Ross O'Caroll Kelly

I mean, I could be sat at home, watching the day’s events from the old Den of N Equity. Instead, I’m in a superior suite in a five-stor hotel, a three-minute walk from Westminster Abbey

OW DO I LOOK?” she goes. “Honestly.”

Of course, a man with my experience of the old deadlier-of-the-species isn’t going to fall into the trap of telling her the truth. She looks like Michael McIntyre in a dress. On the upside, though, she’s got an invitation to the royal wedding – and she’s invited me along as her plus one. Which just goes to prove the point the nuns in Mount An-Vile were always making – that everyone has something that makes them worthy of love.

“Rebecca,” I go, “when I saw you step out of the jacks there, you literally took my breath away”, keeping it deliberately vague.

She looks back at me, unsmiling, then disappears back into the bathroom to have another crack at it.

Rebecca might not be the prettiest cupcake in the pantry, but it has to be said, I’ve had worse mornings? I mean, I could be sat at home, watching the day’s events from the old Den of N Equity. Instead, I’m in a superior suite in a five-stor hotel, a three-minute walk from Westminster Abbey, knocking back breakfast cocktails while flicking through the wedding edition of Hello! trying to decide which of Kate Middleton’s bridesmaids I’m going to make a drunken grope for first.

One thing that even my horshest critics would have to admit about me is that I get myself into some situations.

“Who are you texting?” Rebecca shouts from the bathroom. That’s the thing about birds, isn’t it? I only know this one, like, three weeks and she already has her Shiva Rose in my business.

“Drico,” I go.

She’s there, “Who?”

And of course I end up having to laugh? “Couldn’t have put it better myself, Rebecca. I’m talking about Brian O’Driscoll. See, he was supposed to be here today? Him and Hubes. Except he’s obviously got the Toulouse game tomorrow. I’m just telling him that I’m lying here having a lychee bellini . . . ”

“You’ve had three lychee bellinis.”

That’s another reason why this is going to be our one and only date. I let it go for now, though – just as I let it go last night when she spent the entire flight over boring the ears off me about what great friends her and Kate were at school. If I hear one more hilarious gymkhana anecdote . . .

“Yeah, no,” I go, “I’m just telling him I hope he enjoys his chicken and pasta, or whatever the fock they feed them in the week of a game.”

“Why?”

“Rebecca, for the last 12 years of my life, I’ve had nothing but people rubbing his achievements in my face. Did you see the try he scored against England? Did you hear he rescued a woman stuck in the snow and, I don’t know, stopped a schoolbus full of kids from plunging into a focking freezing river. I’m, like, dog-sick of it. This is the first time I’ve ever had anything over the focker.”

She steps out of the bathroom – her face as hord as a mother-in-law’s love.

She’s there, “Are you saying that’s the only reason you’re here with me?”

Her instincts are good, I’ll give her that.

I’m like, “Of course not! Rebecca, I’m going to be, like, the proudest goy at this wedding. Honestly, you look . . . oh, there’s words I could use but I won’t.”

This seems to please her. “Do you mean that?”

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

She kisses me then. She has some lips on her. It’s like opening an airplane emergency door at 35,000 feet. Then she links my orm and we stort making our way around to the abbey.

Of course, 60 seconds later, she’s already moaning to me about her shoes, like I forced her to wear them at gunpoint. Women – they’d stick their focking feet into two boxes of thumbtacks if someone told them Jimmy Choo made them. I make, like, supportive noises, of course – as you do – and then eventually we arrive at this, like, cordon, a hundred yords away from the actual abbey, where a dude in a tux takes the invitations from Rebecca, then checks our names against this list he’s got on, like, a clipboard? I’m still texting the Dricster, by the way, giving it, “Just saw kanye west! and jonny wilkinson! looks lik all the gr8s are here!”

That’s when the dude in the tux, totally out of the blue, goes, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t let the gentleman through.”

He doesn’t even address me, by the way?

I’m there, “Excuse me?”

He carries on looking at Rebecca. “The gentleman’s name is on a list of excluded guests, ma’am.”

You can picture her face, I’m sure – her mouth is slung open like she’s focking bobbing for apples. She goes, “But why?”

He’s there, “We don’t have to give a reason, ma’am.”

Of course, I’ve a bloody good idea. He’ll have put in a call. That’d be typical Blackrock College, see.

Rebecca’s all, “Excuse me, I’ve been a friend of Kate’s since we were 10 years old.”

“Please step aside.”

“No, I will not step aside.”

She actually shouts it? And the thing is, roysh, there’s a lot of cameras there, filming the various celebs pulling up outside, and suddenly they’re getting very interested in the – let’s just say – kerfuffle that Rebecca is causing? So the dude gets on his radio mic and tells, I don’t know, whoever, to get down here fast.

There’s, like, a Sky News camera practically in my face, so I look into it and go, “I hope you’re satisfied, dude. You think you’d have enough on your mind with the Heineken Cup semi-final tomorrow.”

The next thing, this other goy arrives over and introduces himself to us as something-or-other from the palace security staff. Again, it’s Rebecca he looks at – not me. “I’m very sorry,” he goes, “but your guest has been classified as a security risk.”

I’m there, “Er, excuse me?”

“He was recently photographed taking part in a protest against her majesty’s visit to Ireland.”

“No,” Rebecca goes, “that was just someone who looked like him.”

“We conducted a thorough background check, ma’am.” I decide to come clean then. “Okay, look, it was actually me? But I only went along because my neighbours pretty much forced me to. Focking Scumduggery Peasant and his brother.”

I watch Rebeccas’s eyes fill up with suddenly tears. She’s, like, shaking her head at me in actual disbelief. Then her face is suddenly filled with – I suppose you’d have to say – resolve? “Goodbye, Ross,” she goes, then she passes through the cordon and – limping in her shoes – makes her way to the abbey on her Tobler.

I’m looking at the cameraman, going, “I suppose you got all that, did you?” and it’s then that my phone all of a sudden rings. I answer it and it turns out to be Larry.

“Rosser,” he just goes, “you’re a fooken dead man.”

rossocarrollkelly.ie, twitter.com/rossock