BERTIE AHERN and Tony Blair may profess to be close friends – but listening to the former Taoiseach on RTÉ radio this morning, you may be convinced for thinking he wasn’t massively enthused with Blair’s newly-published memoir.

Reviewing the already-bestselling ‘A Journey’ the John Murray Show, Bertie’s tone was nothing but complimentary… but his choice of words indicated that Ahern, whose own memoirs were published almost a year ago, felt Blair’s writings were overtly complicated and long-winded.

“It’s a good read if you’re a politician,” he said. “Quite a lot of it is detail. You get the detailed explanations of everything.

“I can see a lot of people skipping a fair few pages.”

Explaining that the book would have held particular resonance for him because of his first-hand involvements in the peace process of Northern Ireland, to which a significant part of the book is dedicated, Ahern continued:

“For me [being involved] you have an interest in them [...] all the time he’s joining [world] events with what’s going on in his own administration, what’s happening in Europe, how that’s effecting the world.”

But then came what appeared to be a veiled explanation for why the book was overtly wordy:

Remember he wrote this when he was travelling the world in the last three years, a lot if it was in hotel rooms and on airplanes. [... I think he logged] 200 hours of flight time last year.

Ahern did, however, go on to commend Blair’s role in securing the Good Friday Agreement and in establishing the Bloody Sunday Inquiry against significant political opposition.