As we all know, our Taoiseach likes nothing more than a photo opportunity that presents him as a fun-loving, normal guy who enjoys a jog in the park - with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau - or attending some concert with a few work colleagues.

Last night saw LCD Soundsystem play the Olympia, with Leo Varadkar joining colleagues from Fine Gael at the gig and even managing to get backstage to meet the band. As it turns out, however, there wasn't the usual array of selfies, glad-handing and so on. In fact, it got downright awkward.

According to Al Doyle, LCD Soundsystem's guitarist, Varadkar was confronted by Nancy Whang about his record on repealing the eighth amendment. According to Doyle, Nancy took Varadkar "to task as well," with Doyle himself apparently wearing a 'Repeal' tote bag - which Varadkar saw and walked away.

Helen McEntee, the Minister for European Affairs decided to wade into the whole thing. 

As you can probably guess, a whole thread started up underneath the comments - all of which got pretty serious. As it turned out, the next day saw Doyle make a few statements on Twitter about the whole debacle.

"Firstly, we should do our due diligence on any politico types that wanna come backstage. We didn't in this case, and that was lax. Sorry. Secondly, a tote bag round the neck is a crap protest; sorry. But that's all I had to hand, and I was very tired. Like, existentially tired. Thirdly, I don't have much right to wade into this debate as some Johnny come lately when it's not even my country, so sorry about that too." 

Here here.

 

Via Twitter