It was certainly quite a day - the biggest jailbreak in UK history, with 38 prisoners getting out. (The Maidstone had been decommissioned many years earlier, Dead Horse.) Half were recaptured almost immediately, as were most of the remaining 19 over the years. Three were never caught, and according to Northern Ireland police are no longer being actively pursued.

Any unionist hassled for comment by the press would feel obliged to condemn the Letterkenny bash, but most have managed to keep their heads down, leaving the prison officers to pitch in with most of the sound and fury. Ome unionist who couldn't resist sticking his oar in was Jeffrey Donaldson, surely one of the most deeply unpleasant politicians to emerge in a generation. But among the nonsense he spouted there was one sentence I agreed with: the anniversary celebration was, he said, "insensitive, inappropriate and totally unnecessary." It's regrettable, but I suppose inevitable, that nationalists sometimes feel a need to behave like loyalists.