A buddhist came up to Peter O’Hanlon in a shop in Strabane and asked, “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?,” so Peter gave him a slap on the mouth.

“I’m not anti-Catholic,” explains the great singer-songwriter when we chance on each other at a post-march pint-session in Sandino’s. “It’s the lot of them. I started entertaining evangelists and got my name on a blacklist.”

O’Hanlon believes he’s been banned on account of conversations with callers trying to convince him that their brand of religion is god’s truth. “A lot of people have a peep when there’s a knock on the door to see if it’s them and pretend they’re not in,” remarks the droll genius composer of ‘Half-Hanged McNaughton’. “Or they poke their head out and make excuses about cooking the dinner. But not me.

“I had a chap on the doorstep the other day who asked me how I could be an atheist when I looked around and saw all the wonders of god’s creation. Half an hour later, he was saying there must be a god because sure there has to be more than this. I told him, ‘You say there has to be a god because only god could have made such a wondrous world and now you say there must be a god because the world’s shite, would you ever make up your fucking mind?’

“After another half hour, he was shuffling about and looking all around him but I wouldn’t let him go. If sex is dirty, why should we save it for somebody we love? I got a good 20 minutes out of that.

“His mate in the car was blowing the horn and waving his arms in a panic. He walked away backwards. I followed him down the drive and talked him into the car. They drove away like madmen. Yesterday, I found a black cross on the wall beside the door. I think it’s warning to preachers to give our house a miss.”

I pass this tale on as a service to readers.

You don’t hear a lot about the Third Secret of Fatima these days. When I was a lad it was a big topic of conversation. It was said that only the Pope and the little shepherd children that the BVM had given the secret to knew what it was. The first time the pope opened the envelope and read it he fainted. Most people around our way assumed it must be either the date of the end of the world or news that Ireland would never be united.

The Secret was the one issue on which it was OK for a devout Catholic to slag off the Pope. When I was news editor of the Sunday World a fellow called to the front gate saying that he intended to hi-jack a plane to force the Vatican to reveal the Secret. I’d dealt with dumbo attention-seekers before. I sent out word he could stuff the statement he’d brought along and there was no way I’d be asking a snapsperson to take his picture. Just tell him to fuck away off, I advised the guy in the security hut.

The next Saturday, he hijacked a jet at Dublin airport and threatened to detonate the bombs he said he had strapped around his waist and kill all on board if the Vatican didn’t agree to his demands. The plane took off and landed in, I think, Paris, met by hundreds of armed cops and a thousand journalists. The stand-off lasted six hours. All Saturday afternoon, this was the biggest story in Europe. And I’d had the words-and-pix scoop, free, gratis and for nothing more than a dander across the car-park, and had dismissed it with casual derision. This might have been the most embarrassing episode of my journalistic career, except that I managed to stop it getting out. Hardly anybody knows. Phew!

Anyway, what do I read now in the Irish Catholic (April 3) but a letter from a Dr. M. A. Tierney of Kilmeague, Naas, demanding to know when the “Holy Father” is going to publish the Secret. “Our Lady’s message was intended for all of us,” he declares, suggesting that John Paul has been deliberatly disobedient to the BVM. Wars have been waged for less. Recently, too.

Don’t do it, Dr. Tierney, I implore. No need. Following the debacle described above, I resolved never again to provoke but if possible sometime to prevent the hijacking of an airplane. Towards this end, by devious but honourable means, I acquired the text of the Third Secret. No messing.

Here, transliterated directly from the Portuguese, is the message passed to Pius XII on January 3, 1944 by the sole surviving visionary, Sr. Lucia, which caused the pro-Nazi pontiff to sway and swoon.

“We saw an Angel with a flaming sword. Pointing to the earth, the Angel cried: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. We saw in an immense light the Holy Father dressed in white. Other bishops, priests and men and women religious were going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a Cross of rough-hewn trunks. The Holy Father passed through a huge city half in ruins. Afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way. At the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the Cross he was killed by soldiers who fired bullets and arrows into him. In the same way, there died one after another all the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various and numerous of the Church’s lay people of different ranks and positions. There were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.” (An aspersorium is the same thing as an aspergillum.)

Mad, eh? But another major terrorist incident averted. I never get credit for this sort of thing.

“The chick got in the way”

Not all that many children shredded, then. So everything’s alright.

The bomb-aimer who missed Hussein in a restaurant but left 14 innocent civilians scattered in gobbets across the neighbourhood stressed that any of his colleagues could have accomplished the same. “I just happened to be the lucky one.”

The chap who accounted for a pleading teenager explained, “The chick got in the way.”

A Dubliner joins the British Army after trying for the Irish Army and then considering the French Foreign Legion and catches a bullet somewhere near Basra. Obituaries project him as a role model for young Dubs.

April 14, Blair says it again: “Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people.” Did Dick Cheney get where he is today by sharing his oil with the American people?

Letter the same day in the Irish Times from Monica McWilliams (Women’s Coalition) among those who’d abased themselves at Hillsborough to give George W. Bush the feel of walking over Irish people. Her conversation with Bush had been “heated”, she’d like us to know. Bet he went away feeling really chastised.

Every argument of the anti-war movement has been vindicated. But the kill-crazies aren’t impressed. Can’t afford to be when there’s millions of wogs still out there waiting for the liberators to zap them.