Pomeroy Clean-Up Begins

By Shengas McGlumphie

The village of Pomeroy spent much of Sunday in a state of panic as it prepares itself for the much-awaited return of local singing sensation Andrea Begley, who won BBC’s ‘The Voice’ on Saturday night. After an emergency meeting of the Pomeroy Village Council (PVC), a clearly-flustered Chairman Danny Devlin said,

“Jaysus, we’re sweating like Hugo on Mastermind. We’re expecting Andrea back soon and we’ve nothing ready. Not even sandwiches. What if she turns up this afternoon with all the cameras and there are no sandwiches?”

It emerged that the PVC spent much of Sunday trying to get hold of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on the phone to ask if he could give the village ‘a quick makeover’. As Devlin explained,

“If that big floppy-haired bollix or thon Smillie woman can come along to give the place a wee tidy-up that would help. We’d expect a big crowd of people for Andrea and we could ask the BBC if they could CGI out all the odd-looking ones. We don’t want people thinking Halloween’s come early. Fortunately we’ve some of the bunting left over from the time Dermott O’Gara from Altmore won £50 on a scratch card in Costcutter’s in 2008, so that might improve the look of the place”.

Several local residents have queried the whereabouts of a much-touted open-topped bus which the PVC spent £10,000 on only a few weeks ago.

“It’s a touch embarrassing”, said a sheepish Devlin. “We bought this fancy open-topped bus from Carrickmore. They got it as a welcome home for that boy who made it into the grand final of ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ on Channel 4. We wanted it for Obama’s visit because we reckoned he’d take a wee jaunt down to Pomeroy after the G8. As it turns out he didn’t, so a few of the committee members sort of took it out on the bus in a wee fit of annoyance. Understandable like. Turns out we now need it for Andrea. But we’ve got to fix all the dents and the graffiti. And the fire damage. And we can’t do that until we’ve pulled it back out of Dungannon Lake. We’ve really made a hames of it”.

The PVC meantime intend to fax Philomena Begley to ask if she can ‘keep Andrea talking for a bit’ if she arrives too early.