Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

'I just wanted to give you a pre-warning, Ross that your name may come up in Dail Eireann this week'

I hear him before I see him. But that’s always the way with my old man.

“Ross Kyle Gibson McBride O’Carroll-Kelly!” he basically roars at me – and I end up nearly dropping the two sacks of documents that I’m carrying out to the van. “Talisman! Scourge of defences! Leader of men! Irish rugby’s greatest opportunity missed!”

I’m there, “Is there any chance you could keep your big focking foghorn voice down?” He’s like, “Oh, shouting, was I?” “Er, yeah, just a bit,” I go. “We’re supposed to be, like, a confidential shredding service? I’d say there’s people on top of the focking Sugar Loaf who know we’re here right now.” Here, by the way, is on, like, Hatch Street.

“Well,” he goes, “I did try to get your attention about 20 minutes ago. You passed me at, em, Foxrock Church. I was beeping at you, shouting out the window: ‘Kicker! Kicker!’ Alas, you couldn’t hear me.”

I end up just shrugging my shoulders. “Hey,” I go, “I was listening to the Hova. Had it on loud.” He goes, “Then I tried to catch you up. Except, well, you drive rather fast, don’t you? And you go through rather a lot of orange lights. Actually, that’s, em, kind of why I wanted to speak to you.” I’m like, “Oh?”

He nods at the Shred Focking Everything van and goes, “Probably best we discuss it somewhere we won’t be heard.” So into the back of the van we go. I throw the two bags onto the mountain of, like, 15 or 16 already piled up in the corner.

It’s been a crazy week. People trying to get rid of shit before Christmas. Of course, straight away, the old man is on my case. He’s like, “A bit behind with the shredding, are we?” I’m there, “Hey, don’t even stort. I’ve been busting my nads all week for you. I’ve worked something like three-and-a-half hours straight this morning.” He smiles in a – okay, you decide if this is a word or not – but sympathetic way?

“Well,” he goes, “Enda Kenny did say we were all going to have to make sacrifices. And you’re doing your bit, Ross, to turn around the economic fortunes of the greatest small country in the world. I hope the knowledge of that is reward enough.” I’m there, “Another 300 sheets a week would be better.” “Three hundred?” he goes. “Okay, you’ve just talked yourself into a raise,” and of course I’m suddenly thinking that I should have asked for five.

“And now,” he goes, loving the sound of his own voice, “to that matter at hand! I just wanted to give you a pre-warning, Ross – an, inverted commas, heads up, if you like – that your name may come up in Dáil Éireann this week.” “My name?” I go. “What, because of all this work I’m doing?” He laughs – he actually has the balls to laugh.

“No, no – although I do believe that the occasional namecheck is the least that you and go-getters like you deserve at this difficult juncture in our history. No, sadly, it’s in relation to this penalty points business.”

“What penalty points business?” “Well, it seems that Clare Daly and Mick Wallace – the bloody nerve of that man, by the way! – they’ve got their hands on some kind of, quote-unquote, dossier. Contains the names of some 50,000 people who’ve had penalty points expunged.”

I just stare at him, obviously confused. I’m like, “I’ve never had penalty points expunged.” “That’s not strictly true,” he goes – he can’t even look at me when he says it. “Matter of fact, it’s not true at all.” I end up totally losing it with him. “You and Hennessy! Jesus, you two are unbelievable.”

He ends up losing it with me then? He goes, “How the hell do you think you’ve been driving all these years? Good God, Ross, you’ve accumulated more points behind the wheel than you kicked in the famous 1999 Leinster Schools Senior Cup campaign. And that was a lot of points, lest anyone forget!”

He’s actually right. There was one day on the N11 recently when I happened to be riding the bomper of this particular dude who just, like, refused to move into the slow lane, even when I gave him six or seven blasts of the old full beams. Turned out to be an unmorked Gorda cor. I got two points for careless slash reckless driving, two points for speeding, two for being on the phone, maybe another two for not having a valid tax disk displayed. I suppose they do all add up. And maths was never by strongest subject at school.

I’m there, “So, what, now my name is about to be dragged through the basic mud?”

The old man nods. “And at a time when you’re making such a vital contribution towards the resuscitation of this country’s ailing finances,” he goes. “But don’t you worry about a thing, Ross. Your godfather and I are going to do our darnedest to stop your name coming out in the – quote unquote – wash.”

Before he leaves, he points his unlit Cohiba at the mountain of paper waiting to be fed into the machine. “After you shred it,” he goes, “incinerate it immediately. The FBI have come up with a way of piecing shredded documents back together. They’ll have the technology here eventually. And there’s secrets in those bags that the country doesn’t need to know.”

Then he’s suddenly gone. You have to hand it to my old man. Even in his sixties, he’s still possibly Ireland’s most crooked man. And that’s in a field of thousands. You have to say fair focks.

The Ort of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, an exhibtion by Alan Clarke, is on show at the Powerscourt Townhouse, Dublin 2, until December 24th