Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

“What the fock?” Oisinn goes. “Are you serious?”I’m there, “Oh, I’m serious all right. I’m as serious as – well, you know what.”He goes, “A living funeral? Where did this idea even come from?"

“He must have been in a fight last night,” Sorcha goes.And – yeah, no – she’s talking about my brother slash half-brother, Brett.I’m there, “Why do you say he was in a fight?”And she goes, “Oh my God, didn’t you see the bruises on his neck when he came home this morning?”Seriously, sometimes it’s like she was never young at all. 

So it’s, like, ridiculous o’clock on a Saturday morning – we’re talking nine, ten, something like that – and I hear a ring on the front doorbell, followed, a short time later, by the sound of a woman’s voice going, “Is this the home of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly?”irishtimes.com

Sorcha thinks we should maybe check on Honor and there’s an air of definite excitement in her voice when she says it? Yeah, no, it’s the night before the stort of the Leaving Cert and my wife is absolutely determined that this should be one of those mother-daughter moments...

Sorcha tells me that I need to do something and obviously, I’m like, “Er – as in?”Yeah, no, Angela – the wife of my brother slash half-brother – has been on the phone from the States and Sorcha is running out of excuses....

“So this dude here,” Oisinn goes – and he means me, “he tucks the ball under his orm, beats five players and crosses the try-line under the posts. But he doesn’t ground the ball there. No, he puts it down in the corner to make the conversion horder for himself"...

My daughter is giving the valedictory at the Mount Anville graduation, and there’s a little something in it for everyone

So – yeah, no – the old dear is in the swimming pool when we rock up to the nursing home, doing her – I don’t know – hydrotherapy exercises? She’s dancing to Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like a Woman! while holding a beach ball and she has singlehandedly cured me of my fetish for women in wet swimwear.