Delulu Aras race is farce an Uachtarain

Wannabes suffer fear of missing out on ego rush

- Neil LESLIE

IT'S an early midsummer contender for the word of the year.

Usually these things are not decided until Noddy Holder has called the Christmas season into session.

But the learned faculty members in Cambridge University were out this week inserting some new words that define 2025 into their legendary dictionary.

And if it's good enough for them.

Over there they plumped for words like "Tradwife", which apparently denotes an internet yearning for women to go back to doing more traditional female roles.

And not as I thought at first glance the other halves of the new wave of bearded, banjo warriors that seem to be everywhere this year.

The Cambridge wordsmiths also chose the delightfully lyrical "delulu" to promote into the official lexicon.

It's a jaunty, unthreatening Gen Z term to describe those living in their own deluded fantasy world.

As luck would have it, it's also a perfect adjectival description of the current state of the phony race to be president of Ireland.

Many of the interventions we have seen so far from assorted wannabes and would be hopefuls have been what you might call totally "delulu".

The great columnist Jimmy Breslin used to say New York was the easiest place in the world for a nobody to announce themselves as a political bigshot.

He hadn't seen nothing like the 2025 race to the Aras.

DISPUTE