'Don't be like everyone else, Ross. Full of hate and venom'

A petition to rename Greystones Dort station - has the old man gone off the rails?, asks ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY

THE OLD MAN wasn't wrong when he said that the Celtic Tiger's dirty little secrets weren't going to shred themselves. His confidential document disposal service might well be the fastest-growing business in this town that isn'tinvolved in buying people's wedding rings or stuffing processed turkey into submarine rolls.

From eight o'clock on Monday morning Shred Focking Everything will have a second van on the road. By Christmas, the old man reckons, it's going to be, like, six? The orders are rolling in like you wouldn't believe, and I've been working my orse like a stripper with the rent due.

Anyway, the other morning we were porked in, like, Fitzwilliam Square, having a coffee, killing an hour before our next collection. I was on the old iPhone, looking for photographs of The Saturdays on the old interweb, while the old man was, like, reading his paper and trying to interest me in the details of Seán FitzPatrick's bankruptcy.

"Sleep well, beautiful dreamer," he said, staring - I don't know - wistfullyat the front page? "They can't hurt you now."

Of course I ended up just laughing. "Oh, yeah, I forgot you two are old golf buddies."

"Has nothing to do with golf," he went. "You don't have to tramp the Green Monkey with a chap to feel empathy for him in his hour of suffering . . . They're saying they might only let him keep goods to the value of €3,500." He shook his head - you'd have to say sadly? "I'm sure poor Seánie's got ties that are worth that."

He threw the paper down on the dashboard. " They'vedisgraced themselves again, don't you know. The fourth estate. Drooling with satisfaction. Sanctimonious bloody whatnots." I let him just blabber on.

"Already forgotten, you see, the days when their newspapers were bursting with advertising. Without Seánie - and about 15 others like him - there would have beenno boom. It's people like Seánie who made this country great for 11 and a little bit years. We should be honouring him, not vilifying him.

"Oh, I know what you're wondering, Ross. I can see your little face. What's the old dadgoing to do about it?"

"I was actuallywondering," I went, "what the fock Una Healy sees in Ben Foden."

"Well," he went, basically ignoring me, "fret you not. Because Charles O'Carroll-Kelly and his famous solicitor sidekick, Mr Hennessy Coghlan-O'Hara, brackets BCL, are already on the case. No, we're going to make sure, Kicker - your godfather and I - that this country pays proper homage to the man who put me, and thousands of entrepreneurs like me, on the road to success.

"Hennessy and I are collecting signatures for a petition, which we intend to present to Iarnród Éireann, calling for Greystones Dart station to be renamed . . . Seán FitzPatrick Station."

I actually laughed? Spewed my cinnamon latte all over my Shred Focking Everything boilersuit as well.

"Greystones is a good idea," I went. "Because, when you think about it, it's the end of the focking line for both of them." I can be very funny sometimes. It's one of the things I love about myself.

The old man didn't see the funny side of it, though? He just went, "Don't be like everyone else, Ross. Full of hate and venom. Look, I'm not an iceberg. I know people out there are suffering. But why do we have to put a human form on our unhappiness? It's not one man's fault. It's not even the fault of a thousand men. We all bought into it, Ross, the so-called economic miracle."

I'm suddenly thinking about Sorcha, the day her boutique in the Powerscourt Centre closed for, like, the final time. I remember her packing up the Olivia Morris pumps to send them back to the supplier - as in the, like, patterned silk ones that Celia Birtwell created? - with the tears just streaming from her eyes. She went, "If I ever seeSeán FitzPatrick, I will - oh! my God! - slap him across the actualface?"

I'm thinking about JP, who's been doing, like, repossessions since Hook, Lyon and Sinker went tits-up in a ditch. Poor dude's getting a hord time from his conscience, see. Met him for a pint a couple of weeks back and he'd just driven a Lincoln Navigator back to the showroom with, like, a fiftysomething Blackrock housewife refusing to let go of the front bonnet.

"I swear to God," he went, his eyes all - I don't know - distant, "if I ever see that focker in Druid's Glen."

I think about even the old dear, when RTÉ decided to, like, reposition her daytime cookery programme and told her to stort cooking meals that better reflected what they called the current economic paradigm. I remember the haunted look on her face - like some, I don't know, earthquake survivor - while she showed the audience at home how to defrost frozen cauliflower in a microwave oven; then her comment when they went to, like, an ad break and she thought her microphone was switched off: "If I ever see that man in the Hungry Monk again I will pour my watercress soup with Waldorf creme fraiche over him, then simply walk out!"

The old man was right. There is a lot of it about.

See, that's one of the ways in which prison, like, changedhim? He's more - I wouldn't be certain it's even a word - but philosophical.

"When you find yourself feeling pleased at someone else's misfortune," he went, "whatever they have or haven't done, then it's time to ask yourself what kind of person you are."

This coming from the man who's already pestering the receiver about Jim Mansfield's Ming vase and the duelling pistols that are supposed to have belonged to, I don't know, George Washington or one of those.

"Thirty-seven signatures," he went, "for the Seán FitzPatrick station idea. The petition's in the dashboard if you want to sign it, Ross. No pressure."

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