LEGEND met a legend yesterday and it was all by appointment in a slick PR operation.
Mr Charles J. Haughey, off Abbeville, Kinsealy, Co Dublin, was the legend in human form and Honda's big 3.5 litre flagship represented the automotive metal. Together they met in the spacious grounds of Abbeville, except that the Haughey legend didn't pose beside the Honda legend for the ubiquitous commercial or PR photograph.
"We fully understand," said an understanding Honda managing director, Mr Peter Cullen. It was a PR coup nevertheless.
Mr Haughey has never before lent his mansion for commercial product endorsement. Inevitably, the question is being asked has a precedent been created?
Mr Paul Allen, who masterminded the PR operation for Honda, says probably not. "I know Mr Haughey and the Haughey family. It's probably a once off, but who knows. I did something that I felt was innovative, given the product and the personality, and Mr Haughey liked the idea."
The invitation to the motoring press spoke about meeting a "living legend". For those sensitive folk who perhaps felt that Mr Haughey wasn't that legend, there was Cuchulainn in wood to look at. Six years ago, a huge elm fell in the Abbeville estate, and Mr Haughey asked sculptor Ms Joan Smith to make a Cuchulainn representation from the fallen wood.
Mr Haughey was discharged from hospital only late last week, and it even seemed early yesterday that "legend meeting legend" might not happen. But turn up he did, enjoying drinks with about 20 motoring journalists and then joining them for lunch.
The lunch conversation was interesting, although distinctly non controversial.
Abbeville, we learned, was bought for about £120,000, the price of a good semi in most parts of Dublin today. There was talk about the good old times when Findlaters made deliveries and you could buy a pat of butter for six old pence in the Monument Creameries.
Mr Haughey regaled the journalists with the history of Abbeville. Abbeville is a small town in Normandy, and the Beresfords, previous inhabitants, had married into a French family from Abbeville, hence the name.
At the end of the day it was adjudged a success. Legend had met legend. Both were claiming to be different, prestigious and exclusive.
What more could a PR man ask for?