"The reason I probably can't give you a better reflection of what I was doing on the 19th of January is because I didn't do it." Oh, dear God. Make it go away, writes Miriam Lord.
Bart Simpson meets Samuel Beckett by way of Alice in Wonderland.
Allez le Bert! The man is a genius.
The Taoiseach put up a barnstorming performance in the tribunal witness box yesterday. He baffled all before him with a masterful display of how to talk your way around difficult questions, with any amount of different answers.
In years to come, Japanese students will be writing dissertations on the Taoiseach's Mahon transcripts. Bloomsday will be forgotten.
Tourists and scholars will gather in Dublin on September 26th to mark Dig-Out Day, that special day in 2006 when Bertie Ahern opened his heart to Bryan Dobson, setting in train a remarkable odyssey through the English language and the human imagination.
It's almost a year to the day now since a tearful Taoiseach went on national television to set the record straight on his curious personal finances for once and for all. But he didn't set the record straight. He's still explaining.
But back to Dig-Out Day, when aficionados will wear anoraks, stand outside 44 Beresford and declaim excerpts from the House Purchase chapter.
They will sit in parked cars outside the AIB on O'Connell Street and read pertinent passages from Celia Larkin's soliloquy.
"Yes, Yes, I said Yes, I will take the briefcase and give it to the teller and not look inside and I will say Yes Bertie to the curtains and the carpets and the gold spun drapes! YES!" Lunch will be a humble pint of bass in Fagans. No burgundy and Gorgonzola in Drumcondra.
Then, as the day's festivities (sponsored by Dublin Tourism) draw to a close , they will repair to luxury hotels and not eat the dinner.
Poor Senator David Norris will be out of a job. For Senator Eoghan Harris will be on hand, the world's foremost interpreter of Ahern's glorious canon of work.
Yesterday, at the end of the Taoiseach's third gruelling day on the stand, his exhausted and confused audience spilled from Dublin Castle, brains buzzing as they tried to make sense of what they had just heard.
Bertie had managed to get through five hours explaining in bewildering detail how he couldn't remember what he agreed were "memorable events" involving money he might have converted into foreign currency, while "contemplating" how contemplations made him withdraw £50,000 in cash, which he hadn't needed to do, upon mature contemplation.
Wha? Exactly.
After a long day, people struggled to work out the Taoiseach's convoluted and ever evolving explanations of how he nearly didn't rent a house, leading him to withdraw a huge sum of cash from his bank, converting some of it into sterling in a transaction he can't recall, and for which the bank has no documentation.
They tried to reconcile their Michael Walls with Bertie's talk of Chinese walls. In these pre-Northern Rock days, they tried to work out why he preferred his "safe safe" in Drumcondra to an interest-earning account in the bank. They tried to imagine how he fitted in house-hunting expeditions with never-ending trips around Ireland building up Fianna Fáil. Then they tried to understand how he forgot those snatched weekend and night-time house-hunting exercises until friends got in touch this summer to remind him of the fact.
As for that £50,000, it seemed to enjoy more peregrinations through the banking and non-banking system than Daisy the cross-border cow during the worst days of the beef tribunal.
Then again, in 1995, it was only a forgettable £50,000, not far off Bertie's gross annual salary as minister for finance.
"I wouldn't have thought any big deal of taking the money out of the bank and keeping it in cash," said Bertie yesterday. He was just withdrawing it so he "would have it handy". People are always quick to think the worst. It wasn't like the money he spent on the house he eventually bought from Michael Wall - we'd need to print a special supplement to explain the ins and outs of that - was spent abroad.
"All of the work on the house was spent in Ireland." Indeed, he explored that theme again, when explaining how he decided to repay Michael Wall his stg£30,000 from his own funds, rather than just closing the account Celia opened for him and returning what was in it.
"There were no Chinese walls." No, rather like Ray Burke and his personal and political money, his accounts and Celia Larkin's accounts were seamless. After all, Celia Larkin was his then partner.
"My life partner." When he uttered those words, it caused a sharp intake of breath in the public gallery, followed by a very audible, and very female "Oooooh!"
He had an answer for everything. When The Irish Times reproduction of the opening statement he made to the tribunal last Thursday was displayed to point out discrepancies between what he said then and what he was saying yesterday, he talked his way around them with confidence.
So much confidence that the newly established Fianna Fáil Dublin Castle cumann applauded yet again. The chairman reminded them that applause was forbidden.
Whereupon the claque against clapping for Bertie clapped their approval.
It had been a long, complicated day. The anoraks in the media section had added another page to their growing list of contradictions in the Taoiseach's story. But, such was the amount of dust kicked up by the voluble Bertie, it's difficult to know if the general public is exercised enough to bother with the essence of his evidence left behind.
Perhaps it was a touch of cabin fever, but a giddiness took over at the end. A crowd gathered outside to watch the Taoiseach leave.
The three tribunal judges left first, and they were treated to a rousing round of applause. It was like first curtain call at the Gaiety.
Finally, Bertie made his exit. The Dublin Castle cumann - Drumcondra on tour - cheered loudly, in an effort to drown out the boos.
A beaten-down media hung over the crash barriers. There was just one question: "Any message for the Irish rugby team?"
And a smiling Bertie, full of beans, leaned over his car door and replied: "I wish them well. You know, they should keep up the confidence and just keep going." Never mind Eddie O'Sullivan. Listen to the master, lads.
Allez le Bert!