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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
‘I haven’t come here today to listen to you badmouth my mother – the axe-faced old trout'
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Conor Hession sits on the terrace, nursing a vodka lorge enough to put a grizzly bear to sleep. He’s like, “She was quite the most conniving, the most calculating, the most manipulative person I’ve ever met. And completely devoid of human feeling, of course.”
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‘It’s all right for you,’ Honor goes. ‘You can have any woman you want’
06:09|The front door slams and the entire orangerie – built without planning permission at the height of the Celtic Tiger – shakes to its foundations. Sorcha’s eyes meet mine. Ten seconds later we hear Honor’s bedroom door slam too and we both silently wonder whether the structure will stay standing for what’s left of our daughter’s teenage years.‘I don’t like who my son has become since he started playing rugby. He’s full of himself’
06:29|The room is absolutely rammers and I’m listening outside the door as various randomers talk s, h, one, t, about me and my famous coaching methods.‘There’s no such thing as academic-sporting balance. Not in schools that are serious about being winners’
06:18|There’s a meeting. That’s the big news of the day. I’m like, “What kind of a meeting?” And Fionn goes, “Ross, you’re not invited.”This is my son now – north Dublin’s leading wine snob
06:55|“Here, Rosser,” Ronan goes, pouring me a lorge glass of red, “get yisser laughing gear around that.”‘I’m not going to call you Mister anything,’ I tell the deputy principal, and the boys all stort sniggering
06:40|So – yeah, no – the kids are all standing around me in a semi-circle and they’re, like, hanging on my every word. And I’m in my absolute element, of course, going, “Today, I’m going to teach you guys a thing or two about passing this beautiful object,” showing them a rugby ball. “Now, can anyone here name some types of passes that we might use in rugby?”Honor’s date for the debs is a looker. She clearly takes after her old man in that regord
06:46|Sorcha is up to pretty much 90. It’s the night of Honor’s debs and we’re all waiting for her date, Iarlaith – yeah, no, a girl – to arrive. Sorcha’s old pair are here, as well as my old man, then 10 or 11 of Sorcha’s friends and half the Vico Road.Ronan pours the wine and goes, ‘It’s a surprising little number with notes of candyfloss, anchovies and balsawood’
07:02|The street in front of the restaurant is absolutely rammers and I spot quite a few familiar faces – we’re talking former government ministers, we’re talking former High Court judges, we’re talking two or three former rugby internationals and one or two heads from RTÉ.‘You were mugged in Dalkey? Things like that don’t happen there’
06:02|Sorcha lets out a scream when she sees me. It reminds me of the time during the recession when her BT loyalty cord was downgraded from Platinum to Electrum. It’s, like, high-pitched and – yeah, no – blood-curdling?‘I didn’t do a tap in school and yet life worked out pretty well for me’
06:05|This is me in my absolute element. I’m there, “Rugby is a sport in which you travel forwards by going backwards, in which to succeed is to ‘try’ and in which the ball is shaped with the actual intention of breaking your hort.”