Castlebar comedian Frank Forde remembers it well. It was during one of the Haughey heaves, when Padraig Flynn, then TD for a divided Mayo constituency, was still staunchly loyal to his leader. The politician turned up at the local pantomime, only to be dragged on stage.

"It was Old King Cole and we were policemen," Forde remembers. "We put a (toy) gun to his head and forced him to renounce Haughey and all his evil ways," Forde says.

"And he did! And he laughed, as loudly as the rest of us. Of course, several years later it wasn't a joke at all." Forde, who was a loyal pupil when Mr Flynn was his national schoolteacher, has been making a name in the west for his political caricatures.

Dermot Morgan may have raised laughs on RTE radio with his Scrap Saturday version of Fred Flynnstone, but Forde is actually able to make jokes on home turf - and hold down a job in Mayo County Council - about the man in the Flynn-stripe suit ("he's worn it so long it is bound to come back into fashion") who can administer "Flynn and tonics" to a wounded Tanaiste, Mary Harney.

So far, the daughter hasn't been one of his victims, but the events of this past week have made her a good candidate.

"She has all the father's traits, including a good sense of humour. Give her time . . . !"

One of those traits will be familiar to many of Flynn's school pupils. The teacher had always urged his young charges to "walk their own height".

Beverly Cooper-Flynn's performance this week in the Dail may not have impressed some of her party colleagues, but it has earned her a degree of respect in Castlebar which she may not have held up till now. The phone in the Castlebar constituency office did not stop ringing on Thursday with messages of support.

"Put it like this," said a local Fianna Fail activist - one of many who did not wish to be quoted. "In the 1994 by-election, when she first sought the nomination to run for the Dail, it split the party. Wounds hadn't really healed by 1997, and so there are many people here within her own organisation who will have been enjoying the antics this week.

"They are the same people who wouldn't have been shedding tears for her when she got caught up in the National Irish Bank scandal last year," the activist said, referring to the accusations by a retired Meath farmer, James Howard, on RTE that she had encouraged him to dodge taxes through purchase of a controversial financial package.

"She probably got more sympathy initially this week from Fine Gaelers! But it won't have done her any harm at all. She needed to show some mettle."

"Stunned" was how Padraig Murray, chairman of the Micheal O Morain Fianna Fail cumann in Castlebar, described his reaction to Wednesday's Dail proceedings. "We knew a question had been tabled, but we didn't think it would come to this. She was caught between a rock and a hard place and everyone realises that.

"Of course it will have considerable implications for the local elections, and whether she has to run as an Independent," he said. "But politics by its very nature is about divisions, and about striking a happy medium between the organisation and the personality."

In that well-known Castlebar hostelry, Mick Byrne's, and other public houses late this week, there was much sympathy for the new TD among an electorate which would not necessarily have warmed to Ms Cooper-Flynn or to her father in the past.

The Commissioner is perceived to have delivered for the town during his time as minister, particularly when he held the environment portfolio. The institute of technology, the bypass, and upgraded roads certainly give a veneer of prosperity, in marked contrast to Ballina. However, a recent study for the Tuam archdiocese by Dr Micheal Mac Greil pointed to Castlebar's relatively high unemployment rate, at 28.6 per cent.

Mr Flynn is said to have stepped on a lot of toes during his long political career. A seasoned observer of local politics notes that "there are those within his own party that would gut him, even now". Some of his own supporters believe his recent remarks on The Late Late Show were intemperate, and that if he had issued a statement about the Gilmartin affair he would not have put his daughter in an invidious position this past week.

One of those who has felt Flynn's weight is Cllr Al McDonnell, chairman of Mayo County Council. He had sought the Fianna Fail nomination for the 1994 by-election. He refused to be drawn on his opinion, however, and said he had not spoken to enough colleagues to make any comment. "I am an innocent country boy!" he pleaded.

Similarly, George O'Malley, chair of the Fianna Fail Dail ceantair in Mayo - the equivalent of the party's Mayo executive - said he could not speak with any authority, but the issue is likely to be discussed at the next ceantair meeting. Mr O'Malley withdrew his bid at cumann level for a nomination in 1994.

"One gets over these things, and motors on," he told The Irish Times. "We won't be gathering specially," he said, speaking after Ms Cooper-Flynn had voted with the Government on Thursday and the focus of attention had shifted to the speech by the former PD leader, Des O'Malley. As a vet, he has found that most of his clients are more concerned about the crisis in farming than the crisis in Dail Eireann.

"But obviously the experience of Michael Lowry in Tipperary and Jackie Healy-Rae in Kerry during the last election proves that making political martyrs is still very effective in Ireland, and not bad at all in terms of collecting votes. So we'll be watching and waiting for Mary Harney to come back from her trip abroad, and hoping she will be in good form."

There is a wider issue at stake, which may have been ignored by political commentators and party activists, according to Marian Flannery, chair of Women of the North-West, from Moygownagh, Ballina. The first female TD for Mayo is not known for her feminist views, and is very much her father's daughter, but she has broken a mould, she said.

"It is too easy to go along with the organisation, to sit quiet, to be the nice girl that parties seem to want in politics these days. Beverly was true to herself, she showed courage, she didn't follow the sheep. Why shouldn't she give an emotional speech?

"She is a people's person, rather than someone who is going to be sucked into an organisation, and maybe questions might now be asked about the need for people's representatives," Mrs Flannery said yesterday.

There is also an element of begrudgery about the reaction to her situation, she added.

Certainly, the element of schadenfreude was alluded to recently by Loftus at Large, the wily commentator in the Western People. Lining up the evidence against the Commissioner in a recent column, Loftus concluded that there was very little.

Unless one took into account the fact that Mr Flynn is the son of a tailor, was a teacher with the pension, was a publican, has bushy eyebrows, is haughty and proud, is a Catholic, is a family man ("he even lives with his wife"), likes bacon and cabbage, is proud of his daughter (a "class act"), has three houses, three pensions, led a revolt against Haughey, is "courageous, a doer and a man of conviction", and a highly successful European Commissioner.

"All of the foregoing show not so much Flynn's faults, but our faults as a nation," Loftus wrote. "We are begrudgers. We hate success in others. Some of the comments about bogman Flynn are indicative of a racist psyche. If you are outside the Pale, you are necessarily second class."

The Gilmartin allegations are the nub of the matter, Loftus concluded. "Not Flynn's personality, his personal lifestyle, his family, or his friends . . . if he has any."