Murray met with members of Congress to drum up support for the Guinness-backed effort to have St. Patrick’s Day named an official holiday. He met with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and lunched in the House Dining Room with Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y. (he also caught Madeleine Albright there).

“There’s very little negativity about it,” he told Yeas & Nays. “The congresspeople are all delighted. There’s a lot of buzz up there.”

After making the rounds in our city — which he praised as one of the top Guinness-loving towns on the East Coast — Murray headed to New York, where he was to get some promotional help from MTV’s Carson Daly.

“Me and New York get on very well around St. Patrick’s Day,” he joked.

“It’s about having a friendship day, a community day,” he said. “It’s a social day, when national boundaries are dropped.”

He said the holiday has always been observed a bit differently here than in Ireland. In Ireland, it’s “never had a party atmosphere about it,” he said. “It was always a religious holiday and a day off. We’re 365 days a year Irish.”

And no, he said, there’s no truth to it when some people say Guinness is better in Ireland.