VYING for the title of party of the week was the last bash in the Maryfield bunker outside Belfast on Monday night, and the socialist shindig for Nobel Prizewinner John Hume in Strasbourg on Wednesday. Everyone who was anyone, from minister, Lord Dubs to the RUC Chief Constable, Ron- nie Flanagan - but excluding most unionists - turned up in the bunker for an evening of plenty of booze but no speeches.
In Strasbourg, Commissioners Monika Wulf-Mathies and Erkki Liikanen, 250 MEPs but only one Irish - Labour's Bernie Malone - and their staff gathered over three floors at the Kammerzell Restaurant overlooking the Gothic cathedral. Hume was greeted by the MEPs like a pop star among teenyboppers. In short sleeves he met them all and took the Nobel medal from his trousers pocket at each table as he posed for pictures. Socialist leader Pauline Green was MC. Hume spoke movingly about the North, the prize, how Europe had been such an inspiration to him, and about Strasbourg as "the capital of hope". He sang The Town I Loved So Well which brought a standing ovation and not a few tears.