The North's Deputy First Minister, Seamus Mallon, said this week that he must be the first person to serve under two Nobel laureates at the same time, the First Minister, David Trimble, and his party leader John Hume. He was speaking at a small party to honour the two men, organised by Mallon and the UUP deputy leader John Taylor in the long gallery at Stormont during a break in the Assembly at lunchtime on Monday. Mallon said he was glad to have had such a positive influence on the two during the past year.
Hume said the award was an endorsement of their common resolve to break with the past and build a new North, and Trimble agreed. Members and staff of the two parties attended, but the DUP and other anti-agreement unionists were not invited because their reaction to the awards ranged from rudeness to begrudgery - even to the extent of remaining seated when the Assembly rose to toast the Nobel pair.
The next day, Hume was piped in to a 1,000-strong Assembly at his old school, St Columb's, on the Buncrana Road in Derry, to the strains of The Derry Air. Noting that St Columb's may be the only school in the world to have produced two Nobel laureates, Hume and poet Seamus Heaney, the president Father John Walsh said that for an ordinary school in Derry they had put many an Oxbridge to shame.
The peace prize, alone of the Nobel awards, is presented in Oslo, and the laureates will travel to Norway for the ceremony on December 10th. Hume and Trimble will receive cheques for about £300,000 each. Neither has yet said what he will do with the money.