The old man rues the loss of a taoiseach, but there are far more important matters to think of - such as where the moolah is.
WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME I'm hanging, it has to be said. Long story but last weekend I chatted up this Kim Kardashian lookalike who works in the VHI office on Lower Abbey Street and who turns out to be from, like, Offaly of all places.
So Tuesday night I took her for a few and I suppose inevitably - if that's the word - she suggested taking it on to Copperface Jack's.
Now, I'm not afraid to say it, I've pulled hundreds of boggers in there in my time - better a country girl than an empty bed, is my motto. But I've never brought a bogger to Coppers, and there ended up being a huge row at the door when I went to pay in and they tried to charge me for corkage.
I'm in the sack remembering all of this when I suddenly hear the opening bors from Don't Stop Believing. I check caller ID and it's the old man. I was going to obviously ignore it, roysh, but then I remember that my cor insurance is due. "Sorry to disturb," is his opening line. "I expect you're watching the news - glued to it, I'd say."
I'm there, "Sorry, have we met before?"
"Gone, Kicker - can you believe it? We may never see his like again." I'm there, "I need two grand. Actually, make it three."
"Hennessy rang as soon as he heard. He's seen sense and gone, he said - and that's a direct quote. I thought he was going to go on forever, he said. Cling jealously to power despite all the allegations of corruption, while the country became an international embarrassment. It says something, Ross, that for the first 20 minutes of the conversation I thought we were talking about Robert Mugabe."
I'm like, "Yeah, whatever. Just ring the Sherman, will you? I want that bread this afternoon."
"But oh, no," he goes. "Turns out he was talking about your friend and mine. My old jousting partner, aka Mr Patrick Bartholomew Ahern . . . And it's the oddest thing, Ross. I'm feeling quite emotional. It's rather like that deep burgundy wallpaper I had on the wall of the study - I thought I hated it, but now that it's gone, I'm not so sure I did."
I'm there, "Er, sorry, all of this affects me how exactly?"
"Oh, he was no friend of rugby, Ross, I'll grant you that. Let's not forget the role he played in you and I having to go to bloody Dorset Street to see Ireland play. Him and that Manchester Football Club of his. I won't take back the promise I made four years ago to the voters of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown - tough on soccer, tough on the causes of soccer . . ."
I'm like, "Have you been drinking?" "Afraid so," he goes. "Hennessy and I thought we'd mark the occasion by tucking into that crate of Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou St-Julien we picked up when Berry Bros and Rudd had that sale . . ."
I check the clock. "It's, like, one o'clock in the day!" "Well, I won't stay long," he goes. "I expect Six One will be ringing, looking for my reaction. I'll tell that blasted Dobson what I'll tell that boss of yours the next time I see her - shame on you! A good man - coursed by the bloody dogs of the press and their handlers down at Dublin Castle."
I'm there, "You've changed your tune. Mr Dis Dat Dees and Dohs, you used to call him."
"Well," he goes, "we've a lot more in common than I would have ever dared to imagine. I don't have a monopoly on pain and humiliation, Ross. We've both suffered. Both been forced in front of these Star Chambers to answer their piffling little questions. Where did this cheque come from? Where did that cheque come from? 'Excuse me, Counsel - you eat lobster thermidor for your lunch every day only because of us - me and Bertie and our kind.' People who remember this country when it was a dark, TB-ridden island on the edge of the world, where it rained 366 days a year and it took six months to get a bloody phone put in. Public servants who cared enough about Ireland to want to change it, modernise it - so you show me some respect when you address me."
I'm there, "You need to lie down."
"No, Ross," he goes. "I need to stand up. Because I've sat idly through a decade of this. A long line of great men. Dermot. Denis . . . Men of ingenuity, men of vision - men I've taken quite a lot of money from on the golf course over the years, I hope they won't mind me saying - treated like common criminals. We turned this country around. It wasn't your Irish Times. It wasn't your friends in the Law Library . . ."
In the background, I can hear Hennessy go, "You tell the sons of bitches, Charlie Boy," obviously just as mashed as he is.
"It was us, Ross. We're the economic boom. We're the Celtic Tiger. You think it got here by accident? Without us, the bloody Irish'd still be cleaning their teeth with their own shite. I'll be saying that and a lot more when Dobbo gets here . . ."
"You're forgetting," I go, "you're not allowed to, like, communicate with the media? Under the terms of your, like, temporary release?" That shuts him up. Not for long, though. "Of course," he goes, "threaten me with incarceration lest I speak the truth. Well, Kicker, a great man once said - you can jail a man but you can't jail an idea . . ."
"I think that was Robert Mugabe," I hear Hennessy go. The old man's like, "Oh, was it? Might ask m'learned friend to strike it from the record then . . ." "It's done," Hennessy goes.
I'm there, "Dude, having a deranged old sot for a mother is bad enough without you going down the same road. Now I need that moolah. Are you sober enough to ring the bank?"
"Never thought I'd catch myself saying it," is the last thing he says to me, "but I liked him. I liked him a lot," and then I hear a loud crash as 16 stone of pure lard crashes through what I presume is Hennessy's coffee table.