Rhonda Paisley still lives at home with her dad, the Rev Ian Paisley, even though she's suing his DUP party for sexual discrimination, writes Susan McKay
Newton Emerson ran a photomontage last year in his late, lamented satirical website Portadown News under the heading: Paisley breaks the ice. It showed the Rev Ian Paisley saying to a pained-looking Bertie Ahern, "If my daughter wrote a book like that I'd throw her out of the house".
But Rhonda Paisley still lives under her father's roof, despite this week's news that she is suing her father's party, the DUP. She says she was passed over for a job with his party because she's a woman.
While Paisley v Paisley makes a good headline, it's not the real story. There has been no frost on the Paisley family's morning cornflakes. It's more a case of a power tussle within the DUP, in which the Paisley dynasty remains united.
One British paper this week called the Paisleys "Ulster's royal family", and, indeed, Ian Paisley Snr is now a member of the Queen's Privy Council and his wife is Lady Eileen. But she recently told the DUP's favourite paper, the Newsletter, that she and Rhonda do all the dusting and cleaning at the family's large home in East Belfast.
Proper order, for Bible-believing fundamentalists see women's liberation as anti-Christian. Rhonda, like her father, received her third-level education in the southern states of the US - at preacher Bob Jones's university.
She was newly unemployed last year after her father stood down as the DUP's member of the European Parliament, where she had been his assistant. So when the position of party policy officer with the DUP came up, she applied.
But the job went to Philip Weir, a DUP councillor in Craigavon. Weir is a psychiatrist and was one of the stern young men known as the "baby barristers" when he was in the Ulster Unionist Party. They opposed the Belfast Agreement, saw David Trimble as a traitor, and some of them, including Weir, defected to the DUP.
Rhonda got the "we are sorry to inform you" letter at the end of 2004. In March 2005, she went to the Office of Industrial Tribunals. Backed by the North's Equality Commission, she lodged a claim that she had been the victim of sexual discrimination. The case, which has not yet been scheduled for hearing, is listed as Rhonda Paisley versus Alan Ewart and others. Ewart is the chief executive of the party. The others include her father, the Rev Ian Paisley, deputy leader Peter Robinson, and MPs including Iris Robinson, the Rev Willie McCrea and Sammy Wilson, to whom Rhonda was once close. Also named is MLA Ian Paisley Jr, Rhonda's younger brother.
The party stated this week that it is "content" that the best person got the policy job. Ian Paisley Jr told The Irish Times that neither he nor Rhonda, or any member of the family, would be commenting on the issue.
Rhona was decidedly lukewarm about politics in an interview she gave to the Belfast Telegraph last June, three months after she lodged her claim against the DUP. "I did work in politics in my 20s but I was happy to move out of that. It just wasn't for me," she said. She added that she "didn't mind" working "behind the scenes", but didn't like public life.
Art is clearly her passion in life. "Like most painters, I do have to do other work," she said. "Unfortunately I haven't yet reached the stage where I could just paint. So I've worked for Dad, taught for a while . . . whatever I need to do. I'm looking around again. If only these politicians would get their act together and do something for the arts."
Single and aged 45, she talked about life with her parents. "I still live at home and the three of us are a good team. Why fix it if it's not broken?"
BACK IN THE 1980s, as a DUP councillor, Rhonda became famous for blowing a toy trumpet in the grand council chamber of Belfast City Hall whenever Sinn Féin's Alex Maskey rose to speak.
"She also used to shout 'Leadbelly' at me," Maskey recalls. He was recovering from having been shot by loyalists at the time. "She could be quite nasty." Red Hand Luke, from the BBC comedy series Give My Head Peace, rates Rhonda Paisley as his ideal mate and "a goddess".
Not everyone in the DUP was happy when she was put forward as a council candidate, displacing one of the party's then-rising stars - a man. Her father, however, wanted her to be there. Although she said in a newspaper interview, "Dad's quite a softie, really," she added, "he also believed in discipline" and the family all knew the house rules.
At work as at home. There are those within the DUP who want the party to become more like a normal democratic party, others don't. Tellingly, bloggers on the Slugger O'Toole website this week backed Rhonda's case on the grounds that too many defectors from "the party of failure" are getting high office in the DUP. This isn't Paisley v Paisley - it is a battle for the heart and soul of the DUP. Rhonda's on Dad's side.