Flanagan, looking around him in 1971, saw that ‘the country was reeking with drink, drugs and sex’.3 Mary Kenny, the women’s editor of the Irish Press, joked that he had been put up to this claim by the Irish tourist board, Bord Fáilte, ‘in order to add a bit of much-needed fleshpots-of-sin glamour to the auld sod’s hick image abroad’.4
