Ross O'Carroll-Kelly @ The Irish Times: Recent Episodes
The Irish Times
Described by George Hook as the greatest Irish player never to make it and described by everyone else who knows him as a shallow, self-obsessed idiot.
Everybody knows about the Dalkey Lobster Festival. It’s coming up in, like, two weeks’ time, and Sorcha is already practising her walk and wave for the Parade of Lobster Queens Past, wearing the sash and crown that she’s held onto ever since her victory in 2008, at the stort of the crash, on a platform of, I want to say, hope?
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All of Ronan’s old mates are there. We’re talking Buckets of Blood. We’re talking Stacks of Money. We’re talking Nudger. We’re talking Gull. It’s actually Stacks of Money who sidles up to me as I’m watching Ronan across the room, chatting to Paul Reynolds from RTÉ.
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The old man looks wretched. I say it to him as well. I’m like, “You look focking wretched – worse than usual"
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“The fock is going on here?” I go. Because – yeah, no – I’ve arrived home to find my wife, my four sons and my in-laws sitting in front of the TV watching, quite literally, a soccer match? My reaction is basically the same as it would be if I arrived home to find Sorcha in bed with Russell Crowe.
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So me and Ronan swing out to – believe it or not – Bray, just to see how my old man is getting on. I’ve a bet with him that he won’t last the summer living out there and I like to check on my investment from time to time.
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I absolutely despise Christian’s wife, Lauren. I say it as well. Not to her face obviously. Sorcha goes, “Ross, you shouldn’t despise anyone.” This coming from the girl who refuses to watch anything with Jake Gyllenhaal in it because he broke Taylor Swift’s hort a life sentence ago.
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So the latest “thing” in our house is the Swedish death clean. For those of you who aren’t married to Sorcha Lalor, this is a decluttering method that’s meant to spare your loved ones the trouble of sorting through your shit after you’ve dropped the mic.
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The old man says he thinks he might not live long enough to see Leinster win the European Cup again. I tell him I’m only 46 years old and I’m storting to feel the same way.
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Sorcha says she’s – oh my God – so excited about Saturday and I tell her I am too. She goes, “These are the moments, aren’t they?” Which is random because she’s hasn’t shown the slightest flicker of interest in rugby since she thought Rob Kearney gave her a smile and a wave at Taste of Dublin the year before the pandemic and I didn’t have the hort to tell her that he was smiling and waving at me.
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So what do you think? Yeah, no, Nicola – as in, like, Honor’s girlfriend – is showing me a watch that she bought from, like, Tiffany of all places? It must be, like, a grand’s worth.
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The old man asks me if I’ve been boning up on my Spanish ahead of the trip to Bilbao. I’m like, “Is that where Bilbao is? In Spain?” I honestly think I learned more from rugby than I ever did at school.
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So I’m in the gym and I’m bench-pressing, I don’t know, something ridiculous, when all of a sudden there’s someone standing over me and – yeah, no – they’re, like, talking to me? I take out the old AirPods and sit up and it ends up being Nicola, as in, like, Honor’s new – in fairness – girlfriend.
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The old man is sitting in the corner of what was once Shanahan’s on the Green, sucking on a Cohiba the size of a Daihatsu exhaust.
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Sorcha asks me how I’m feeling and I tell her I’m in scintillating form – especially after the win over Sale yesterday. I’m half-thinking of doing my joke about having a semi to look forward to – but then I think better of it.
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“Come in,” she goes.
This is Bernie I’m quoting – word for word, by the way – as in, like, Bernie the mother of Claire from, like, Bray of all places?
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“Stop!” Sorcha goes. Yeah, no, we’re driving through Donnybrook at the time. I generally slow down anyway as we’re passing the spot where Kielys once stood, just to make the sign of the cross on myself. Except Sorcha is looking past me at the other side of the road?
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The airport is absolutely rammers and I’m in – it has to be said – scintillating form, so much so that Sorcha actually remorks on it.
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I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this is actually happening? Yeah, no, you always try to think about worst case scenarios in your head – just so you have a plan in case something goes wrong – but this is beyond my, literally, worst nightmares.
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This is me in my – yeah, no – absolute happy place. Castlerock College jersey with the collar popped. Rugby Tactics Book under my orm. The match against Blackrock College is just four days away and I have a plan to beat them.
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So it’s, like, 11 o’clock on Sunday morning and I’m hord at work – albeit still in bed – making notes in my famous Rugby Tactics Book. Sorcha walks into the room and goes, “Get dressed, Ross. We’re going out for lunch.”
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“Kicker!” the old man has the actual nerve to go. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”
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Sorcha says this is the worst thing I’ve ever done. And it’s far from it. I could give her a list of 50 things, except I doubt if it would help my cause.
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There’s no sugar-coating this one. We’ve been taken to the literally cleaners today. Yeah, no, beaten 45-10 by – and there’s easy way of saying this – Wesley College, the same Wesley College who haven’t won a Leinster Schools Senior Cup since the world was in pretty much black and white.
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I’m like, “A what?” And Honor goes, “A double date. It’s cute.” I’m there, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Claire from Bray of all places–”
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Joy Felton – yeah, no, one of our neighbours – is standing at the front gates as I swing the cor into the driveway and she nearly ends up with the BMW logo imprinted backwards across her, I want to say, midriff?
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A Prius pulls up at the next pump, just as I’m imagining what topics my pep talk would touch on, and suddenly I hear the driver say my name. She’s like, “Ross!”
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So – yeah, no – I’m in the staffroom and I’m chatting to one or two teachers about the Leinster match against La Rochelle: Miss Casey, who teaches something-or-other, and Miss Nealon, who teaches, I don’t know, something else.
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I’m packing away the last of the Christmas bits and – yeah, no – I’m throwing out the Advent calendar that someone sent me obviously as a joke. It’s a Blackrock College Advent calendar – which is the same as a regular Advent calendar, except that your daddy opens all of the doors for you!
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“Okay,” I go, “today we’re going to work on one or two moves from this sacred text,” and I show the players my famous Rugby Tactics Book.
There are no gasps from the kids, even though there are a lot of rugby coaches out there who would kill to get their hands on it.
Yeah, no, they all just roll their eyes, probably pissed off at being asked to train in Herbert Pork on New Year’s Day....
irishtimes.com
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Sorcha’s old dear has a scream on her like Wayne Bornes’s whistle. Sorcha’s old man is like, “What in the name of God?” and we all rush into the living room – we’re talking me, Sorcha and, like I said, her old man – to see her standing there with the famous Elf on the Shelf in her hand.
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“Mee, meh, mah, moh, moo,” Sorcha goes – and not for the first time since we left Dublin. “Mee, meh, mah, moh, moo.” And I’m there, “Don’t worry – I’ll, em, let you know when that gets annoying.” She goes, “I’m doing my vocal exercises, Ross. This is a huge night for us.”
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The old man says he doesn’t think he’ll bother with Christmas this year – “what with everything”. By which he means, what with it being the first one since the old dear – yeah, no – pegged it. Sorcha goes, “Oh my God, Chorles, Fionnuala was such a Christmas person. She’d want you to celebrate it.”
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Sorcha is in her – literally? – element. She goes, “This is gorgeous, isn’t it?” This being the humungous Christmas morket in – believe it or not – Belfast. Honor’s there, “I still don’t understand what we’re even doing here?” And Sorcha’s like, “Honor, we may end up living in a united Ireland one day. And what do we know about our brothers and sisters from the North?” “They’re very angry,” Johnny goes.
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Ronan shows up at the front door wearing a Santa hat and a big smile. I’m there, “What are you, drunk?” because I’m aware that the Ireland soccer team had some kind of result at the weekend.
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Things have been a bit – yeah, no – strained between Christian and me ever since he got back with his ex-wife, Lauren. I told him straight out that he was Hertz Car Rental even thinking about going there again. But he asked her to marry him irregordless and then, in the first flush of their rediscovered love, she asked him – “tell me honestly, I won’t be angry” – what his friends thought of them getting hitched again and the dude snitched on me like a parrot with a megaphone.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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“Here, Rosser,” Ronan goes, pouring me a lorge glass of red, “get yisser laughing gear around that.”
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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?”
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.”
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Sorcha says she’s delighted for my old man. Yeah, no, as you may or may not have read in the pages of this paper, he and Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara have bought Shanahan’s on the Green and are planning to reopen it in, like, two weeks’ time.
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It’s finally here. A day I’ve dreamt about for, like, 12 years. Brian, Johnny and Leo are storting school in Castlerock College, where their old man famously went and his old man before him.
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“I remember when you got your Leaving Cert results,” Sorcha’s old man goes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of you, Dorling.”
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So – yeah, no – we’re in the cor, on the way to the airport, to collect Honor, who’s coming home from her Leaving Cert holiday in, believe it or not, Magaluf.
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So I’m walking around town with Ronan and – yeah, no – we’re playing a game we used to play when he was, like, eight years old: when we pass a shop or restaurant, he tells me whether it’s a real business or a money-laundering front.
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Sorcha tells Honor that she’s leaving it very late.
Honor’s like, “What are you talking about?”
And Sorcha goes, “I’m talking about the debs, Honor.”
Honor’s there, “Not this again,” and she’s right because her old is like a dog with a chew toy.
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Sorcha says I can’t wear those.
And I’m like, “My Dubes? What’s wrong with my Dubes?”
She goes, “You can’t wear Dubes to a funeral, Ross. Put a pair of actual shoes on.”
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“Okay,” the old man goes, “here’s another one you, Kicker!” because – yeah, no – he’s written a book of his Fifty Years of Letters to The Irish Times, which Honor has helped pull together for him. “Listen to this one! Dear Madam. Whilst sorting through the vegetable tower in the kitchen the other morning, I discovered an oval-shaped tuber with a pale yellow flesh. Is this a record?”
No one laughs – except him, of course?
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The room is absolutely rammers and through the door I spot so many faces from the past. We’re talking Angela and Dermot from the campaign to move Funderland to the northside. We’re talking Ida and Clem from the campaign to stop the Luas from coming to Foxrock. We’re talking Lucy and Aednat from the campaign to stop poor people being allowed into the National Gallery.
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“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?"
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“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.
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I’m like, “Bray?”
And Sorcha’s there, “Yes, Ross – Bray!”
I’m like, “But why do we have to go to Bray?” sounding like a spoiled child – in other words, one of ours.
irishtimes.com
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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
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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...
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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....
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“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"...
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My daughter is giving the valedictory at the Mount Anville graduation, and there’s a little something in it for everyone
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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.
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Brett asks me what she was like when she was younger. I’m like, “Who?” He goes, “Our mother.” And it’s random because I’ve never thought of the old dear ever being – like he said – young.
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So – yeah, no – I grab a stick of Heinemite from the fridge and I ask Sorcha, “Who’s the kid in the bow tie?” The reason I ask is because I don’t trust kids in bow ties. I’m on the record as saying that putting a bow tie on any human being turns him straight away into an insufferable dickhead. We’re talking nightclub bouncers. We’re talking wine waiters. We’re talking clowns.
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Honor is sitting at her computer doing fock knows what? Although I’d be shocked if it was homework. I’m there, “Honor, I need you to brace yourself – for some news.”
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She’s sitting in the window of the, whatever you want to call it, nursing home, playing the piano – badly, I might add – and I get a sudden flashback to my childhood. This is what she did whenever we had, like, visitors coming to the gaff.
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For, like, 30 seconds, I’m as quiet as Thomond Pork since 2019 and the dude ends up having to repeat himself.
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So it’s, like, Paddy’s Day and me and the goys have arranged to go for our usual walk on Killiney Hill with the kids. They’re already waiting for us in the cor pork – we’re talking JP with little Isa, we’re talking Fionn with Hillary, we’re talking Christian with Ross Junior and Oliver and we’re talking Oisinn with little Paavo.
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Honor says she’s not worried. She says she couldn’t give two focks. But Sorcha’s like, “Well, you’d better give two focks. This is a serious matter. A head girl has never been expelled, Honor – not in the 170-year history of this school.”
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“The fock is this?” I go. Yeah, no, I’m doing the morning school run, crawling up Trees Road in a procession of all-terrain vehicles, like an invading ormy, when Honor hands me a piece of paper. She goes, “It’s, like, my results – from, like, my mocks?
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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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Sorcha rings me and there’s an air of, like, panic in her voice? She goes, “Ross, where are you?” Yeah, no, we’re in Portugal for midterm – along with the rest of south Dublin – and I’m on the road from Quinta do Lago to Vilamoura. Although I don’t tell her that.
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Sorcha goes, “This is exciting, isn’t it, Ross?” because – yeah, no – we’re having dinner in Iguazu, a new hipster restaurant on Camden Street, where there’s no actual menu and an algorithm chooses what you’re going to eat based on the answers you provide to 10 questions when you’re booking.
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Dalisay says she’s in the pool. I’m like, “The pool?” “Yes,” she goes. “Your mother likes to swim every morning. Would you like to see her?” I’m there, “In a way, no? But I suppose that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? So I suppose – yeah, no – lead the way.” I walk with her from the old dear’s private ward to the actual gym.
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The Broken Orms is absolutely packed to the rafters for the engagement porty of Tina, the mother of my firstborn, to Tom, her fireman boyfriend, who famously played 300 matches in the All Ireland League, albeit for Bornhall.
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So – yeah, no – I’m in Dunnes Stores in, like, the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, grabbing a few bits for Sorcha, who’s making a special dinner tonight. I dump my items on the checkout belt and make a mental note to find out if it’s her birthday, or our wedding anniversary, when all of a sudden I hear an old woman’s voice go, “Mind if I just go ahead of you there, son?”
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Honor walks through the arrivals gate with a face as long as a wet weekend in Knock and I take it as read that the week in St Moritz was a bit of a let-down?
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It would be an understatement to say that Honor was never the most popular girl growing up. As a matter of fact, on the very rare occasions when she was invited to a porty, Sorcha used to sew cubes of pancetta into the hem of her dress so that at least the family’s dog would play with her.
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The old man and Hennessy look a total state in their chef’s uniforms. Yeah, no, they’ve invited us all around to the old pair’s gaff for a New Year’s Eve dinner, a dry run – their words – for when the two of them supposedly buy and then reopen Shanahan’s on the Green.
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So I’m, like, standing out on the balcony and – yeah, no – I’m vaping like a crazy person and I’m going, “Remember, goys, your old dear is going to be under a lot of pressure today.”
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The old dear smiles and I end up having to look away. I’m there, “Can you at least put your teeth in?”
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Sorcha says she knows me. She knows me inside-out. But I tell her that the Rossmeister General still has one or two surprises in his locker.
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So – yeah, no – it’s that magical night of the year again when we all sit down as a family and write our letter to Santa Claus. We’ve the Bublé CD on and we’re all wearing our Christmas jumpers.
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Honor is in an absolute fouler when she gets into the cor.
I’m there, “Tough day at school?”
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There’s a Gorda cor bent around a lamppost and people are standing around looking shocked. Who could be responsible for this cornage?
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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
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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 presume I’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 any circumstances?”
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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 terms of?”
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/
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?”
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.
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.
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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The old dear is drinking a Baileys with her dental plate out and I don’t think I’ll ever have another amorous thought in my life. The old man raises his brandy glass to me and goes, “Merry Christmas, Ross.”
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So I’m standing at the trough in The Queens in Dalkey, having a much-needed slash, when I hear a voice beside me go, “Is that the famous Ross O’Carroll-Kelly I see?”
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The Castlerock College Christmas Fete has always been a massive event in the O’Carroll-Kelly social calendar.
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“Corlow?” Sorcha goes – clearly worried about me. “Why on earth do you want to drive all the way Corlow for a Christmas tree when we can buy one three minutes up the road in Terenure College?”
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Hey, as I always say, it’s better to be someone’s shot of tequila than everyone’s cup of tea.
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So – yeah, no – I’m in, like, the gorden, throwing the old Gilbert around with Brian, Johnny and Leo, except we can’t complete three passes without one of us dropping the ball and I’m wondering does it have anything to do with us living in Terenure now – as in, the general sense of failure that hangs over the place has somehow seeped into my children’s bones like arthritis.
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The school concert hall is absolutely rammers and the walls are pretty much vibrating with the sound of people being – as we say on this side of the city – up in orms.
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Anyone who follows the Letters to the Editor page in this newspaper will be aware of my old man’s thoughts on the subject of girls slash women playing rugby.
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I end up pretty much not sleeping for, like, five nights straight. And I know Honor is exactly the same. I’m there, “Can you just explain to me again what you saw and heard — illegibly.” “There’s no illegibly about it,” Sorcha goes. “I saw the ghost of an old man.”
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She’s quiet, cranky and liable to explode in a rage at the least provocation. Mind you, she’s been like that since she emerged from her old dear’s womb with her two middle fingers raised to the world. It’s just that for the first time ever, she seems without – I don’t know – hope.
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Sorcha is unpacking her collection of Lladro figurines from a cordboard box. She says she’s worried about Honor.
I’m like, “Honor? In terms of what specifically?”
So I’m in, like, Dundrum Town Centre with Honor and we’re racing for the lift slash elevator before the doors close. There’s, like, eight or nine people in there and they all do that thing that I always do when I’min a lift slash elevator and someone is rushing for it. They all pretend they can’t see us, while one of them — some random old dude? — makes a movement like he’s looking for the hold doors button but he does it in, like, slow motion.
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Claire from Bray of all places says the miniature Scotch eggs are – oh my God – divine? Sorcha says the secret is to fold some Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco into the pork mince before deep-frying the things in 100 per cent corn oil.
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I’m like, “Okay, listen up, everyone,” spinning a rugby ball in my hands and – to be honest? – loving the way my voice sounds right now.
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Lauren — as in, like, my best friend Christian’s wife? — has never been my number one fan. There are many reasons for that. For storters, she wouldn’t be what I would call a rugby person?
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It’s, like, the first day of the school year and we’re standing outside the gates of Castlerock College. Although it would be more accurate to say that we’re blocking the gates — yeah, no, in protest at the school’s decision to go co-ed. There’s, like, 40 or 50 old forts involved — mostly mates of my old man’s — and they’re in their literally element.
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There are – I think we’d all agree? – some great events in the South Dublin social calendar. There’s, like, the Dublin Horse Show. There’s the arrival of Santa Claus in a twin-engine Sikorsky on the roof of Dundrum Town Centre each December. And there’s obviously Bloomsday – or, as I call it, Halloween for wankers.
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The weather in — yeah, no — Portugal has been so good that Sorcha has been suffering the big-time guilts over the future of what she calls our planet? But on Tuesday everything changed when a severe depression suddenly blew in from the west — in other words, her old pair came to visit.
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It’s a cracking day in Quinta do Lago — but then aren’t they all? I’m having my first piña colada of the morning because I drank way too much last night and I’m feeling like dogshit that’s been stepped in twice.
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A well-appointed property,” Sorcha goes, reading from the bumf, “set in the hort of one of South Dublin’s most sagacious suburbs. Oh my God, I love that word. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it, Ross?
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So – yeah, no – I’m in the gym in Riverview, trying to get myself beach body-ready for Quints in the middle of August. Today is orms day and I’m sitting on a Swiss ball in front of a long mirror, with a 6kg dumbbell in either hand, thinking how fantastic I look for a man of, like, 42, with abs like speed bumps and pecs like bay windows.
The old man has a Cohiba the size of a Wavin pipe wedged between his teeth and I end up having to open the window so I don’t die of smoke inhalation.
“The fock are we even doing here?” I go.
Ireland are playing the All Blacks but Sorcha has planned a family weekend to Center Parcs.
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It’s here — as in, like, the big day? Honor has reached the final of the Joshua Pim Shield and it’s the most excitement Glenageary has seen since Google accidentally called it Glasthule in the course of mapping the area and 14 per cent was wiped off local property values overnight.
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Sorcha asks me if I’m ready and I tell her – yeah, no – I think so? I’ve got my Rugby Tactics Book on the coffee table, twenty-four sticks of Heinemite in the fridge and I’ve aired out my Cantos with the loose elastic in which I do all of my best thinking.
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“Daddy long-legs,” Leo goes, pointing at quite literally nothing. “It’s a focking daddy long-legs.”
I’m like, “For the fifteenth time, Leo, it’s not a daddy long-legs. It’s a crack in your glasses from when Johnny hit you across the face with the griddle pan.”
“Ross,” Fionn tries to go, “you can’t keep turning up at the school like this.”
And I’m like, “Who says so?” sitting down opposite him and throwing the old Dubey Dubey Doos up on his desk.
Sorcha has ordered a skip. Yeah, no, that might not be big news where you live – but on Vico Road, Killiney, it’s, like, massive? Because it’s evidence that you’re up to something. And around here, there’s very little that escapes the attention of the local residents’ association, especially with their hourly drone flyovers looking for evidence of illegal building activity in the area.
“Oh my God, that’s her!” Honor goes.
Her being Corina Brien, her opponent in the first round of the Joshua Pim Shield in Glenageary Lawn Tennis Club.
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So I’ve brought Brian, Johnny and Leo to Morseille – yeah, no, the one in France – for their very first European Cup final. It’s, like, 24 hours before kick-off – or kick-orse, as I call it – and the excitement is already storting to build?
https://www.irishtimes.com/podcasts/ross-ocarroll-kelly/
There’s a familiar face in the kitchen, although I’m struggling to put a name to it. “Ross,” Sorcha goes, “you remember Foraoise Farrell, don’t you? Holy Child Killiney?”
And that’s when the penny suddenly drops. Yeah, no, I was in UCD with her brother, Conor. We did the old Sportsman Dip course together – although the only sport we actually played, if I’m being honest, was pool while pissed.
“What do you think?” Sorcha goes. Yeah, no, she’s trying to choose an outfit for the annual Vico Road and Vico Road-Adjacent Residents’ Association stort-of-summer borbecue and she’s been at it since nine o’clock this morning.
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So it’s, like, Day Whatever-it-is and my period of isolation is finally over. I’m about to ring the goys to see if anyone fancies hitting The Bridge for a few bank holiday scoops when all of a sudden my phone rings and it ends up being dick features himself.
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According to my latest antigen test, I’m still positive, but – the most random thing – I’ve never felt better in my life, either physically or whatever other ways there are.
"I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve been dreading this week since Christmas.
And not dreading it in the same way that you dread, I don’t know, root canal surgery, or an NCT.
I mean dreading it like you dread your own death, if that’s not putting it too strongly?"
Christian’s wife, Lauren, has never been a fan of the Rossmeister General. I don’t mind. I think it was me who first said I’d rather be someone’s shot of tequila than everyone’s cup of tea...
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‘Most of them are empty and there’s, like, a homelessness crisis? I’m going to put six rooms’
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Charles O’Carroll-Kelly goes on Drivetime to talk about Castlerock College going co-ed
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How can Ross convince the goys that Castlerock should never let in girls?
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Fionn’s changed since he landed the top job at our old alma mater
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There’s goys from Michael’s, Belvedere, Gonzaga and Blackrock all mixing with each other like there’s no actual difference between them
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A tap on the shoulder while getting in a quick pint at the bor in Dublin Airport
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Fifty grandingtons. That’s what this crowd in, like, Budapest want to share the secret of Dr Holger Esterházy’s hair restoration miracle with me. I tell Winker Raymond – who did the Sportsman Dip course with me in UCD – that it seems a bit on the, I don’t know, steep side? But he reminds me that a year ago he had a head like a plucked scrotum and his confidence was on the floor – and now he’s dating a woman who’s, like, 26.
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Sorcha is quiet this morning. I honestly haven’t seen her this distracted since she got a girl sacked for plucking her eyebrows in a way that made her face look – her word – quizzical? And she keeps asking the same question that she asked that day: “Am I, like, a bad person?”
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Sorcha calls the Emergency General Meeting of the Vico Road and Vico Road-Adjacent Residents’ Association to order.
“I realise that there’s a great deal of concern in this room,” she goes – this room being our living room, by the way? – “but it would be helpful to me, as the chair, if we could hear from just one person at a time?”
It’s the night before Sixmas and I’m sitting in The Bridge 1859, sharing with the goys the gift of my pre-tournament analysis. I’m telling them that I think Ireland are now the best passers of the ball in world rugby – and I’m including the All Blacks in that – but the most random thing is happening as in, they’re not hanging off my every word like they usually are?
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Chorles may miss his first Six Nations championship match in almost seventy years
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“God, I’m bored,” I go. “How far into this whole self-isolation thing are we now?”
Sorcha’s there, “We’re halfway-”
I’m like, “Halfway?”
She goes, “-halfway through day two.”
“I think I’ve finally figured it out,” I go – and, yeah, no, I’m talking about the latest restrictions. “If I set the alorm for, like, 2am and give the kids their breakfast, that’ll mean we can move lunchtime back to, say, 8am, which will mean that I’ll have my stomach properly lined when I stort drinking at 10am."
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Ross makes Sorcha a doubly special Christmas gift.
Thanks to everyone who listened to the podcast in 2021. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
There’s no doubt that Honor takes after her old man in terms of never being afraid to call it.
“Why is Dad allowed to get shitfaced with his friends,” she goes, “and my brothers aren’t allowed to put on the story of the birth of Jesus?”
I’m like, “Er, I thought you were, like, an atheist?”
“Oh my God,” Sorcha goes, “we are so on top of Christmas this year!”
I’m there, “In terms of?”
Sorcha has pushed the boat out in a major way here. She’s having – get this – a Christmas mother and daughter day with her old dear and Honor and she’s gone about it in her usual try-too-hord way.
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“Boys and girl,” the air hostess goes, “we have arrived in Rovaniemi, Lapland – home of Santa Claus!”
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It’s a big day for Johnny Sexton. And it’s a big day for me as well. I’m – yeah know – bringing the boys to see the great man win his 100th cap against Japan at the Aviva, and I decide to swing into Christian’s gaff on the way there just to use the old Josh Ritter.
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An encounter at rugby training sees Ross making an unexpected connection.
From The Irish Times, this is Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's weekly audio column, as read by Paul Howard.
The famous Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara says he hasn’t been this excited about a business idea since we built all those houses on a floodplain in west Dublin in the 1970s...
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The latest dispatch from Ross O'Carroll Kelly, as read by Paul Howard.
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'Since they storted school at Willow Pork, it’s been rugby, rugby, rugby, with no mention of soccer'
From The Irish Times, this is Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's weekly audio column, read by Paul Howard.
irishtimes.com
Hennessy pulls out the big guns to help settle a case of caravan arson
From The Irish Times, this is Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's weekly audio column, read by Paul Howard.
irishtimes.com
Mad as it sounds, sometimes it’s easier to tell the girl the truth. I’m like, ‘Honor burned down the caravan, Sorcha’
From The Irish Times, this is Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's weekly audio column, read by Paul Howard.
Sorcha samples kalettes and deactivated pecans as Ross gets accused of arson
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The cor pork is full of BMW X5s, or, for older moms putting the last of the dynasty through the school, Volvo XC90s.
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The Leaving Cert results are about to go online and Ross's family are gathered around the kitchen island to find out how he's done.
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Willow Pork is the only school to take the triplets, they’ve been on Joe Duffy too many times
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Sorcha’s family conference to discuss registration for teenagers doesn’t quite go to plan
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Ross goes on a date with Marianne the Irish teacher, beginning with Mass.
This is the final of four excerpts from the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book Normal Sheeple - out now.
On holidays in Kerry, Ross has a chance encounter with some locals and tries his hand at Gaelic football. The third of four exclusive excerpts from the new Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book Normal Sheeple. Normal Sheeple is out now.
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This week we're bringing you four exclusive excerpts from the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book, Normal Sheeple, which is released on Wednesday 18th August.
Today: Ross and Sorcha attend a dinner in honour of President Putin, who makes an unusual request.
This week we're bringing you four exclusive excerpts from the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book, Normal Sheeple, which is released on Wednesday 18th August.
Today: Sorcha takes control of Samantha Power's visit to her alma-mater Mount Anville.
Toni Loscher next door is power-washing the wooden patio again.
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Sorcha and her ‘symptoms’ want me to tag along for her PCR test
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I end up lying on her behalf to get her out of an unwanted visit to – oh my God – Lusk
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Ross’ father is determined to make sure a birthday party takes place indoors in the Horseshoe Bar
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Ross can’t face a week in a mobile home with Garret and Claire, but Honor has a plan
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‘So what’s there to see in Ballycanew?’ ‘A Daybreak and a Londis’
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I'm looking at the other 41-year-old men and I’m thinking how well I look by comparison
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Sorcha panics during a gathering of friends but Ross is on hand to help
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It’s the first day of the Leaving Cert and my hands are shaking like the old dear’s when I hide the corkscrews
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‘I’d rather spend next 12 months in prison than endure one more night in a limited services hotel’
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Ross is pressured into chopping off Christian’s top knot in the name of ‘rugby banter’
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Rugby training is back and Brian, Johnny and Leo are in a loser pod
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Honor gets frank with Ross after he fails to see the painful truth about his boys’ rugby abilities
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‘Who in the name of God eats four types of potato with their dinner?’
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Ross's parents continue to play by their own rules when it comes to lockdown.
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Ross's mother finds herself in mandatory hotel quarantine.
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Ross collects his unrepentant anti-lockdown dad from Mountjoy.
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Honor devises a strategy for Ross as he attempts the exam for the second time
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The old man tells the court he broke lockdown and refuses ‘to live under your mortial law!’
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Honor learns money can't buy everything as Ross and Sorcha purge their friend lists
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It’s a mask-off in Dún Laoghaire as the old man leads an anti-lockdown march
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Just google George Soros Molesworth Street and it’s all there! We have all been had...
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'Every single room in this house is haunted by the guilt of my failure’
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Ross likens his life to Heathcliff’s – especially when it comes to women
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‘You asked me the other night was I breathing louder than usual?’
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Sorcha loses it with Ross’s dad on Zoom when he discusses conspiracy theories
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Every – I don’t know – significant thing that ever happened in my life has some association with Kielys of Donnybrook
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‘They’re using the vaccine to force people to say they’re over 70 when they’d pass for 50’
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I’ve never passed an exam in my entire life. I’m still driving on a provisional
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I stand up on a chair and I take down the three guns...
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No booze, swearing or sweets – Sorcha has new year’s resolutions for all the family
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Sorcha is determined to stage a Christmas Day gathering that complies with safety guidelines
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Ronan is making a mint from black market Mass tickets until three wise men arrive
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All of a sudden I’ve got a woman asking me if I find food intolerances funny..
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Storting Christmas early could be good for our mental health...
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I just want him to see what people from Dalkey are really like.
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‘It’s like The West Wing when Jed Bortlet had to step down and John Goodman became president’
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There’s no trick-or-treating this Halloween, but the trolls seem to be out in force.
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I’m not 100% keen on Honor driving, mainly because she’s 14, has no licence, tax or insurance
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As Sorcha said, I shouldn’t have been throwing the old Gilbert around at her Ulysses fancy dress porty...
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I throw back the duvet, hop out of bed and step into my chinos, all in one fluid movement
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Sounds like Sorcha’s old dear is driving the old man cuckoo in their Brittas Bay love nest
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Talking to strangers on the doorstep is dangerous. Who knows what I might catch?
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It storted with the shooting-of-the-s**t that goes with a doorstep package handover
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Sorcha’s old dear and my old man are supposed to be moving into the Lalors’ holiday home in Brittas Bay, except three dudes – studenty types – have been refusing to leave.
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The old pair are a bad influence on Honor so the plan was to move them out...
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It looks like she’s a cranky drunk – in that way, she does take after her grandmother
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There are landmork moments in our children’s lives. First day of school. First time you hold their hair back so they can vomit a naggin of vodka
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‘Your dad is the leader of a political porty that believes women should have to re-sit their driving test every six months to prove their competency to drive’
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‘I suspected there was something going on. I have a sixth sense for this’
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The sensible thing to do is to accept defeat early and try to get back on the road before the traffic gets bad
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The Dingle restaurant owner thinks Ross’s family are from the US – and things get ugly.
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‘Quinta do Farranfore? I’ve never heard of it’
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Posting a Fáilte Ireland pic on Instagram doesn’t mean you’re actually on a staycation
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It seems young Ronan is doing a line in black morket tickets for Masses and church services
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Time to put Christian in his place – after all, it’s what best friends are for
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Honor plots revenge for Ross after his rugby chat gets hijacked
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly: I’m not sure we’re the kind of family who likes fun
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Honor restorts the economy while Sorcha’s Zoom call proves fatal to Ro’s alibi
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Despite Sorcha’s warning, Ross may have just made a bad situation worse
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Rueful Ross realises the old man may have amorous notions when he spots that missing Greg Norman hat.
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'You’re lucky my orms don’t stretch two metres – because I would deck you for that'
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The Rossmeister prepares for a third crack at the exams with Honor’s home-schooling.
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Welcome to the horsh realities of the free morket, Honor goes
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After weeks in lockdown Sorcha’s roots are showing...
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Sorcha is working on her best self and getting the old man and old dear talking again
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Phoning ‘Mom’ is a sure sign Covid-19 crisis brings out the best in people
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Neighbourly gestures are one thing, but a hostage exchange is quite another.
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Phoning ‘Mom’ is a sure sign Covid-19 crisis brings out the best in people
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Home-schooling? Me? But I’m a complete focking dunderhead...
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For five days, I’ve been stuck in the house and I can’t help thinking, ‘God, my family are annoying
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The old dear is catfishing dudes on Tinder by pretending to be only 58about 6 hours ago
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The old dear was planning to propose to him on Saturday night
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The old dear is up in arms because the house is being considered for a preservation order
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The triplets tear apart an oil painting of their smiling grandad and make a delightful discovery
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Who wouldn’t spend too much at a charity auction for a horrible portrait?
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Sorcha will do literally anything to get Honor into the right Irish college
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The old man is ordering a statue of Fr Fehily – with Panzer tanks and hippos, of course
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The old man has spent some of his hord (slash, crookedly) earned money on a statue of the late, great Fr Fehily
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‘He hasn’t come to kill you, Ross. He’s come to dig up the time capsule we buried in the gorden just before the millennium’
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Ronan admits to Ross he threw the race at Leopardstown on Stephen Zuzz Day.
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Leopardstown proves to be Hoss O’Carroll-Kelly’s downfall by betrayal
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I love playing Santa Claus. The adulation brings me back to my schools’ rugby days
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The Rossmeister gets into the spirit of the season with a spot of Grafton Street carolling
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I’m like, ‘What the fock, Ro?’ because I’m suddenly thinking about the 20Ks I’ve just lost...
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A surprise trip to take the kids to see Santa Claus does not go according to plan
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Sorcha’s Toy Show dream quickly comes to an end when Ryan Tubridy meets the boys on set.
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Meeting our temperamental racehorse, Hoss O'Carroll-Kelly.
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Yeah, no, I bought a racehorse, but it's not for Honor - it's for my old school's honour.
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All the posh schools have a horseracing syndicate. Why not Castleknock College?
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A trip to Center Porcs leads to an encounter with one of Sorcha’s frenemies.
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There's barely a day goes by when I don't think "God what I wouldn't do for a condom and a time machine". But that's parenting.
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What the fock? Did the old man pay someone to fake a video?
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The Rossmeister is struck with a sudden case of FOMO with just one phone call.
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Being fired as godfather is making him teary - so is the breakfast beer...
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Sorcha's was served on a VHS copy of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
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‘According to Fionn, it makes me guilty of a thing called “cultural appropriation’’’
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The old dear thinks the old man has lost his marbles. He’s set up a vlog.
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Baxter’s rightful owner has shown up, and Honor’s not giving him up without a dogfight.
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A letter from Munster Rugby leaves Ross's old man pacing the floor.
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The third and final excerpt from 'Schmidt Happens', the eighteenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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The second of three exclusive excerpts from 'Schmidt Happens', the eighteenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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The first of three exclusive excerpts from 'Schmidt Happens', the eighteenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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In an extract from his new book, Schmidt Happens, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly has taken on his toughest job yet – coaching the Facebook tag rugby team for their annual summer match against Google.
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Ross doesn’t like what he sees when he visits Ronan at work for some lunchtime pints.
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The dog is for the chop until Ross channels his inner rugby captain.
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Christian is horrified to find his Wagyu steak looks tougher than Billy Vunipola.
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A dickhead of a smoke alorm ruins Ross’s night and leads him to a surprising discovery...
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Ro learns how to handle found goods, from the master, Hennessy
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The old man got more than he bargained for when he bought a Lambo at a Cab auction
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I have to remember to treat them all equally, even though one of them is clearly never going to play Leinster Schools Senior Cup rugby due to being basically half-blind.
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My daughter had previously told me that being seen to care is a sign of weakness
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‘Do you know how embarrassing it is to live in Killiney and have to drive stick shift?’
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I end up carrying Leo in to the ophthamologist. I don’t know why – there’s fock-all wrong with his legs.
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She walks into the kitchen and storts looking at Leo in a suddenly strange way
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‘Your accent has gone full Colin Farrell from Intermission since we passed the turn-off for Newtownmountkennedy’
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Rosston College has an eventful first day with the triplets out of Montessori.
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It wouldn’t be an uncommon occurrence for me and Sorcha to find ourselves in a school principal’s office having to apologise for the behaviour of our children.
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Honor is at a birthday party – what usually follows is a solicitor’s letter
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Sorcha's old pair are making arrangements for her resting place - but Honor has different ideas.
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Ronan is about to finish college and the old man has a bribe to bring him onside.
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Sorcha is crying in the cor. “How could something like this have happened?” she keeps going – over and over again.
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Sorcha is on the warpath after the latest phone call from the Montessori about the triplets
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Most of our goys look like they’ve been pulled from the sea after their ship went down.
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Ross O’Carroll Kelly: ‘Inevitably, given the pressure I’m putting my mind and body under - I end up blacking out’
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Unfortunately, I don’t have Fr Fehily’s command of German or his record collection. But I do have my own – let’s just say – motivational qualities?
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Preparation for our grudge match with Newbridge isn’t going to plan.
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Our victory was slightly tainted when the IRFU stripped us of our medals.
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I’m, like: ‘You’re not going to drive around Belfield bellowing insanely at passers-by?’
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Honor goes, ‘The only reason I’m ringing is because there’s a Gorda checkpoint ahead’.
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The old man has a plan to stop him being no-platformed by UCD.
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The three boys experience that landmark moment: their first rugby international.
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There’s some kind of protest in UCD as the old man arrives for his talk.
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Honor’s blackmailing skills come out after using Sorcha’s MyTaxi app.
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Why is there no O’Carroll-Kelly building?
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Sorcha’s What Would Jesus Eat Diet lasts a record four hours.
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Ross discovers his 13-year-old daughter has secretly been driving his BMW X5 for the last two years.
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‘She said if we hadn’t been friends for 20 years, she would have called the Gords’
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Ross and Sorcha are particularly tense watching the triplets in their nativity play...
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Ross, dressed as Santa, can’t believe it when a boy asks him for an Ireland soccer jersey for Christmas
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We are surrounded by empty porking spaces but neither of us is prepared to give up this one.
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I had to unmute the Mount Anville mothers’ WhatsApp group - I couldn't bear the silence.
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Ireland are beating the All Blacks with 15 minutes to go but everything is kicking off in the old man’s corporate box
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The old man is plotting a fresh course for New Republic given the Peter Casey effect.
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"Peter Casey has out-Charles-O’Carroll-Kellyed Charles O’Carroll-Kelly" says the old man.
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Sorcha gets teary about her old Rav4 in Dundrum cor pork
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Ross gets a horsh lesson on how Mount Anville moms’ WhatsApp groups really work.
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Sorcha tells Ross that Honor has set up a review site. It’s called Rate My Playdate.
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What would Johnny Sexton do when confronted with plotting a way through Dublin’s no-go areas?
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I’ve joined the WhatsApp group the moms set up, and it is intense...
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I convince the lads to go to Munster to rescue Joey Corbery
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The boys can presumably see that Mallorie Kennedy is a serious, serious honey.
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Fourth and final excerpt from Dancing with the Tsars, the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book from Paul Howard. And we're back tomorrow with Ross's regular audio column.(Earlier we reposted Excerpt #1 in error - apologies to our listeners)
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I’ve been slaving over the microwave to prepare a family meal for us.
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Preparing for Round Two of the Strictly Mount Anville Father and Daughter Dance Competition. Excerpt three of four from Dancing with the Tsars. It's available in bookshops today.
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Sorcha delivers her maiden speech on the floor of the Seanad, with mixed results. The second of four exclusive excerpts from the new Ross O'Carroll Kelly book, Dancing with the Tsars.
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It's the first of four exclusive excerpts from the latest Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book 'Dancing with the Tsars'.
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It’s portly my responsibility to deal with the triplets’ swearing
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‘Focking fockers!’ Brian goes, obviously looking forward to releasing some of that pent-up energy
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Honor lasted the course in the Gaeltacht - and that's suspicious.
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While Honor’s away, the guests will play.
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Honor’s off to Irish college somewhere called Tralee – I’m going to miss the little wagon
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Time for the Rossmeister to show this LinkedIn team what actual rugby is
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One by one, I open the buttons of my shirt. Then, I stort unloading the dishwashing, making sure to let him see The Six.
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Fionnuala has tipped waiters that much for a good Martini.
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Tempers fray as the family are landed with some cling-ons
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The family is flying to the south of France. It hasn't started well.
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Ross sets off for the driving test centre, confident it will be 17th time lucky.
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Sorcha wants me to stay home to look after the kids.
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Sorcha’s landed some job, and I don’t loike where this is going
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It’s time to learn some crucial differences between GDPR and CPR
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There has to be a consequence for ruining Sorcha’s royal wedding porty, hasn’t there?
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So I’m lying on the floor in Bilbao airport – in shock
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In fact my ancestors – brace yourselves, goys – are from Munster
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Ross has done a whole series of ads for the ‘Irish Times’ property section
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Surely Ross can come up with a plan to save a little bit of southside heritage...
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It’s one of the biggest days in the south Dublin social calendar
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Ronan wants to go to New York and hab a woord with his heerdo.
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You’d have to be up early in the morning to get one over on Lauren, though - and when I say early, I mean before the Happy Pear goys are turning cortwheels on Greystones beach.
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I grab my jacket and I perform my famous Ironmonger Act – I make a bolt for the door.
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Rude restaurants – in Ranelagh – are back and the family has a booking
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Just when Ross thought there were no more tears, the floodgates open in Bucharest
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Ireland are playing Scotland – but I know my old dear well enough to know when I’m being blackmailed
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The Mount Anville past pupils breakfast is like LinkedIn with egg white omelettes and epic insincerity.
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It’s hord to put into actual words the power of my new, one-seat, electric, company cor, other than to say it’s like if you fixed four wheels to Sorcha’s hair dryer, then tried to drive the thing to work.
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: The agency is rebanding and Ross doesn’t like it
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Sorcha’s digging her way through a landfill of old memories
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‘You’d better look at the video she posted three days ago’...
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Honor is rude to randomers on Grafton St – and Ross has never been so proud.
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Ross discovers that his idea of a Holy Day of Obligation doesn’t quite tally with his bos
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Ross isn’t on board with Sorcha’s Irish resolution – and it’s about to blow up in his face
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The dude who rings is called Mister Something-Something. His name isn’t important. He says he’s from the Deportment of Education and he has some good news for me.
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“It’s an amazing way of celebrating our Irishness in this period of historic centenaries,” claims Sorcha
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Honor goes, “What the fock are we doing in Cork anyway?” and I end up having to laugh because it’s honestly like listening to myself.
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“Honor has never been sentimental about Christmas. Do you remember the first time we ever watched the Late Late Toy Show together as a family? And she said she wanted to smash all of the toys with a hammer just to make all the other children cry?”
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Dave from the office was in chorge of payroll until he did a course in human resources in the Smurfit Business School in Blackrock and returned to work six weeks later having lost his sense of smell, his sense of taste and – most tragically of all – his sense of humour.
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly is a grandfather and his old man is building a prison called Robbin’ Island.
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“Dad,” she goes, “you are so not a sexist. You’re horrible to women and men. It’s one of the few things I actually like about you.”
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Lauren, the new Lady Managing Director of Hook, Lyon and Sinker, thinks I have a problem taking orders from women. Which is complete horseshit, of course. I worked behind the bor at the annual Foxrock Golf Club Ladies Foursomes event for seven years in a row and took thousands of orders from women. Mostly for gin and tonics.
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I walk into the office to discover that all of my most treasured possessions have been stuffed into a cordboard box, which is sitting on my desk. We’re talking my ‘That’s Leinstertainment’ travel mug. We’re talking my 13 letters of censure from the Property Services Regulatory Authority. We’re talking my signed photograph of Richie McCaw (“To Ross,” it says. “You could have been one of the all-time greats,” words which still bring a tear to my eye, even though I told him specifically what to write).
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Hennessy and the old man have bought Hook, Lyon & Sinker, but the way Hennessy’s talking, it’s not looking like yours truly is their first choice for managing director
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The annual Iron Stomach Contest is as much a part of UCD life as wearing your schools rugby jersey for the first 10 weeks of first year and experimenting with your sexuality by getting off with people who didn’t go to fee-paying secondary schools.
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My daughter is doing a Closet Purge for her vlog. A purge with a difference – it’s Sorcha’s closet and there’s petrol involved
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The old man asks me for my thoughts on the Budget – like it affects me somehow?“What Budget?” I go.
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If you’d told me, when I was, like, 16 years old, that one day I’d end up literally working for a living, I would have asked you, well, what was the point of playing rugby in the first place?
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It’s like Honor’s had some kind of, I don’t know, personality transplant?
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The fourth and final exclusive excerpts from 'Operation Trumpsformation', the seventeenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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The third of four exclusive excerpts from 'Operation Trumpsformation', the seventeenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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The second of four exclusive excerpts from 'Operation Trumpsformation', the seventeenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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The first of four exclusive excerpts from 'Operation Trumpsformation', the seventeenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series.
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Ross and Sorcha find something suspicious – but they’re the ones in trouble
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Ross manages to throw the most unwanted birthday party of all tim
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The HSE have paid Ross a visit, but it takes him a while to figure out why
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First day in ‘actual Mount Anville’, but the last thing Honor needs is a chaperone
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“Now,” she goes, “when I give you the injection, I want you to count backwards from 20.”I’m like, “Twenty?” and I can hear the fear in my own voice.
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The old dear might be ‘entitled’ to free travel, but that doesn’t mean she wants it
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Some quick thinking is required of Ross to bail Ronan out of trouble – again
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Oisinn goes, “Yeah, you’ve been sitting there all night with a face on you like the Long Mile Road. Why did you even come out? You should have stayed home and watched Love Island.”
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Ross finds the past, and tackles by Jerry Flannery, catching up with him
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Sorcha has gone away for the weekend to a Himalayan Spa Retreat in a hotel on the R280 just as you’re coming into Drumshanbo.
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I’ve hordly ever seen the old man this excited about something non-rugby related.
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He asked me for 20 snots. And as I peeled two Brodie Jenners off the wad, I could seem him silently kicking himself that he didn’t ask me for 50.
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Ross is forced to engage his brain, with surprisingly good results.
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"I'm Ross O'Carroll Kelly. What's your superpower?"
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“Well, I’ve never heard of him. What school did he go to?”“King’s Hospital, Ross!”“Jesus. No wonder he says it doesn’t matter where you come from.”
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We keep driving. He doesn’t say anything for a minute or two. Then he goes, “You know, I shouldn’t eeben be in the cunter doddy.”I’m like, “In the what?”“The cunter doddy. This cunter doddy. Arelint.”“Oh, Ireland – right.”
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Sometimes the best advice we can give our children is the most obvious.
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Why am I getting grief for giving Ross jnr a wad of cash?
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Can Ross save Ro from Grievous Bodily Harm?
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In which Ross and Ronan encounter celebrity gangster Grievous Bodily Horm.
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Ross rediscovers the simple pleasure of selling property to desperate house-hunters in an overheating morket.
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Honor outwits Ross after a focking disastrous parent-teacher meeting.
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"Ronan, I'm terrified of you being sucked into the world of guns, drugs and non-rugby nicknames" by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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It’s, like, so random seeing my old man without hair...
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I am so excited thinking about all of the people’s lives we can change with this money! by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross will pay it, Shadden. As a matter of fact, Ross will pay for absolutely everything by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I genuinely feel like grabbing that wig right now and focking it in the Liffey by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: “I’m here to watch Denis O’Brien wipe the floor with you.” by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘It’s the Celtic Phoenix, Sorcha. People are thankfully being stupid again’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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"The Dublin accent was invented to allow criminals to talk to each other" by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘If you showed Dermot Bannon around the inside of my head, he’d say the design was minimalist’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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They’ll have to rename it ‘Don’t Tell the Bride I Did the Dirt on Her Again’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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The old man wants to build Trump’s Mexican wall by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I actually like Trump. I like the way he pisses people off. I can see a lot of myself in him’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I thought Pythagoras was something the Greeks dipped their bread in' by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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"She unbuttons her coat and that’s when I notice that my old dear has had . . . augmentation" by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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"All those prophets of doom who said we would never again make the mistakes of the Celtic tiger era have been proven well and truly wrong. We’re not only making those mistakes, we’re making lots of new ones as well.”
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‘The two of us listen to them roaring at each other’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘The turkey shuffles into the room and jumps onto the sofa beside me’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Going through Honor’s Santa list must be what it’s like to go on Tonight with Vincent Browne by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘The old man is making a complete orse of himself’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Have you ever had an episode like this before? You could use his orteries for attic insulation by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I wouldn’t be any kind of best man if I didn’t try to persuade you' by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I think it was John F Kennedy who said that politics was the something of something else by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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When she was born, the midwife smacked her orse and Sorcha fake-smiled her back by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Don’t be frightened, it’s just latex and make-up – but you can call her Granny by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘Mount Anville took out a High Court injunction banning me from their debs one year’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘You’re a dirty dog. And I can’t tell you how proud that makes me feel’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Women want more. I say let them have it. I’m just not sure I’m the man to give it to them by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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“ It feels like you’re.”“What?” “I’m going to use the phrase ‘pimping me out’.” by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘No one goes to lectures before Christmas’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘Her ex worked as a risk assessor for an insurance company. I call him Love Actuary’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘Did you hear that, Shadden? George Clooney is one of Hennessy’s neighbours!’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘Honor is pacing in front of the cage, glowering at 200 terrified kids’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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RO'CK Game of Throw-ins Extract 4 by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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RO'CK Game of Throw-ins Extract 3 by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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RO'CK Game of Throw-ins Extract 2 by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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RO'CK Game of Throw-ins Extract 1 by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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We can hear them chanting through the walls of the dressing room by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘You’re so transparent. You’re trying to butter me up so I won’t humiliate you too badly’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘After 2km, I’m wheezing like a 60-cigarettes-a-day man while Garret isn’t even breathing heavily’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘He’s got 12 months of hord training behind him. All I’ve really got is drugs’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘That’s a side-effect of taking these pills, by the way – short-term memory, em . . . thingy ’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘What’s happening with your face?’ ‘I’m thinking. I’m thinking deeply’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I suddenly feel the kind of shame that only a couple of lunchtime pints can help erase’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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"See that little island down there. Lambay Island. Or – as it will soon be known – Aquatraz" by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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“Do you want to be the fedda puking his ring up on the soyud of the road? by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I find myself standing on Vico Road, hand on the wall, throwing my breakfast up’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘Claire doesn’t have, like, a Wicklow Wicklow accent? she’s very, very nearly South Dublin’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘Are any of you familiar with Countdown?’ Of course they are – they were in UCD by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘You’re like a young Katie Hopkins – except more, I don’t know, evil?’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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JP’s dad won’t be able to show his face in Doheny & Nesbitt’s again
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‘I can see Honor standing in the wings, giving Miss Pallister the famous one-finger salute’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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She might have fitted into the dress on our wedding day, but now, well..' by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I put Leinster on the Census form as my religion’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘If at first you don’t succeed, it’s a pretty good indication you’re never going to’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I could tell you the word she used except The Irish Times probably wouldn’t print it’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘I can’t wait to see Denis O’Brien wipe the floor with you in the High Court' by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: doing a hard sell on Inchicore as an estate agent by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Honor is naturally gifted on the piano. She’d want to be – we’ve spent about 12 grand on lessons by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘The last time JP had his hand on a breast, it came out of a bucket’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘I haven’t heard the word pronoun since I sat the Junior Cert’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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If JP is crazy enough to think he can take the chest-bump out of selling houses, he’s crazy enough to do anything
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‘I make sure to just say it in my mind. Because that’s being a good husband' by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘Chorles wants a prison colony for people who don’t pay their water bills’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘The government is planning to come down hord on people not paying their water bills’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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“Once Chorles discovered how highly the porty rated in the opinion polls, he didn’t want to discuss issues in case it alienated the people who were already committed to vote for us. That’s not politics to me, Chris – it’s morkeshing.”
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This is getting ridiculous. It’s like being on a spa weekend with Sorcha by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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He smiles with the same smile he uses when choosing his lobster in Cavistons by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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These apartments will be so small, there won’t be room for two people to break wind by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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These are going to be our Family Date Nights by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Has she been drinking or is she still pissed from last night? by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I just don’t consider it a sport. It’s like watching CCTV footage of a fight by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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You look like something Dr Marie Cassidy should be going at with rubber gloves and a bone saw by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I actually love women. If that makes me a feminist, then so be it. by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Christmas is a time of year when, er… you get loads of stuff by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I’m the porty spokesperson on Gender Issues by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross, we need to take Pang to the Beacon – right now by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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My son’s nickname is Manslaughter. by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Sorcha hasn't touched her chicken by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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“Ireland won alright. Which means we’re into the semi-finals of the World Cup!” by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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“A lot of children are just born that way – they’re d**kheads.” by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I’m there, “Pang, give me those cigarettes.” She goes, “Get away from me, you racist!” by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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If you can do it on the upper deck of a no 40 bus by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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‘If you bought a gaff in Tenerife, they'd say they bought one in Elevenerife’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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I should report you – underfloor heating is a human right by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Seedless in Seattle Extract Five by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Seedless in Seattle Extract Four by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Seedless in Seattle Extract Three by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Seedless in Seattle Extract Two by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Seedless in Seattle Extract One by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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RO'CK: It's here. A day I thought I'd never see by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly: “It’s not camping,” Sorcha tries to go. “It’s what they call glamping!” Honor whips out her phone. “I’m staying in Castle Durrow,” she goes. “It’s what they call five-stor hoteling.”
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People are chanting, "Co'ck for Taoiseach!" by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll Kelly: ‘I see one placard at the next auction and the doggy gets it. Cah-peesh?’
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Ross O'Carroll Kelly: ‘Why don’t you just tell Denis O’Brien’s solicitor that you’ll stop having Denis O’Brien Hair?’
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Ross O'Carroll Kelly: ‘Whatever you think about two men kicking the humanity out of each other in a cage. . . at least it’s not soccer’
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I've got to stop thinking about my old man as an ATM by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly - JPs old man by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly - You know that smell by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly - I've genuinely never seen Sorcha so angry ... by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll Kelly: ‘Why would I want to date you? I’m already married to you.’ by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll Kelly (June 20th - 2) by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O Carroll Kelly (20th June) by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's audio column in The Irish Times
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's audio column in The Irish Times
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's audio column in The Irish Times
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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's audio column in The Irish Times
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