Last week I drove to Cookstown to interview Martin McGuinness for Inside Politics, but I'm afraid I completely missed the real story. My sources tell me that a Sandwich War is in danger of breaking out at the Council.
Previously councillors got used to taking their tea and sandwiches after council and committee meetings in the Chairman's office. But nationalists complain that the practice ended after the DUP's Ian McCrea, son of Willie, took over.
Councillors noticed the change when they discovered their sandwiches on a trolley in a corridor close to a gent's toilet. In high dudgeon, Sinn Fein Councillors Clarke, Molloy, McNamee, McAleer, and Mc Ivor all put their names to the following motion.
”That this Council agrees that the practice of providing hospitality for Councillors, staff and visitors in the Chairman’s room at Council and Statutory Committee meetings is reinstated with immediate effect’.
I don't know exactly what fillings they have in their butties, but given this is Cookstown I hope some of them are sausage sandwiches.
UPDATE: My Cookstown sources tell me a compromise is under discussion - the Council's marriage room is now being touted as a possible venue for hospitality. Both sides to the dispute will have to vow to love, honour and clean up each other's crumbs...
I just recorded an interview for tonight's BBC Newsline about Alastair Campbell's Diaries "The Blair Years". It doesn't exactly change our understanding of history but there are a couple of good anecdotes. He says the three Republican women who accompanied Gerry Adams on his first visit to Downing Street were "as tough as boots". The delegates in question were Lucilita Bhreatnach, Siobhan O'Hanlon and our very own Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew.
As the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement reached their heights Campbell describes an atmosphere of near hysteria as the politicians and officials work around the clock to seal the deal. At one point he's called in to see Tony Blair when the prime minister is in the bath. He finds the PM playing the fool, mimicking an Irish newsreader announcing that as part of an agreement Cherie Blair is going to become a Protestant and Tony has agreed to speak with an Irish accent.
Campbell talks about the tug of war between unionists and nationalists about which cross border bodies could be set up as part of the deal and a meeting in which David Trimble and John Taylor went into the minutest detail of the smallest ideas they had about the bodies. This was nearly midnight on the night before the agreement was signed and when the two Ulster Unionists left Campbell and Tony Blair fell into hysterics, putting on Irish accents again and wondering what bodies they could come up with. "the waste paper bin emptying body" and "the screwing tops of bottles body" were two of their suggestions.
Of course there are darker moments as well as light ones. After Omagh he describes Tony Blair overruling Mo Mowlam on the security response and there are some tart observations about David Trimble as "difficult" and "graceless". Martin McGuinness also comes off better than Gerry Adams.
The independent unionist MEP Jim Allister has responded to my Inside Politics interview with Martin McGuinness, in which the Deputy First Minister argued that delisting and demolishing the buildings where the IRA hunger strikes took place would be "ludicrous". Mr McGuinness argued that creating an interpretative centre at the Maze was a project of international importance in an era when local politicians are trying to share their experience of conflict resolution with other parts of the world (on which subject the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has just funded a 25 million euro a year conflict resolution unit).
Predictably Jim Allister isn't impressed with the Deputy First Minister's argument that any Maze centre would not glorify the IRA hunger strikers. He claims it would salute and enhance their memory just as the heritage centre at Conlig in County Down salutes the memory of the soldiers who fought at the Somme.
Jim Allister wants the Maze buildings delisted and swiftly demolished. Sinn Fein's Paul Butler reckons this would run "totally contrary to everything that we are trying to do in terms of attracting people to our country to learn from what is clearly a whole new experience for us."
How come this argument never happened when the demolition workers moved in to take apart those iconic army watch towers on the border, which would surely have been a mecca for tourists?
I'm 
