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

‘There’s a video of me doing the rounds on this famous Tick Tocks dot com’

Réaltín really is the most terrifying person I’ve ever met 

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.

‘You should be ashamed of yourselves! We’re old enough to be your parents and we’ve taken you to three sets!’

‘Don’t you dare tell me that I’m over-reacting!’ she goes. ‘Don’t you dare try to gaslight me!’

Sorcha is upset. I totally&nbsp;get&nbsp;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.

‘If you play that match, Ross, our marriage is over’

 Seriously, the Leinster Padel Championships make the Hunger Games look like Sports Day in Newpork Comprehensive

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.

‘You are not having a hort attack! I’m not allowing it!’

The gorda is about to do me for speeding, but some things are more important than avoiding a driving ban

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?”

‘I didn’t play football for Rathnew. I didn’t play football for anyone. I resent the allegation’

 On Sunday, it will be 25 years to the day since I led Castlerock College to victory, but where are the goys?

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?

Three European Cups, three Six Nations, one Grand Slam – but never winning a Leinster Schools Senior Cup clearly still rankles Heaslip

I’m playing in the quarter-finals of the Leinster Padel Championship with Réaltín when I feel suddenly hot and, I dunno, jerky

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?”

‘Don’t tell me I don’t know Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. You bullied me for most of secondary school’

Yes, I’m wearing Lynx Africa, not to mask the smell of adultery, but that of B.O. - unbelievable as that obviously is

Sorcha asks me straight out if I’m having an affair. I’m like, “Why would you even think that?”

‘I haven’t cheated on you in, like, 10 years, though – well, let’s just say a long time’

After less than 60 seconds of this, she stops and goes, ‘I’m ringing Ronan’

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?”

Honor rubs at the graffiti with a dainty, circular motion, like she’s applying foundation to the face of an elderly loved one

The weekly Ross O'Carroll-Kelly column in audio, read by Paul Howard.

The weekly Ross o'Carroll-Kelly column in audio, read by Paul Howard.

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

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