A Co Tyrone town was the subject of much discussion on RTE Radio on Thursday as a local resident took to the airwaves for the ‘Parish Quiz’ hosted by popular duo the Two Johnnies.
The show brings on local people to chat about their towns and villages on RTE 2FM, and answer questions to get through to a final to win a grand prize, and on Thursday it was the turn of Coalisland.
Top of the agenda in the segment of the show was Coalisland’s relationship with traffic wardens and roundabouts - the latter of which Paddy Lyons refers to as ‘overabouts’.
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“Jesus Christ hi the roundabouts are an absolute pantomime,” Paddy tells the pair.
“See about this time here now about five o’clock whenever there’s traffic coming from out of Powerscreen, traffic coming from all engineering companies, all the schools and then there’s a bus that just plants in the middle of it and holds everything up.
“There’s a set of traffic lights as well which nobody really pays any heed to.
“Roundabouts - we don’t really do them either. They’re not really roundabouts, they are more like ‘overabouts’. People just drive over them.”
The chat moved on to the Co Tyrone town’s short stint of having a traffic warden patrolling its streets.
“No there was one attempt but they realised that it just wasn’t doing any good so no there’s none,” Paddy adds.
“They tried to give somebody a ticket and they basically got told to sling their hook.
“People were complaining and giving off that Coalisland is getting away with no parking signs, no double yellow lines, no nothing but what have you got to do, just move to Coalisland and you don’t have to worry about parking fines.”
In a host of questions about the town, Paddy answered four out of five questions correctly, including making reference to the time his father beat local legend Dennis Taylor in a snooker match in Gervin’s pub.
Paddy made his way through to Friday’s final, and will compete against the contestant from Nobber in Co Meath.
You can listen back to Thursday’s episode on the RTE 2FM website.
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