Email from a friend who works in an international organisation:
“When I was a lickle boy, one would often be asked “are you going to be a priest when you grow up?”, and even from a very young age my reply was that there was only one cardinal in Ireland, and anyway an Irishman could never become Pope, so there was no point in my becoming a priest. Which would tend to suggest that, with such an attitude to nationality-related promotional vacancies, I was predestined to become a[n]….official (notwithstanding the fact that the fact that Ireland would incredibly produce not one but two secretaries-General).”
Very small prize, if you identify the international organisation.
I was holding off with the answer (a) because I didn’t want to look sad and nerdy and (b) I wanted to leave the field clear to…. ahem….all those other sad anoraks out there…ahem. Having left a more than decent interval now though, and pushing the Irish talent for bureaucratic excellence, I have to ask, would the institutiion in question be the European Commission perhaps?