O’Brien was born on November 3, 1917 and died today, December 18, 2008. When I first started reading the Sindo I always found him engaging but never really agreed with him.
I could never understand how he moved so easily from one end of the political spectrum to the other. Of course I know him best for coining the phrase Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented, or GUBU, in reference to Charlie Haughey and the discovery of a murder suspect in the apartment of the Fianna Fáil Attorney General Patrick Connolly.