One can not but feel very happy for Dick Spring - fine chap and all that - who has just been head-hunted by the International Advisory Services Division of an American law firm, owned by a sextet of persons called Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo. The announcement said that Mr Spring would be "helping the firm obtain work in Europe and neighbouring countries" (that's an odd way of putting it) "in the firm's key practice areas, such as project finance, mergers and acquisitions, healthcare, telecommunications and high technology." At first glance, the report looked like a spoof. Mergers and Acquisitions? The best leader the Labour Party ever had. Surely it could not be true? But then I forced myself to sit down and think about the nature of the conversation that took place, that morning, between Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo - all of them serious operators, big hitters - none of them given to fits of whimsy at the boardroom table.
Mr Secretary
"Any Other Bidniz?" asks Mintz, leaning back into the President's great swivel-chair and lighting the first of the two cigars per day allowed him by his coronary consultant. "I bin thinkin'," says Ms Popeo (a womanperson), "whyn't we ask this Springsteen guy - yuh know, the former Irish Secretary of State - to come join us." "Spring?" Cohn asks, drily. "No, no, summer. Right away, I mean," says Popeo. "What I mean," says Cohn, testily, "the name's Spring, not Springsteen. An' they don't call 'em Secretary of State over there - the guy was Foreign Secretary." "Aha!["] says Ferris (who has a deceptively Irish-sounding name). "But wotcha suppose the fellah wuz called before he changed the name? Yuh gotta remember, a guy calls himself Springsteen over there, he ain't goin' nowhere, pretty goddamn fast, in Irish politics. Sure, he changed it, or prob'ly his old man did when the family first hit that wotchacallit island in Cork Harbour: yuh know the one, it's in the Titanic movie." "Newfoundland," Glovsky suggests, brightly. "From there came the iceberg. Am I right?" "Nah," Ferris says, "the other island."
Good on the notepaper
"Order," says Mintz, tapping the ash off his cigar. "Springsteen, yuh say. Or Spring. Who'n hell cares what name the family took when they wuz comin' thru the island? If the guy's a right guy, an' we can use'm, let's have'm. We could stand a splash of Irish in this corporation: looks good on the notepaper, here an' in Europe. An' if the family started out called Springsteen - so we should complain, huh?" "How could we use'm?" Levin asks. Popeo pulls a sheaf of photographs out of her hand-bag and passes them around. "As we see, gentlemen, he's more'n somewhat dishy. Look at that head o' wavy black hair. Grab that neat li'l moustache: there's a political fashion statement if ever I saw one. He's class, this guy. An' he abso-goddam-lutely don't shop for those eyeglasses in no five-'n'-dime."
"So yuh want we should call'm, or what?" Mintz asks, looking around the table. "Can we have a show of hands?" "One moment, President," says Levin. "Yuh think maybe we oughta first talk about how we'd use this Irish guy?"
Ms Popeo is geared up for this moment. "I bin thinkin' it'd be real neat to have'm in our Innernational Advisory Services Division. I done some research on'm, an' guess what, he ain't just a cute looker. This guy's hot, real hot. In the brain domain, I mean. "Could be she's right," says Ferris. "I bin readin' about'm somewhere - Time, I guess, maybe Newsweek - and he sure as hell looks like he's right for Mergers 'n' Acquisitions. This Spring, or Springsteen, or whatever yuh wanna call'm, is a straight down the middle Irish liberal - they got one or two of 'em over there, wudja believe - but when he was runnin' the Irish labour movement, he threw his hat in the ring with two or three right-wing governments an' as near as dammit pulled a leveraged buy-out on' em. This is some cookie!"
"I hear," says Glovsky, "when he was Irish Foreign Secretary, he spent a whole lotta time in Europe an' some o' those other countries over there. Sounds to me like he knows his way around in the dark without a flashlight. We could goddam use a guy like this in our European Expansion Program. Am I right or am I right?" "An' his wife's American," Cohn says. "A great-lookin' broad."
All-Irish quarterback
"On toppa that," Ms Popeo says, "this Springsteen usta be an All-Irish quarterback, or whatever'n hell they call' em over there. Gentlemen, what we got ourselves here is a package deal - an all-around, puttogether jock." "Sure sounds like he's the right stuff," Mintz says. "Let's take a vote on it." All hands are raised. "I guess that's a wrap, then," says Mintz, stubbing out his cigar. "Popeo, whyn't yuh hop over there to Europe an' get schmoozin' with this guy? An' check out the wife while yer at it, OK?" Board meeting adjourned.