Seán Kelly and Simon Harris: Seán's enthusiasm for a good photo opportunity got the better of him. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
“It made him Taoiseach!” pointed out Fianna Fáil’s Malcolm Byrne as TDs and Senators fell around the place laughing.“It’s just taken over his life entirely. He is the TikTok Taoiseach. It has taken over his life entirely, it’s gone in an unanticipated direction.”He’s his party’s equivalent of a heat-seeking missile, only in this case, the target is any high-ranking politician in front of a camera.
Then there was an unmerciful crash as the bould Seán toppled over the edge and into a large pop-up backdrop. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was a table with empty glasses behind and he fell on that too after the “spider” frame supporting the large Fine Gael poster collapsed. “I’d been looking at this course for years and was going to go for it in 2016 but, bizarrely, I got into government at that stage,” says the independent TD for Roscommon-Galway. “But it was always in the back of my mind.”