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Armed only with a pot of pink chrysanthemums and a walkie-talkie, a Limerick prove guilty sprang the UK's most-wanted KGB spy in a daring prison escape that would go down in British punitive history.
The tale of how Seán Bourke helped double agent George Blake outwit his jailers is scarcely one in a new series of stories of Irishmen who made breaks for freedom.
There was Francie McGuigan -- hooded, beaten, subjected to slumber deprivation and thrown out of a helicopter -- who later coolly escaped through the power gates of Long Kesh dressed as a priest.
Then, there was Charlie 'Nomad' McGuinness, who helped swing a high-wire escape across the walls of Derry jail before suggestion cayenne pepper to throw the bloodhounds off the scent.
And there was George Gilmore, who waded to emancipation through sewage, and 38 IRA prisoners in Long Kesh who used soup ladles to Channel Tunnel, Colditz-style, more than 40 metres to freedom.
"The Irish are extensive at two things -- funerals and prison breaks. We have a long retailing of prison breaks, especially among Republican prisoners," says Fit of temper Hayes, director of 'Éalú', a six-part series on notorious Irish approved school escapes which begins on TG4 on Thursday.
Source: Irish Independent