

of animals, especially of deer, these cuts are now referred to as offal or lights and are rarely available for general sale, except through game butchers. The British are well known for their liking for offal, cooked in a variety of ways, particularly liver, kidneys and heart, but the ingredients of Humble Pie brings this to a whole new level.ĭuring the 14th century, the numbles (or noumbles, nomblys, noubles) was the name generally given to the heart, liver, intestines, entrails etc. The unpalatability of crow cooked in this way is not difficult to imagine, but what about humble pie?

From the mid-19 th century, in the USA, anyone who had occasion to 'eat his words' by humiliatingly accepting and publically stating they were wrong, would be said to 'eat crow' (originally to 'eat boiled crow'). Despite his regret, he put his lobbying for Ezra in the same category as his human rights campaigns and similar letters written by other politicians.Returning for a moment to the expression, various nations had different interpretations of the words and in many cases it meant to eat something unpleasant by means of a penance or punishment. and you don't stop loving someone whatever their flaws and faults are."īut interviewer Anton Savage didn't shirk from hard facts ("This man that you so loved had sex with a 15-year-old child," he said) and as he pressed these points home, Norris demonstrated why his position was untenable: he didn't get it. When later he appeared on The Last Word he sounded humbled and explained the very personal nature of his actions: "I think in one sense he was the love of my life. Then on Liveline, a programme which has documented many of Norris's ups and downs, a phone poll indicated that 55pc of listeners felt Norris should withdraw. On Tuesday's News at One, former candidate Mary Banotti extended sympathies to all candidates and suggested we'd only seen the start of the muck-raking. It was amplified to national scandal by the realities of the presidential system: the presidency is symbolic you can't campaign on policies, so every mistake is a potential deal-breaker. The simple fact, as Jackson suggested, was that this was a very personal tragedy.
#Humble pie desserts trial
On Newstalk's Lunchtime Jackson discussed Norris's love for his ex-partner Ezra Yizhak Nawi and his "stupid romanticism", while simultaneously, no doubt, scribbling the manuscript for Son of David Norris: Trial By Media II on a napkin for publication later that week.

In around the time it would have taken him to write that letter, Joe Jackson had written and published David Norris: Trial By Media, a book based on a previous scandal. Nobody was claiming that Norris was a pederast. They say that people campaign in poetry and govern in prose, but having just heard some of Pearse's poetry, I suspect he might have governed in a sex-dungeon. Harris then suggested that even Pearse would have been prohibited from being president in the current climate, and listeners wondered whether this was really a bad thing. Lad of the grey eyes, that flush in thy cheek would be white with dread of me could you read my secrets." Patrick Pearse was thought to be a pederast, he observed, before reciting a few lines from Pearse: "There's a fragrance in your kisses that I've not yet found in the mouths of women. On Monday's News at One he eloquently defended Norris, who had once sought clemency for a former partner in an Israeli statutory rape case, and began with a well-meaning and genuinely impassioned plea for empathy and against "the mob" (Harris hadn't been quite so understanding when excoriating Adi Roche in 1997's election, Fergus Finlay reminded us the next morning on Newstalk's Breakfast).īut then he veered a bit off-message.

So when Harris waded into the Norris-scandal, it was a sure sign that his presidential campaign was doomed. Sadly, also like an episode of Mr Benn, Harris's sporadic radio polemics, though entertaining, are no basis for coherent policy making. It must be fun being Eoghan Harris, a man who takes up political positions like 1970s' cartoon character Mr Benn dons fancy dress (socialist, unionist, capitalist, cosmonaut, Aztec priest, saucy nun).
