You will have noticed, perspicacious reader that you are, that the veil of pseudonimity has been lifted from this column after some 19 or however many years it’s been. I was going to write “anonymity”, which would have had the advantage of not getting a squiggly red line under it, but can a column the identity of whose writer has been known virtually since day one really be called anonymous?

When the book comes out, you’ll get chapter and verse as to the why and how of “Beck” but, until then, be patient. The book will come out when I get around to finishing it, which, given my tendency towards sloth, is not imminent. In my own defence, when my real life consists in generating a decent volume of writing, not to mention this column and a biweekly or so blog, getting down to writing even more is a bit of a chore, though I will be getting down to it.

You’ve also got a stunning pic of me for your delectation, though I’m not entirely sure that those of you who access this through the online version (not the pdf, the other one, which you can comment on) will be getting this inestimable bonus.

Also, there’ll be a graphic or pic, which might have something to do with that on which I am discoursing.

All of the above flows from the decision of Them Upstairs to make the paper even prettier, so enjoy. For me, it’s the erudite content of my stuff that should cause you to be lining up outside the newsagent whatever the weather or sitting checking online second by second to be sure you can read me as soon as I hit the ’net, but I’m not the boss.

Enough about me, though I can’t think why that should be so.

So, there we have it: the Prime Minister’s consultant, jet-setter and financier extraordinaire (pro bono or not, depending who you believe) John Dalli has delivered himself of his report on the state of Mater Dei Hospital. I haven’t read it, preferring not to waste my time reading the former Minister of Health’s condemnation of all that came after him, especially given that we’ve already been given a very good indication of what Dalli thinks about anything that wasn’t done by him.

To explain the last bit of the previous sentence, as soon as Dalli had lost his bid to become leader of the Nationalist Party and, consequently, Prime Minister, he embarked on his that-bloke-sulking-in-his-tent act, whinging and whining that he had been exiled to a far off land and imprisoned, neglecting to tell us that this exile and imprisonment was as European Commissioner in Brussels, hardly a hardship.

Why is Joseph Muscat so beholden to John Dalli that he hasn’t yet told him to take a hike?

As a result of his embitterment, Dalli became a regular guest on Super One TV, critical of everything that the person who beat him to the leadership was doing. He was paraded, and paraded himself, as a Nationalist, contributing in no small measure to the growing disaffection with the government, a completely understandable disaffection in the context of the long time the PN had been in charge.

This was, of course, four-square within the cunning plan drawn up by Baldrick. I was going to poke a bit of fun at Labour and its leader by associating Blackadder with Joseph Muscat but, truth be told, I couldn’t bring myself to elevating the man beyond the level of Rowan Atkinson’s sidekick and familiar.

Dalli continued to be used by Muscat as a principal battering ram in the assault on the consciousness of his (Muscat’s) target audience, the disgruntled and the ungrateful, with a great deal of success, as the election result showed.

For the undiscerning and for those desperate for a reason to vote against the PN, the fact that Dalli had hardly covered himself in glory during his tenure of the commissionership and certainly had not contributed to his image positively in the manner of his leaving it was irrelevant: Dalli was PN (at least as far as they were concerned), Dalli was anti-PN (and hang the lack of logic in that), so they could be anti-PN too.

And, thus, it came to pass that Baldrick’s cunning plan came to fruition, with the result that Muscat became Prime Minister.

This phenomenon had, and continues to have, wide and varied consequences, but let’s restrict ourselves this week to those relating to Dalli. This estimable gentleman miraculously recovered from the illness that was preventing him from undertaking the arduous trip from Brussels to Malta to face the odd notion that the then Commissioner of Police had that he should be prosecuted, the fact that the new Head Chef was of a different opinion having nothing to do with Dalli’s recovery, of course.

Dalli’s rehabilitation, at least on the local level, was as fast as the happy recovery of his health. Ignore the fact that, as far as we are aware, the EU’s investigators are still having a bit of a wonder about Dalli’s activities, such as his ‘faster than the speed of light, is it a bird, is it a plane, no it’s John Dalli’ dash across the Atlantic and back to sit on a plane in Bermuda or wherever.

Concentrate, instead, on the manner in which Dalli triumphantly returned to us, his loyal subjects, something in the manner of Mark Anthony and his elephants, clashing cymbals and all, was anointed Minister of Health de facto, much to the chagrin of the de iure minister, who is now having a bit of trouble containing his glee at the mess Dalli has gotten himself into.

If Tuesday’s front page of this newspaper is to be believed, Dalli promptly cancelled a €25 million euro IT contract and installed a consultant of his choosing to do the job instead. At the time of writing, that’s about all we know. Imagine if this had been done by a Nationalist minister, Dalli would have worn out the chairs on Super One bitching about it.

Eyebrow raising, or what?

Not content with this sort of shenanigan, Dalli also drew up a little report that the Minister of Health (the ostensibly real one, I mean) promptly disavowed, that the relevant unions promptly had conniptions about and that, all in all, demonstrated precisely why most people, with the notable exception of the Prime Minister, who seems to be infatuated with Dalli and all his works, think that said Dalli should be put out to grass once and for all.

Incidentally, can we have a bit of a clarification as to the genesis of this blinking report, the first effect of which seems to have been the cancellation of some operations? The Minister of Health has let it be known, from what I can make out, that Dalli proposed it, it wasn’t commissioned by the government, which is a somewhat peculiar way of going about things. Almost as peculiar as appointing an obscure lawyer to revise the Constitution, say.

This story, and many others, will, no doubt, run and run, one of the most interesting aspects of which being why, in the name of all that’s glorious, Muscat is so beholden to Dalli that he hasn’t yet told him to take a hike. To be fair, perhaps Muscat is too busy trying to find himself a way out of the cul-de-sac into which he’s driven himself with his weird notion that our citizenship is his to tout around the world but, surely, it’s about time he cut Dalli loose once and for all.

On Wednesday, after a really enjoyable lecture by Liam Gauci under the auspices of Palazzo Falson, a job-lot of us were kindly invited to try out the fare at Theos, a new venture in The Priory at the hands of Frank of Shisha (also in Mdina) fame.

Major thumbs-up, folks: excellent Med. and Greco-Ottoman food, really good service (the waiter, whose name I missed, should be cloned) and generally a great experience. We will be back, and you should head there. They’re in soft-launch phase, so as Mr Blair had memorably put it, things should only get better.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20