My Leaving Cert: His mind elsewhere, Ross O'Carroll Kelly does not recall much about Leaving Cert Irish or much else about the exam for that matter, roysh.

I don't remember there being much talk of the Leaving Cert when I was in sixth year - as in, like, the first time I did sixth year?

We were doing pretty well in the Senior Cup that year and when I close my eyes, roysh, I can remember every word that Father Fehily said to us on the eve of the final against Michael's.

He was like, "We here at Castlerock would never conceive of encumbering such fine, athletic specimens such as yourselves with such fripperies as schoolwork."

Then he was giving it, "The reproductive system of the earthworm, the fixed rhyming schemes of a Shakespearean sonnet and the principle industries of the Benelux countries should not matter a jot to you.

"Iambic pentameter, chlorophyll, Maginot Line, hypotenuse - these terms have no relevance to your lives."

We ended up losing to Michael's and of course the next day he'd changed his tune. He told us about this big exam we had coming up that was going to, like, define the rest of our lives, though with my old man being one of the 500 richest men in the country, I doubted that.

I remember, roysh, in the weeks leading up to the exams discovering all these subjects I didn't even know I was studying. We're talking physics, we're talking biology, we're talking maths. And Irish! I mean, HELLO? What use was that to us, unless you wanted to chat up the birds from Coláiste Iosagáin on the bus on the way home, which most of us didn't anyway, on account of most of them being a bit, you know . . .

I remember McGahy, the geography teacher, saying he had high hopes for me, given that I managed to find the classroom, even if it was 7½ months into the school year. I suppose you'd have to say that if I'm famous for one thing on the rugby field - aport from my pecs and a set of abs you could grate cheese off - it'd be that I'm totally committed. So I decided to take that commitment and, like, apply it to my exams.

The first step was getting the books. I went to the old man and I was like, "I need a thousand snots for school books," and he was there, "But I gave you money for school books last September," and I'm thinking, 'Some weekend, that was.'

I went, "Look, it's bad enough that they pull this exam stunt on us at the last minute - now I find out that my so-called father actually wants me to fail," and that guilted him into handing over the shekels.

Fionn - who ended up getting maximum points, like the weirdo that he is - told me that the key to getting through exams was good time management. And he was right.

I spent the first half-hour of, like, English higher level paper 2, for instance, writing down my exam number, ruling my page and copying down the questions, which is, like, guaranteed morks. Then I spent the next 2½ hours writing out a list of all the birds I'd been with in the past two years. It took up two sides of an A4 sheet.

At the top of it, I wrote, 'What I did in fifth and sixth year,' roysh, and stuck it into my answers booklet.

I might have had some kind of breakdown during Irish higher level paper 1 because I remember writing down the only Irish word I knew - Tá - over and over again, until I'd filled five pages. I was home in time to see the lunchtime episode of Home and Away. I remember having thoughts about Isla Fisher which I'm thoroughly ashamed of today.

Physics was tougher, but I spent the time writing smart-orse answers to the questions, which passed the time. A couple of the goys said afterwards, roysh, that they'd looked up and couldn't believe how much I was writing and my nickname that summer was Einstein.

Until the results came out.

I didn't get a bunch of Ds. I didn't get Es or even Fs. I was way, way down the alphabet. They had to use the Greek one to get across just how badly I'd done.

And of course that rumour I heard - that ruling your page and writing out the questions got you an automatic pass - turned out to be a bit like my last-minute kick that could have given us victory in the schools cup final. We're talking wide of the mork.

• Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's column appears every week in the Sunday Tribune. His last book, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightdress, is available in paperback.