The old dear made a seating plan for her own funeral. She didn’t want ugly people in the first three pews
It’s the morning of Fionnuala’s funeral and the gaff is a scene of chaos
Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
Ross O'Carroll-Kelly columns
I get this sudden flashback to when I was six or seven and I’d hold the wheel steady for the old dear while she drove home, half-cut
Ross and Honor dress up the visitors’ room to take the old dear to her favourite restaurant for a bloody Mary with an extra shot
The old dear goes, ‘Sorcha? I don’t know anyone of that name. Is she one of your tarts, Ross?’
Ross and Brett are hosting a living funeral for Fionnuala, but she can’t remember anyone
Oisinn goes, ‘Dude, you’re saying goodbye. You do realise that? You’re saying goodbye to your old dear’
‘I hope she has one of her good days – because there’ll be some crowd at her living funeral’
Brett goes, ‘She’s close to the end, Ross. I was thinking we should arrange a living funeral for her’
The old dear is pretending she doesn’t know who Brett is, in the hopes of scaring him back to the US and as far away from yours truly as possible
I’m always telling Sorcha to tone down the southside when we come out to Bray but she never listens
Sorcha’s friend Claire has opened yet another cafe but this time with a new gimmick: all the staff are ex-offenders
‘I haven’t really been living before now,’ Brett tells his wife. ‘Ross has slept with more than 800 women’
Brett is in bed with a woman he met at the Divorcee Disco when his wife arrives at the front door
‘I’m not even a bit stressed,’ Honor goes, ‘I haven’t done a focking tap for these exams’
It’s the night before the Leaving Cert, and Sorcha wants to have a mother-daughter hort-to-hort
‘He obviously decided that he’d wasted his life, focusing on career, marriage and family goals’
Brett has arrived downstairs for breakfast with a woman named Rowena, and Sorcha is accusing me of corrupting him
‘We’ve been through so much. I slept with two of JP’s ex-girlfriends, and Christian’s actual mother and even that didn’t break us up’
Brett, my brother slash half-brother, is clearly impressed by our tales in the pub. The dude can really put the drink away – that’s one thing he inherited from the old dear
Honor goes, ‘People will talk about my speech for years to come. And that’s just in the libel courts’
My daughter is giving the valedictory at the Mount Anville graduation, and there’s a little something in it for everyone
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘My old dear doesn’t have the embarrassment gene. It’s a South Dublin thing’
So, my brother slash half-brother finds out what he missed out on by the old dear giving the dude away
Honor is staring at Brett like he’s an ATM and she’s sitting in a JCB, trying to work the levers
His gaff is the size of the Powerscourt Hotel
It’s finally here, the day that I meet my brother slash half-brother
We’re in the cor on the way to pick up Brett from the airport and Sorcha’s running me through a few talking points
‘That picture The Last Supper is weird. They’re all sitting on the same side of the table’
Everyone just stares at me in silence like people sometimes do when I’ve made them think
Honor goes, ‘I’m editing the school yearbook photographs of anyone who pissed me off’
Sorcha said we should possibly keep a closer eye on what our kids are up to after watching that TV show that everyone’s banging on about
‘Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can,’ the old dear sings. Her earrings cost more than my cor
She's sitting at the piano when I get to the nursing home to interrogate her about my half-brother
‘I most certainly do have an American accent,’ I tell my supposed half-brother. ‘I’m from south Dublin’
I’m actually shaking on the phone to Brett, like Thomond Park used to shake before 2019
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘I hate my children too. Like, how could three kids of mine turn out to be such dicks?’
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: It’s the annual Paddy’s Day walk with the goys and the kids, and so far it’s not going well
Most schools fear Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara like they would a typhoid outbreak
Honor has been caught using ChatGPT and faces being expelled, or at the very least, impeached as head girl
I’m there to Honor, ‘You’ve never been good at school. I always thought you took after me’
‘They’re clearly not yours,’ I go when she hands me her mock Leaving Cert results
‘I haven’t come here today to listen to you badmouth my mother – the axe-faced old trout’
I’m there, ‘I’m here to find out if I have a brother or sister out there?‘ He’s like, ‘All in good time. I haven’t had nearly enough to drink yet'
‘My old dear said you had a kid together. Well, I’m its half-brother. Or half-sister if it’s a girl’
I’m there to the guy, ‘Fionnuala O’Carroll. You were, like, engaged to her?‘ He looks genuinely terrified
‘Only cheat with someone who’s married. It’s the principle of mutually assured destruction’
It’s Valentine’s Day (or so she tells me), and Sorcha says she wants to spice things up
‘I strip down to my boxers. I can always drive home commando. Wouldn’t be the first time’
The old dear is in the deep end, treading water. I’m like, ‘Hey, how the hell are you?’ She goes, ‘I’m wonderful, Ross! Are you getting in?'
When Ronan was 10, I said, ‘I need to have the chat with you about sex.’ And he said, ‘What are you wanting to know, Rosser?’
On her wedding day, Tina tells me that Ro calls the day I knocked on their door ‘the luckiest day of his life’
The dude goes, ‘The famous Rosser, what?’ looking me over like I’m a buffet item gone cold
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: Ronan’s mum, Tina, has a new fiance, but here’s the big shocker – the dude plays rugby
‘You wouldn’t last one day as a girl,’ Honor tells me
As I greet her at arrivals after her trip to St Moritz, it’s clear from her face that things haven’t gone well
‘You’re both loved and feared, Honor – and I’m so proud’
As head girl of Mount Anville, Honor is leading the sixth-year skiing trip to St Moritz – and turning a tidy profit in the process
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘Why do you want to go disinterring the past, Ross?’
After his old dear tells Ross that he has an unknown sibling, Ross raises the topic with his father on New Year’s Eve
Sorcha is standing at the island with a boning knife in one hand and an espresso in the other, grinning at us like a serial killer
She’s preparing a 15-bird roast for her old pair the week before Christmas, and I can already feel the tension coming off her
The old dear goes, ‘I don’t want my vital work on the campaign Move Funderland to the Northside to die with me’
Before she falls asleep in the nursing home, she whispers a secret in my ear
‘I remember Past Ross thinking, you need to stort being nicer to Future Ross. He’s a genuinely good bloke’
I’m absolutely sure I wrapped the Christmas lights last year, and didn’t just fock them into the same box
‘Sorcha, I’m wondering is climate justice maybe a bit above Santa’s pay grade?’
Honor goes, ‘Don’t worry – it’s just our mother looking for likes from strangers again’
Sorcha goes, ‘I make no apologies for saying it, Honor. You are a danger to democracy’
Honor’s like, ‘You compared me to Donald Trump’
‘When they see the copper, the triplets think it’s about them gobbing on the cauliflower and turmeric latte crowd - which I’m not even sure is a crime’
There’s a Gorda cor bent around a lamppost and people are standing around looking shocked. Who could be responsible for this cornage?
‘We’ve no idea what caused the fire. And we’re sticking to that story’
Sorcha is flirting with the fireman while the focking house is on fire, but there’ll be focking war if she finds out about the fireworks
‘People in the crowd are staring at Honor like she’s a cold sore on debs night’
Ross O'Carroll-Kelly: JP is running the marathon and I’ve turned up to cheer him on, but Honor’s telling runners they’re out of their focking minds
‘The thought of booking a table for one at Shanahan’s on the Green got me through my prison sentence’
The old man is depressed about the closure of his favourite restaurant, and Hennessy is looking like a kid whose favourite toy is broken and he’s waiting for a grown-up to fix it for him
JP is staring at me like I’ve said I’m really enjoying his old dear’s OnlyFans account
The goys are up in orms that I used to send them chicken feathers anonymously in the post after lousy displays. But I was their captain
‘A threesome?’ Sorcha goes. ‘Why would you think I’d be into having a threesome?’
Yeah, no, I’ve badly misjudged this one. She’s actually talking about having another baby
‘Things have changed since you were at school, Sorcha,’ the old man goes. ‘We recognise that traditional media is our enemy now’
Hennessy, the old man and Honor are sitting around the island, looking as thick as thieves. Which is exactly what they are
The competition gets under way. The entrants are each told to remove a sock and put it in the pint glass in front of them
Oisinn is feeling old as he shows up to compere the UCD Iron Stomach Contest, but his exploits in the competition are still legendary on campus 23 years on
‘Your father is a moral eunuch, Ross. Those aren’t my words. That was a main finding of the Mahon tribunal’
Sorcha is making unfounded allegations that my old man and Honor are in cahoots over the closed-bids system for the school skiing trip
The porty invitations were returned with the words, ‘Honor O’Carroll-Kelly? Are you focking kidding me?’
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: I’ve possibly spoiled our daughter over the years, having decided very early on to give her absolutely everything she wants out of fear of the hurtful things she might say to me
A lot of things are storting to make sense, including the violin case Leo carries around with him like a Chicago gangster
Leo’s teacher stares at me silently. She’s clearly never met a father like me before
‘Our daughter is nothing like Donald Trump, Sorcha – aport from the tan and the vengefulness’
Teenagers are a mystery. You might as well ask why it gets dork at night. Nobody knows
Don’t Look Back in Ongar: Ross O’Carroll-Kelly says an emotional, unexpectedly touching farewell
The plot is farcical on the surface, but the absurdity of Ross’s life cloaks the relatable beneath
Sorcha knows my game. She can read me like the instructions on an airplane vomit bag
She goes, ‘Are you actually trying to talk me out of taking you back?’
It’s a miracle Sorcha’s old man has never killed me, though he did buy me a plot in Shanganagh Cemetery for my 40th
The kitchen door opens and in they come, Sorcha’s old pair, the two of them with faces as long as an M50 tailback
‘Are you aware that your children are Protestants now?’
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: At a borbecue in Christian’s gaff the cat is thrown out of the bag ... and now I’m in deep merde
How do you become a Protestant? ‘You have to drink the blood of a Sussex chicken on Dalkey Island under a gibbous moon’
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: The vicar-slash-reverend-slash-whatever is joking about that – but not about the baptism part
Honor has picked a theme for her year as Mount Anville head girl: ‘Vengeance’
My daughter has failed to turn up for community service. ‘Hennessy can’t get you out of every legal scrape,’ I say, an out-and-out lie
‘Protestants are not that much different from us. I mean, they’re definitely less craic, but they get sh*t done’
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: I’m reading the epistle from St Paul to – randomly – the Ephesians, when Christian tells me his ex wants to get back together
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