'Ross, my girlfriend's father is a member of the Russian Mafia!'

JP's bird hates me, roysh, but I can win over her old man – unless he kills me for locking tongues with his wife, writes ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY

I'M FALLING out of love with Sharon Ní Bheoláin. It occurs to me while I'm standing in Kielys watching Thursday's Six One news. It just seems that every night she has a new way of telling us that the country is focked seven ways till Sunday.

“You know,” I go to JP, “I think the last time I saw that girl smile was in the blood bank a couple of years ago, when I pulled up my top and asked her did she want to feel my abs.”

Hebarely acknowledges it, even though he thought it was hilarious at the time. He's barely touched his second pint, either, while I'm already half-wankered.

Something’s obviously wrong.

With JP, of course, you have to be careful. He has this, I suppose, sensitive side – he was a priest before he was ever a repo man, remember – and there's no telling what effect seizing people's TVs and X5s all day long is having on his, I don't know, soul?

“Is it the whole current economic thing?” I go, nodding at the TV. “Is it, like, getting you down?”

He’s like, “No.”

"Because you know Renords is reopening? They might even be getting me to do the honours, by the way. Well, that's if Jamie Heaslip knocks it back. AndRobbie Fox is supposed to have something new in the pipeline. I mean, surely that's a sign that we're already through the worst of this thing, as a – I hate to use the word – but nation?"

“It’s not that,” he goes. Then he pulls various faces before deciding to eventually tell me.

“It’s Danuta.”

I laugh, roysh, because I was the first one to say it. This Russian girlfriend of his, she’s stunning – no complaints on that score – but she’s as mad as focking toast. She’s never warmed to me, for instance.

“Well, it’s not so much Danuta,” he goes. Then, roysh, the weirdest thing – he has a quick look over either shoulder. “It’s more, well . . . her father.”

I actually forgot that her old pair are over at the moment from basically Russia.

She's supposedly opening her own cash-for-gold business.

"The funny thing is, Ross, I never really thought about it – as in, I didn't put two and two together. Even when she mentioned that her old man was in the old repossessions game himself back in Novosibirsk. Even when she told me that hewas giving her the money for the business . . ."

“Dude, you’ve lost me.”

“Think about it, Ross. I mean, what do girls in this part of the world usually get for their twenty-firsts?”

“Mini Cooper Ones, obviously. What’s your actual point?”

"Well, hegives his daughter the seed money to set up a high street mail-in gold-melting company in one of the western world's most depressed economies. Now do you understand what I'm saying?"

“Still no, to be honest. You know how slow off the mork I am.”

“Ross,” he actually shouts, “my girlfriend’s father is a member of the Russian Mafia!”

Of course that pretty much silences the early-evening crowd in Kielys. Recession or not, this is still actual Donnybrook, remember.

I’m about to say something when JP instantly shushes me, and I can tell from the look of sudden fear on his face that the dude is standing right behind me.

I whip around, expecting to see – and this is a sign that I watch possibly too much TV – but Tony Soprano in a furry hat. But he’s actually a skinny little dude in a black leather jacket with a comb-over and a humongous hooked nose. I’d say The Beatles were still all mates the last time the focker smiled.

“Igor!” JP goes, obviously crapping himself. “What’ll you have to drink?”

"Oranj jews," he goes, at the same time staring at me, I suppose, suspiciously?

“I’m Ross,” I go, sticking out the old hand. It’s nice to be nice – I’ve always been a big believer in that.

“Rozz?” he goes, and it’s obvious from the way he looks at me – from head to toe, roysh, with pure contempt – that his daughter has already given him a flavour of what I’m like.

"You are eediot that eez friend of JP, yes?" Jesus – and I thought myin-laws were a tough crowd.

The next thing, roysh, Danuta all of a sudden walks through the door with this woman who I straight away take to be her old dear. Not that there’s any resemblance. I don’t know who Danuta takes after, but it’s obviously not this woman, who looks like that wooden Indian outside the cigor shop on

Grafton Street, except in focking drag.

Danuta says something to her old man, which I don’t quite catch – my Russian’s rusty – then they stare at me, roysh, like I’m something that just won’t flush away.

Of course you knowme – and one of the many things I was famous for back in the day was my ability to win over a hostile crowd. I decide to switch on the famous Rossmeister chorm and concentrate it on the old dear.

I go, “Hello there! And let me say from the word go that I can see where Danuta gets her good looks,” then I grab her hand – she has hands like a focking dockworker, by the way – and I move in to, like, air-kiss her.

My timing couldn’t actually be worse. At the exact point that my lips are reaching their destination she just happens to turn her head, presumably to ask Danuta for a translation, and – well, I’m not proud of it, but I end up kissing her full on the mouth.

All of a sudden there’s, like, total silence in the boozer, except for the sound of Danuta and her old pair shouting at the same time in basically Russian.

"Vot eez theez," heeventually goes. "You keez my wife like theez!" See, this is possibly going to sound bad? But I'm pretty sure our tongues touched as well.

“Hey, it was an accident,” I try to go. And then, acting out of pretty much fear, I end up doing something stupid. I go, “Eeeuwww!” and then I basically spit on the floor – just to show them, I suppose, that I didn’t do it to get my jollies.

Danuta’s old man’s eyes go wide while the old dear just storts shouting – again, in Russian.

Hegoes, "You disrespect my wife like theez?"

I hold my hands up. "I'm just trying to get you to see that I've no actual interest in her. I mean, it's obvious when you look at her that you'renot seeing what I'mseeing. A lot of people would say that's the miracle of love."

JP throws his two yoyos in then.

“Ross,” he goes, “you need to walk out of here – very, very quickly.”

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