Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Here's a great story from the "It-must-be-Ireland" department. Padraic Ward, proprietor of Ward's Pharmacy in Ballina, County Mayo, decided to promote the Yves St Laurent perfume Opium by placing a poster for the product in his shop window. This turned out to be a controversial move as the said poster features a life-size image of supermodel Sophie Dahl (daughter of children's story writer Roald Dahl) lying on her back and wearing nothing but an expression that says "Oh! Yeeeeeeees!"

Enter the mayor, Ray Collins. He said he'd received complaints from "a few women over the phone and some I met in town." The feeling was that the poster was offensive to women and suggestive in its pose. Mr Collins then approached Mr Ward:

"When the mayor rang and complained, for the craic I put yellow luminous paper over the model's breast and wrote 'by order of the mayor'. A huge amount had not even noticed the poster until then but after that, cars and trucks at the traffic junction up from the shop would be flashing their lights," Mr Ward told the Irish Times.

Asked whether sales of the perfume had increased as a result, Mr Ward replied:

"Probably, but what I have really noticed is that the sale of Viagra has gone through the roof so obviously this has all had a very good effect on the men of Ballina."