Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

So I’m standing with Honor at the junction of Foster Avenue and the N11 and we’re watching people pass us by with agony, I don’t know, etched all over their faces? Yeah, no, JP is running the Dublin City Marathon and I’ve turned up to cheer him on, as well as – obviously – the rest of the field.

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Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara rings me. Which is a rare enough occurrence. On the four, maybe five, occasions it’s happened, it’s been to ask me to retrieve the Go Bag that he insists on storing in our attic and to drive him to Dublin Airport.

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JP says Chloe is writing a novel based on her college days. He’s like, “She’s hoping to do for DBS what Sally Rooney did for Trinity.”

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Sorcha asks if the beef is from a regenerative form and I end up having to look away. Seriously, you can’t bring her anywhere.

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Hennessy, the old man and Honor are sitting around the island, looking as thick as thieves. Which is exactly what they are.

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Driving through the gates of University College Dublin (UCD) brings back one or two memories. Not that I spent much time in the place when I did the Sports Man Dip course back in the day.

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So we’re in Morton’s of Ranelagh, doing the big shop, when we run into Rebecca Leahy, the old dear of Honor’s classmate Diva Leahy. Actually, she and Sorcha both reach for the last punnet of kumquats in the shop and I watch Sorcha’s body shape change to fight mode until Rebecca goes, “Sorcha! How are you? Oh my God, look at you! You must weigh nothing!”

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I‘ve always worried about Honor – from the time she emerged from her mother’s womb and gave a “fock you” look to the midwife who slapped her orse.

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Leo’s music teacher, Mrs Gordon, says that Leo has a genuine gift for music and I’m thinking that I need this like Ranelagh needs more launderettes with performance spaces.

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It’s, like, the first day back at school for Honor and she eats her muesli with the quiet, steely-eyed intensity of me doing my traditional 500 sit-ups on the first morning of the Six Nations Championship.

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It’s true what they say – travel really does broaden the mind. And even though I’ve never seen the point of having loads of knowledge in my head when pretty much everything is available on the internet, you can still end up learning things when you go abroad whether you like it or not.

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Sorcha says this is the worst thing I’ve ever done to her. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done to her. It’s not even in the top 10. But I don’t think it’s going to help my case if I stort running through some of my greatest hits.

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So — yeah, no — Oisínn has landed himself an unbelievably cushy job. As a matter of fact, I have to ask him to repeat himself because I presumeI’ve, like, misheard him?

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Alice says that was a very interesting reading by me the other morning. She says she’s never heard the story of the Prodigal Son told in that way before.

I’m there, “You mean all the different voices?”

She goes, “The voices, yes – but also the sound effects.”

I’m there, “I wanted to, you know, put a bit of welly into it for the audience. I was a bit of a showman in my rugby days. I think what we’re finding out is that it’s a quality that never really leaves you,” and I give her a big, leathery wink....

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I’ve never been one of those parents. You know the kind I’m talking about. Their kid does a poo for the first time sitting on a toilet and they’re taking out an ad in The Irish Times to announce the news. It’s genuinely rare that I find myself in a position to say – like I did on Friday – that I’m proud of one of my children. Honor has now completed exactly half of her community service hours for vandalising hundreds of SUVs across south Dublin. I know it’s a low bor that I’ve set for her, but here we are.

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I’m not usually one of those, what I like to call Flat White Wankers, but that’s what I’m drinking this morning, sitting outside the Happy Out Café on the seafront in Dún Laoghaire.

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Leo is the first of us to get restless. He goes, “Oh my God, this is so boring!” and this is in the middle of the Protestant equivalent of, like, Mass?

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If getting Brian, Johnny and Leo into a new school means changing my religion and getting up on Sunday mornings, then I’ll do it

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Christian is sitting at our usual table in 3fe on Sussex Terrace and I can tell instantly that something is up. When you’ve played ten to someone’s twelve, you can have no secrets from each other. Fact of rugby, fact of life.

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So I’m in the cor with Sorcha and we’re on the way to Clonskeagh to collect Brian, Johnny and Leo from school. Yeah, no, they’re finishing up today and we’re bringing them out for lunch to say fair focks to them for going another year without being expelled. Like most south Dublin parents, we set a very low bor for our children.

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It’s the old Jonny Bell that hits me first – a combination of bacon, cheese and Tom Ford Portofino that comes wafting up the stairs and under the bedroom door looking for me.

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So – yeah, no – I’m mowing the back gorden with my top off again, portly to showcase the work I’ve been doing in the gym since the stort of January, and portly to see how long it takes for it to become an item of discussion on the Dalkey Open Forum

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The school concert hall is absolutely rammers this afternoon. We’re talking, like, 1,000 students and parents crammed between the walls to hear the result of the election for Mount Anville Head Girl for 2024-2025 and I haven’t seen Honor looking so pleased with herself since the time she swapped her old dear’s hair conditioning mask for Veet.

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It’s Friday afternoon in London, the day before the European Champions Cup final. We’ve spent the last three hours talking about our favourite memories from our years following Leinster.

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So I’m driving along Vico Road – one of the bits of the road where two cors can barely pass – when I notice a black SUV coming towards me at speed...

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“Oh my God,” Sorcha goes, “what is she doing?” Yeah, no, she’s talking about Honor, who’s smiling so hord that it looks like someone has jammed a coat hanger in her mouth sideways.

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So it’s, like, Friday night and I’m having the usual pints with the goys in The Bridge. Dave Kearney asks how we’re getting on with a big smirk on his face. We’re all, like, crowded around my phone.

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The old man steps into the kitchen with a Montecristo the size of a rolled-up yoga mat burning between his fat fingers. Sorcha storts coughing – her passive-aggressive way of telling him that we don’t allow smoking in this house – but he just ignores her, like he did when she tried to introduce a similar rule about shoes.

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How quickly the years go by. That’s what I’m thinking as I’m taking the right turn at Donnybrook Bus Depot.

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I had my nightmare again last night, the one where I have a one-night stand with Taylor Swift and then I ghost the girl and she ends up writing 15 or 16 songs about me and they’re on the radio constantly. And – yeah, no – I woke up screaming.

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Sorcha is upset. I totally get that? But I haven’t seen her over-react like this since I ate a tin of macadamias from the hotel mini-bor on a weekend city break in Ljubljana.

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Réaltín smiles. Which might well be a first for her. Yeah, no, we’re in Baldoyle of all places, playing Thor Frimann and Lisa Murray – the reigning champions – in the semi-finals of the mixed doubles at the Leinster Padel Championships. It’s, like, one set apiece and we’re winning 5-4 in the third.

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I tell Honor that I’m proud of her.

I’m there, “Obviously, I don’t mean that literally?” because all she’s actually done is spend her Paddy’s Day picking litter up off the beach in Curracloe as port of her community service. “I’m proud of the way you’re, like, owning what you did?”

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I’m the first to arrive. I order a pint of the obvious and I do a quick circuit of the place. There’s no one here yet, even though I said eight o’clock and it’s quarter-past already. Fr Fehily wouldn’t have put up with that. What was it he used to say? Better three hours too early than a minute too late?

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I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.

“Ross?” the dude goes, pulling a face at me across the net. “Ross O’Carroll-Kelly?”

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Sorcha asks me straight out if I’m having an affair.

I’m like, “Why would you even think that?”

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I haven’t seen Honor look this angry since the time she spear-tackled a woman who tried to cheat her out of first place in the sack race at the Castle Pork Dalkey Open Sports Day.

She’s like, “What ... the... fock?”

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Sorcha says she’s sorry and I’m there, “Hey, it’s cool,” even though I’ve no idea what she’s even apologising for?

She goes, “Oh my God, I was such an idiot.”

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“If some wooden comes at you with a shank,” Ronan goes, “grab them be the wrist and twist it, then hit them at the base of the nose with the heel of yisser hand, driving upwards. Upwards – that’s it."

irishtimes.com

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So I’m shaking hands with Hugh and Marie Atcheson after our latest victory in the Leinster Padel Championships and the famous Réaltín – as in, like, my mixed doublesportner? – is just, like, glowering at me.

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Honor pretends to sneeze, but instead of ‘achoo!’ she goes ‘fock you!’ to the prosecution barrister

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So Honor is lying on her bed, her nose stuck in her phone, presumably trolling people on social media, when I tell her that Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara is here to talk about her case.

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Réaltín and I have an intuitive understanding that only great lovers, or an out-half and his inside-centre, could fully understand

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Sorcha has made an alarming discovery during her annual New Year’s Day clear-out.

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Leopardstown on Stephen Zuzz Day is a tradition for the O’Carroll-Kelly men

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It’s three days before the big day and Cornelscourt is like the Battle of the Bastards scene from Game of Thrones

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Sorcha wants to make our own Christmas tree out of books this year. I think she’s been at the eggnog

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We’re off to give my godson Ross Junior his Christmas present, but his old dear will already be in a fouler at the thought of me coming.

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We’re doing the usual volunteering at the annual Christmas fete and this year we’ve been put on toilet-cleaning duties as a punishment

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“If we do this,” she goes, “my husband can’t find out about it. Under anycircumstances?”

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Or is Sorcha standing at the end of the bed, wearing the Tory Burch tennis whites she bought last summer to watch Wimbledon?

She’s like, “Are you ready?”

“Ready?” I go. “In termsof?”

Read Ross O'Carroll-Kelly at irishtimes.com/podcasts/ross-ocarroll-kelly/.

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It’s the Killiney and Dalkey Combined Christmas Fete meeting, and we’re about as welcome as a snot-nosed kid in a bridal shop

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“Sur! Prise!” we all go.

But the old man – standing at the bottom of the stairs in Shanahan’s on the Green – barely raises a smile.

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I’m there, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

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It’s a sad day. Everyone agrees. Not as sad – hand on hort – as Ireland losing to the All Blacks last weekend.

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So we’re in Corcoran’s on the famous Boulevord de Clichy – we’re talking me, Christian, JP, Oisinn and Fionn – and I’m telling the goys why I think we’ll beat the All Blacks on Saturday and why I think it won’t even be close? But they only want one question answered.

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I’m there, “I’d be in Paris now if things had been different,” and when I say different, I mean if my daughter hadn’t been chorged with 277 counts of criminal damage.

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I’ve never seen Sorcha so upset? And given my record as a husband, that’s a genuine achievement. She’s literally shaking with rage and whatever else is bubbling inside her, which is the reason I’m staying on the other side of the kitchen island.

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I love a crowd. Yeah, no, that’s as true of me now as it was back in my days as the best number 10 in the history of Irish schools rugby and the goy that every girl wanted to be with. I love the feeling of people staring at me with their gobs open in just, like, wonder.

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So I wake up in the hotel in Nantes to find a letter on my bedside table, which turns out to be from – yeah, no – my old man?

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The old man is as excited as I’ve seen him since the members of Elm Pork Golf Club voted to name the lateral water hazard on the 12th hole “the Chorles River”. It’s, like, Friday night – the night before Ireland play Romania in the opening match of the Rugby World Cup – and I’m sitting in The Connemora in Bordeaux, listening to him phone pretty much everyone he’s ever known in his entire life to tell them his so-called news.

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Sorcha is tense. Yeah, no, for her, the first day back after the school holidays is like the first day of the Six Nations for me. In other words, a matter of life and death.

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The old man looks surprisingly well for a man who’s been banged up for, like, a week and a bit. I’m sitting in the visiting room when he walks in and he’s, like, deep in conversation with another, I want to say, inmate? It’s a good, like, five minutes before he saunters over to where I’m sitting...

irishtimes.com/author/ross-ocarroll-kelly/

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I’m no stranger to seeing my old man standing in the dock accused of serious crimes – he’s Chorles O’Carrroll-Kelly, for fock’s sake – but I never thought I’d see him in court, aged seventy-whatever-he-is, chorged with the illegal possession of a fireorm.

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This is the final exclusive excerpt from Camino Royale, the new Ross O’Carroll-Kelly novel out today Thursday, August 17th.

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This is the second of three exclusive excerpts from Camino Royale, the new Ross O’Carroll-Kelly novel out this Thursday, August 17th 2023.

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This is the first of three exclusive excerpts from Camino Royale, the new Ross O’Carroll Kelly novel out this Thursday, August 17th 2023.

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Sorcha is sitting at the kitchen island with her laptop open and a pleased-with-herself smile that I recognise from the Mount Anville Class of 1998 graduation photograph on her bedside table.

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So – yeah, no – we’re out in the old man’s boat in the middle of Dublin literally Bay, we’re talking me, the old man and Hennessy, and like the old man says, it’s just like old times.

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So it’s, like, ten o’clock on a Friday night and Ronan’s at the front door. He goes, “How are you fixed for the Oddle Arelint football fidal on Suddendee, Rosser?”

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Sorcha smiles warmly at me – an event so rare that it’s actually worth mentioning. “I’m so proud of our daughter,” she goes. “She’s turning into a wonderful young woman.”

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The old man rings me at, like, two o’clock in the afternoon and goes, “Ross! You’re not busy, are you?”

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“Oh my God,” Sorcha goes, “they’ve struck again!”

I’m there, “What are you talking about? As in, like, what the fock?”

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So – yeah, no – we’re at the recycling centre with a boot full of empty cans and bottles from a recent borbecue to celebrate Sorcha’s 43rd birthday and me having nine penalty points wiped from my driving licence on appeal.

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I’m standing outside the famous Galloper on the Stillorgan dualler when Ronan rocks up. He’s as surprised to see me as I am to see him?

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I have to confess to getting a bit carried away, and I stort shouting things like, ‘Eat it up, you pack of losers!’ at the other moms and dads

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Honor has been walking around under a bit of a cloud ever since a dude by the name of Jonah – Wesley College, before you ask – friend-zoned her.

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There’s no mystery as to why they chose Kielty for the Late Late. He’s not 76 years old. His bodily organs didn’t come from a black morket doctor in Bogotá

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The old man is on the phone, shouting at me in his usual all-caps voice.

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So we’re at a dinner in the famous Rochestown Lodge in – let’s be honest here – Sallynoggin, to raise money for the Seapoint Rugby Club U-8s Trip to Biarritz: Leave No Child Behind.

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Honor goes, ‘It’s because I’m not good-looking.’ I’m there, ‘Looks aren’t important, Honor,’ and I’ve no idea where I’m pulling these lines from.

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He’s, like, standing right in front of the gaff, staring at his phone. I throw open the front door and I’m like, “Whatever you’re selling, fock off before I call the Feds,” which would be pretty much por for the course in these ports?

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People talk about polyamory like it’s a new thing. I’ve been polyamorous since the late 1990s. It’s just that I’ve never told my wife.

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I know they say it’s not good for your health but my relationship with Honor has never been better

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She has so much filler in her face that she looks like she’s had herself embalmed to save us the trouble when she finally pops it.

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If everybody is doing something how bad can it be, Ross thinks, as he submits to peer pressure from his daughter and discovers vaping

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The old dear rings me and asks me to meet her for Sunday lunch in some, I don’t know, random Italian restaurant in Ranelagh.

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The final whistle blows and I burst into tears. The greatest day of my life? It’s definitely up there. People bang on about the birth of their children, but children let you down. This Ireland team never do?

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The big Castlerock College versus Newpork Comprehensive showdown has arrived

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When his ‘back me or sack me’ move backfires, Ross is left in a mild depression having lost his job as the coach of Castlerock College girls rugby team.

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The Rossmeister General finds out about the ‘deleterious effect’ rugby is having on academic and behavioural standards among girls at school

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Only the crookedest lawyer in Ireland can get me out of this contract I accidentally signed with a modelling agency

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It’s, like, Monday morning and I’ve taken the boys for a haircut – or, to be more, I don’t know, pacific, I’ve dumped them in the borber’s while me and Honor are sitting in the coffee shop next door.

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So – yeah, no – the girls have been working unbelievably hord in training, which is why I’ve arranged a little surprise for them. I tell them to meet me in the school cor pork, where the bus is already waiting with the engine idling.

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“Oh my God,” Honor goes, “you’re not actually wearing that, are you?”

And by that she means my black, Canterbury elite protection body ormour vest.

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I go, “Twas the week before Sixmas, and all through the class, nothing was stirring, not even a mouse!”

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So – yeah, no – I’m in Cinnamon in Monkstown, getting all excited about Sixmas, which is only, like, two weeks away now. I’m writing out my storting 15 for the match against Wales into the famous Big Book when I notice a woman staring at me over the top of her Watermelon Shhuga.

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They stagger out onto the pitch in two or three different huddles, their orms folded against the cold of a horrible January morning.

I’m there, “Welcome back, ladies! Hope you had a good Christmas!” and they’re all, like, hating on me for my – yeah, no – cheeriness?

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No less a judge than the great Jerry Flannery once described me as “one of Ireland’s greatest thinkers” – and even though it was in the course of a Charity Roast in the Sin Bin in Limerick, I think his point still stands...

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