Further to Maze: the Screenplay, I can report that Mischa Barton accompanied Ministers Poots and Dodds down to the Great Hall where they were interviewed by reporters and snapped by a line of waiting school girls. Mischa was resplendent in a hugging red dress and silver shoes several storeys high.
The starlet's fame is a cause of consternation to both myself and most of the more veteran members of the Stormont press pack, who admitted privately that they didn't know who she was. But the crowd of waiting school girls most definitely did.
After assiduous research on the web, though, I was able to inform a Sinn Fein MLA that our guest was a star of the American teen drama television series, "The O.C." The politician in question had spent most of his formative years behind bars. He shook his head and told me "in my time the OCs never looked anything like that".
I'm not sure if it's a rom-com or a farce, but Stormont witnessed some chaotic scenes today as unionists on the Culture Committee refused to look at some architects' design plans for a potential multi-sports stadium at the Maze. The members argued they should have been shown a business plan first. The architects, who flew over from London, were, at the time of writing, due to go home without making their presentation.
The scenes outside the Committee room were rendered all the more surreal by the presence at Stormont of Lord Attenborough, Shirley MacLaine, Pete Postlethwaite and other stars of the "Closing the Ring" movie. When I last looked the glamorous Mischa Barton had not arrived, but was due to attend a reception.
The Culture Minister Edwin Poots had to divide his attention between the rebellious Culture Commitee members and the film stars, whilst the architects hung around waiting to hear if the Committee would reconvene to see their drawings.
As I looked on increasingly bemused, I wondered whether there might be a film in it....
Opening Image: An aerial tracking shot of the Stormont estate zooms into the Assembly building and moves seamlessly through a window to reveal angry exchanges inside a Committee Room...
Flashback: We are in a jail, fly on a wall style, listening in to prisoners planning their escape. Some of the inmates look strangely familiar..
Dissolve into: an image of the Olympic torch being plunged into a Beijing stadium bowl (a clock can be seen ticking in the background)
Wipe to: David Healy scores the goal which completes his hat trick against Spain. Long panning shot captures jubilant crowd reaction but rests on ominously creaking base of stadium stand...
That's as far as I've got...perhaps others would care to develop the plot and the characters, before we apply to the Culture Department for development funding.
I'm 
