There was a slight intake of breath. Was Brendan O'Carroll going to be difficult? Exuding pizzazz, he breezed in, 40 minutes into the photo shoot. "I'm sorry, I don't do groups," said the comedian-cum-writer-cum-actor to the waiting photographer. O'Carroll stopped dead in his tracks and looked resolute on being asked to stand in with the other winners of the "Smoothie Awards", a publicity event in honour of the Wilkinson Sword razor blade.
The assembled guests stood in shocked silence for a second on the roof of the Fitzwilliam Hotel. Then the Dubliner broke into an impish grin and vaulted up onto the platform to join the others. Paul Allen, organiser of the event, breathed a sigh of relief.
Louis Copeland, tailor to the stars, was not a bit uppish. He allowed himself to be smeared with shaving cream while model Natasha Byram pretended to shave his bald pate. When his suit was daubbed with the stuff, someone quipped: No shortage of good suits there. Brian Kerr didn't understand why he'd been picked by consumers in shopping centres as the sport smoothie. "I'm more of a Desperate Dan than a smoothie," joked the FAI man.
Conrad Gallagher was the smoothest operator in the business category. "It's about being very smooth at work," he said, talking without missing a beat about the two restaurants he is about to open - one in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, and the other, the Ocean, on Dublin's Charlotte Quay.