Five to three, me and Fifi watching the old dear on the Liza Minnelli - it's a date, writes Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
THE NEWEST ADDITION to the O'Carroll-Kelly family is a chihuahua that the old dear bought during the Paris Hilton phase of her ongoing midlife crisis. Fifi is as bald as a plucked chicken, with eyes like saucers and a mouth like a bucket of broken Lego - and yet, as I never tire of saying within earshot of the old dear, it's still only the second ugliest mutt in the house.
Naturally, roysh, I started out hating the thing. You know, I'd see her sitting there with her head sticking out of the old dear's pink Leiber Rattle miniaudiere bag, yapping away like there's no actual tomorrow, and I'd, like, growl at her, just to remind her who's still top dog around here.
The old dear - get this - started baking actual fruitcakes for her and I'm slightly ashamed to admit to having tipped two sachets of Senokot into the mixing bowl one day, causing Fifi to leave a slug's trail of you-know-what all over the white carpet in the hall, stairs and landing.
But then, weirdly, about two months before Christmas, myself and Fifi suddenly bonded. I went downstairs to the kitchen one afternoon to fetch myself a can, only to find her sitting in front of the old Liza Minnelli, watching - of all things - the old dear's show, as in FO'CK Cooking? The funny thing was, roysh, she obviously recognised the old dear because she was, like, borking and wagging her orse, all, I suppose, excitedly. So I ended up sitting down beside her, probably intrigued more than anything, and we ended up watching the old dear cook her red mullet with black pasta together, the two of us pretty much salivating.
The following day, about five to three in the afternoon, I heard this, like, scraping at my bedroom door. So I opened it, roysh - and I know it sounds like I'm making this up - but there was the dog, letting me know that the show was just about to stort. There's a place on the sofa with your name on it, blahdy, blahdy blah.
So I just thought, hey, why not - there's only so much of your day you can spend watching women fight on YouTube. Went downstairs and whatever.
It became, like, a regular thing after that and I have to say I began to actually look forward to our afternoons. I'd be even chatting away to her, saying mostly derogatory things about the old dear in fairness, but I can guarantee you that those 60 minutes were the happiest of Fifi's day.
But a few weeks before Christmas, roysh, things turned sour, when RTÉ called the old dear in and told her to stort cooking dishes that better reflected the new financial realities - in other words, the whole current economic tiger thing? I don't think I imagined it but some of the zip went out of Fifi after that. I know the fairer sex better than anyone and, while our afternoon dates continued, I got the definite impression that the dog wasn't enjoying it as much as she once did. It was like she somehow sensed it was being done on the cheap and she sank, it breaks my hort to tell you, into a bit of a depression.
This would have reached, like, its lowest ebb on Thursday afternoon, when she spent the entire show basically whimpering, to the point where even I started to get a bit down in the dumps myself. It wasn't helped by the fact that there was no beer in the fridge, so I headed down instead to the wine cellar, cracking open a bottle of 1968 Merlot from the case the old dear's agent bought her for Christmas.
So I settle down in the front of the box again, talking sort of, like, soothingly to Fifi, like I do to Honor when she's upset, giving it, "Come on, Feed, it's not so bad. It's not so bad." Of course it actually is?
The old dear's on the screen going, "Now, don't peel the potato - just give it a good scrub, then put a metal skewer through it, to ensure it cooks in the middle. And I should mention - because a lot of viewers tell me how much they despair of the number of potatoes they end up having to throw out - that Dunnes Stores are now doing a Sensible Portions range . . ."
I look at the dog. "You're right," I go. "She has no focking shame." It's at that exact moment, roysh, that my phone goes off - and who is it only Sorcha, ringing to tell me she's so looking forward to watching next week's inauguration and she's actually thinking of watching the entire West Wing again from, like, series one, to celebrate.
Then she goes, "Oh my God, Ross, what's all that whining?" and I tell her the whole story that I've just told you. She listens patiently, then goes, "Well, she just has to understand, Ross, that the world has, like, changed. Conspicuous consumption is so out. Even Hermès on Madison Avenue are offering customers the option of, like, a plain carrier bag now? I'm thinking of doing the same in my shop . . ."
I listen to a good 10 minutes of this kind of thing, then hang up. I look down for some reason and notice that the dog has managed to knock over my pint glass, spilling red wine all over the new wooden floor.
She's also lapped about two thirds of it up. And - a good plug for Merlot this - she's actually stopped whimpering. In fact, she's back to her old, yappy self, bouncing around the room at just the sound of the old dear's voice.
The old dear's giving it, "If I was making this at home, the cheese I'd use would be a nice Grafton or some Lincolnshire Poacher. But here, I'm just going to use this . . ."
Louder and louder the borking gets. You'd never know the old dear had just cooked a baked potato, cut it in half and stuck an Easi Single into it.
I don't know about the rest of you but I've decided that pissed on Merlot in the middle of the afternoon is how me and Fifi are going to see our way through the current economic blahdy blah.
www.rossocarrollkelly.ie