Doctor delights in grim diagnosis

Doctor Ian Paisley's diagnosis was grim. "Dublin is sick," he announced as he emerged from the Ballymoney count centre after his first-count election. "Tony Blair is sick," he added, "and the sickest of them all is David Trimble." Never has a doctor so delighted in the decline of so many patients, but there was no mistaking his special joy in the UUP leader's alleged condition. Dublin and Tony Blair might recover in time, implied the doctor, but Mr Trimble was "sick unto death, because the people of Ulster have written his political obituary".

If his enemies were not already sick, they might have grown ill listening to what he had in store for them. He promised to "nail the hide of Mr Blair to the fence" on his referendum pledges. Then, perhaps fearing the Prime Minister's skin was too thin to support nailing, he promised to "nail the flesh of Mr Blair and Mr Trimble to the fence". Warming to his theme, he predicted the creators of the assembly's consensus rules would be "hung on their own petard".

Still in the humour for hanging, he regretted that Joe Cahill, the veteran republican and a fellow candidate, had not been suspended "from a pole" years ago, "but we have hung Joe Cahill on the electoral poll here today", he said.

When he wasn't assuring his enemies that their ailments were terminal, Dr Paisley was giving eccentric weather forecasts. "The sun is shining," he said at one point, as monsoon-like rains continued outside. "It's a good day for my province and a rotten day for Dublin," he bellowed into an RTE camera.

Even when he bowed to the weather, his enthusiasm was undampened. In a quasi-biblical flourish, he declared: "The rain will fall to water not the green grass, but the orange seed that has been sown. Roll on the Twelfth of July."

A lone PUP supporter heckled him, causing the DUP leader to deny that he was a "wrecker", but with Joe Cahill hanging from a pole, Tony Blair and David Trimble nailed to a fence and the entire pro-agreement campaign hung on its own petard, he was leaving a swathe of destruction behind him.