'The limit does not exist': Leo Varadkar wins bet with Mean Girls quote
Leo Varadkar has won a €50 bet with . . . a hobbit.
Already attracting attention for using quotes from Winston Churchill to a fictional Messianic character who resists time-traveling Terminators, the Taoiseach yesterday turned to a fictional 16-year-old schoolgirl for inspiration.
But while quotes he borrowed in his various addresses to the nation during Covid-19 have all come out of the blue, his latest appears to have come about after a public bet.
Addressing the Taoiseach via a video messaging app while being interviewed on RTÉ 2FM Breakfast, Lord of the Rings actor Sean Astin bet him “fifty quid” he couldn’t “fit” a quote from the 2004 movie Mean Girls into his next address.
He appears to have obliged yesterday.
Talking about how quickly he believes the economy will bounce back from the Covid-19 crisis, he said: “Some have asked whether there is a limit to what we can achieve.
"My answer is that the limit does not exist.
“We have been here before and we know the way out."
In Mean Girls, the character Lindsey Lohan plays gives that very “the limit does not exist” line in her winning answer when asked to find the limit to an equation in a maths challenge in the film.
Use of the line has led to a predictable flurry of commentary on social media, as indeed has happened in response to all of his Covid addresses since the first on March 17.
Then, in what was a historic address to the nation, he paraphrased one of Winton Churchill’s best-known wartime phrases when he said “never will so many owe so much to so few".
It was, depending on your personal point of view, either a highlight or simply the most controversial moment in the “we are in this together” speech.
He followed it up on March 27 when he said lockdown measures were “radical actions aimed at saving as many people’s lives as possible in the days and weeks ahead”.
And he added: “We’re not prisoners of fate, we can influence what’s going to happen to us next.
“There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."
It is the same thing told to the character Sarah Connor - played by the pouting Linda Hamilton - in The Terminator film by her future son.
In his April 10 address, he said: “As (poet Seamus) Heaney wrote, we were ‘all the more together for having had to turn and walk away’.
“In the days ahead we must continue to turn and walk away from each other and from doing the things we would like to do.
“But we will be all the more together for having done so.
“Stay strong, stay safe and stay at home.” On June 5, when he announced to the nation the relaxation of lockdown measures, he borrowed the Lord of the Rings quote.
He said: "So, this afternoon let me end with the words of a wise man - some words of hope.
"In the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.
“Even darkness must pass.
“A new day will come.
“And when the sun shines it will shine out all the clearer."
The quote is from the last of the epic trilogy and is delivered by hobbit, Samwise Gamgee - Frodo Baggins' gardener.
It was delivered at a point in the Two Towers when Frodo struggles with self-doubt on his journey to Mordor, the bleak volcanic plain in the southeast of Middle-earth.
It was a few days later when the Taoiseach received Sean Astin’s message.
He said: "Leo! Hello Leo, how are you? How's it going, man?
"You quoted me in your last speech. Cool, cool, super cool.
"So you've had Terminator, Heaney and me. That's good company.
"Now I'm going to bet you fifty quid that says you can't fit Mean Girls into the next one."
And lo - a quote was born.
