The Times We Lived In: Too skinny for a European Parliament fat cat?

A man sitting forlornly in an empty row of seats. His shoes are shined but his gaze is unfocused; he has the look of a creature left behind in a rockpool after the tide has washed out.

Many readers will, by this point, have recognised the distinctive features of Lord Henry Mountcharles, best known in Ireland for hosting a series of summer rock concerts in the ground of his home, Slane Castle, and for at the regular column he writes in (shh) another newspaper.

Technically he is the Earl of Mount Charles, but we don't fuss too much about that sort of thing in Ireland – and to be fair, neither does he. So what's he doing here? Auditioning bands for the Slane stage? Wishing it was 1982, when the Stones rolled in? Well, 1984 maybe wasn't Slane's best year ever, but the programme still managed to boast In Tua Nua, UB40, Santana and Bob Dylan, Bono and Van the Man.

No. For all its faults, stadium rock could surely never produce such a miserable face as this.

In fact Lord Mountcharles is pictured at a Fine Gael selection convention in Kill, Co Kildare, where – according to the caption – “he failed . . . to secure a party nomination for the Leinster constituency in the European Parliament elections”.

Perhaps he was too skinny for an EP fat-cat. Or maybe his pinstripes weren’t sufficiently spiffy? Either way, his political career never took him to the top of the charts. The Slane concerts, however, have become legendary in everybody’s lunchtime – and despite a diagnosis of lung cancer in 2013 his earlship was back on the concert platform last summer with, appropriately, the Foo Fighters.

Sadly, there’ll be no outing to Slane this year; the man himself recently scotched rumours that U2 would return as headliners. Maybe in 2017, he said. No need for Slane fans, therefore, to be miserable. Sure as another icon of Irish pop culture once had it, what’s another year?

Arminta Wallace