A heroic self-admitted arsonist in Northern Ireland has been awarded a posthumous medal for bravery after spending half a lifetime putting out suspicious looking fires.

The other half of his life is a bit murkier but it is understood that he enjoyed collecting Zippo lighters and often didn’t have any eyebrows.

Malcolm McBaileys of Belfast was known in his youth as something of a “twisted fire starter” who just wanted to “watch the world burn” but decided later in life to become a fire safety officer for Belfast Council.

“He was something of a legend around here.” Councillor Dermot Orange of Belfast Parish Council told us. “The number of times the litter bins mysteriously caught fire around Malcolm was incredible, if he hadn’t been around to put them out they probably wouldn’t have caught fire in the first place. He was a hero. It’s almost ironic that he should die in a litter bin fire.”

The news comes following news of the tragic death of the IRA leader, Martin McGuinness who definitely might not have given Paddy Ward bomb parts on the morning of Bloody Sunday, and definitely might not have been armed with a sub machine gun that same day.

The lauded peace activist who was outrageously arrested next to a car with 110kg of explosives and 5,000 rounds of ammunition in it in 1973, who definitely might not have had advance knowledge of the Enniskillem Car Bomb that killed 11 1987, died peacefully in hospital of rare heart condition. Unlike the IRA informant Frank Hegarty who was was shot in the head after Martin McGuinness probably didn’t lure him back to Ireland to be murdered in 1986.

McGuinness the former Minister of Education was certainly responsible for the Good Friday Agreement, absolutely the Deputy First Minister and definitely and definitely not, according to McGuinness, in the IRA. He did his bit for peace in Northern Ireland by, according to McGuinness, possibly or possibly not murdering anybody since 1997.

It’s a low bar, but nobody has clean hands in Northern Ireland.

Quentin D Fortesqueue is a founding editor of The Rochdale Herald. Part time amateur narcissist and full time satirist Quentin is never happier than when playing his lute and drinking a full bodied Bordeaux. He rarely plays the lute and never gets to drink Bordeaux.