably not. It’s Ireland after all.


PS. Didn't get the Lotus in the end  -  not with the waiting times for orthopaedic consultants.  And VRT.

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