Mum's the word

That Seamas O'Reilly has a way with words was already abundantly evident - from his regular parenting columns for the Observer to his evaluation of our very own Steve Bruce's cringeworthy foray into fiction and his rightly legendary Twitter account of serving drinks to the President of Ireland while spannered on his mate's home-baked ketamine.

So it came as no surprise whatsoever to hear the enthusiastic praise being lavished on his first book Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?. Certainly, the taster published in the Guardian recently does an excellent job of selling it. It turns out that the Mary McAleese incident wasn't the first time he behaved inappropriately at a serious public event - as a five year old, he helped to enliven his mum's wake.

O'Reilly writes wonderfully about a traumatic life event that he initially met with childish incomprehension and whose seismic impact only became fully apparent some time afterwards. There's warmth, poignancy, lightness of touch and some fantastic one-liners - not least the reference to the INLA as "very much the Andrew Ridgeley of Irish republicanism"...