COLM TOBIN: Time to say goodbye to the Choc Ices that melted all our hearts

IT’S been an emotional week. First up, the weather took a turn for the worse and we saw the break in a long spell of drought (if you’re a farmer) or ‘heaven on Earth’ (if you’re a civilian).

Then, ice cream makers HB made an announcement that shocked those of us aged
over 30 and over to our very cores. 

In a statement which will surely be featured on Reeling In The Years – such is the scale of its cultural impact – HB said they would be discontinuing the Choc Ice, which has been bringing creamy, chocolatey joy to pleasure-starved Paddies since 1960. 

Grown men wept in the aisles of SuperValu on the day of the announcement. Family WhatsApp groups lit up from Sligo to Sydney mourning the death of life as we knew it.

They may as well have taken a wrecking ball to the Rock of Cashel while they were at it. 

‘We have found that it is no longer as popular as it once was,’ a spokesperson for HB said as a mob with torches formed around him.

Most of us heard the bad news at home, where we sat silently to take it in, guiltily wiping the Magnum stains from our collective lips as we shed a quiet tear for our childhoods. Why didn’t we support the simple, honest Choc Ice while we could? Why did we betray our culture? What have we become?

Michael Healy Rae was quick on the uptake – a man for whom no populist cause is too small. First, he asked jokingly if it had anything to do with the Green Party. 

Then he went on Newstalk and did his best impression of John B Keane, waxing lyrical about his childhood days. ‘One of the first ice creams we can all remember is the Choc Ice,’ he said. ‘You broke the hard chocolate layer, you got into the creamy ice cream in the middle, you chewed it up and you mix that layer on the outside with the inner beautiful ice cream.’ 

And just when you thought that his musings had reached their poetic conclusion, he finished with the tear-jerking finalé – ‘This created a sensation in your mouth like nothing before or after, and now to think that it’s going from us.’

The saying goes that the average Kerryman could ‘sell ice to the Eskimos’. Well, now we know that this one can sell Choc Ices to the Irish as well. And it seems the Choc Ice is going the way of the derogatory phrase ‘Eskimo’ too. Banished to the sands of time. As for Michael Healy Rae? It’s like chocolate wouldn’t melt in his mouth. 

FG looking very tired

YOU can almost smell the malaise emanating from the Fine Gael ranks in Dublin these days. Leo and Co just can’t seem to catch a break. And you could forgive them if
they are feeling a bit hard-done-by. 

After all, this is the party that is presiding over record homelessness, with the government coffers awash. Things are apparently so good, their biggest worry these days seems to be how they might spend the multinational spoils. 

But none of this seems to be sticking. It’s not like they are even spinning any of it. It’s actually happening on their watch and they can’t seem to make it reflect well on them.

If Simon Harris walked into The Dáil trailing a happy Shergar on a rope, you get the sense the public would just sigh and change the channel. 

It’s hard to match this with the Varadkar who performed in such an outstanding and reassuring manner during those dark days of Covid when Boris Johnson was flopping around hospitals shaking hands and nearly getting himself killed.

The same leader who took the calm tone of a medic laying out the science and getting us all to work together while Trump was preening in front of the White House press corps suggesting people inject themselves with bleach.

The Fine Gael we see these days is looking tired and battle-weary – a typical mid-term condition perhaps – but one which seems to get worse by the week. And the strange thing about it is that there are no huge scandals or gaffs causing the problems. It’s the slow slippage of a team that seems to have lost belief.

You’d wonder why they didn’t grab hold of the narrative when Leo took the leadership back from Michéal, or even why he didn’t shake things up with a publicised reshuffle.

 Sometimes in sport, a few fresh faces can give everyone something to think about. It feels like there was an opportunity for something headline-grabbing there. 

The fact Leo, of all people, didn’t seize it, seems mystifying given the recent backfired attempts at flying budget kites for attention. The truth is that many still haven’t moved on from Micheál Martin as Taoiseach. Who would have seen that one coming? 

The government’s cause wasn’t helped during the week when Michael D stuck his oar in again, and not for the first time in recent years, to take a fairly political pop at the upcoming Consultative Forum on International Security Policy. 

This is exactly the sort of meddling the president is supposed to avoid, but Michael D seems to be doubling down like a fella who knows he’ll be leaving the job soon and has a mind to shake things up before he does. 

Fine for him, but it’s another in a long summer of headaches for the government. 

End of Brady bunch era

IT was sad to see Liam ‘Chippy’ Brady stepping down after 25 years as a pundit with RTÉ Sport. 

I’ll miss his grumpy assessments. He’s the last in the Gang of Four that included Giles, Dunphy and Bill O’Herlihy, not to mention their classic alter-egos in Aprés Match. 

Still, I was heartened to hear that Jim Crawford’s Republic of Ireland under-21 team walked off the pitch against Kuwait in Austria the other night after a racial remark was made against an Irish player. 

Whatever about our struggles on the pitch, it’s good to know our players are willing to fight the truly important battles.