What’s my name? I don’t even bother answering him, just reef open the glove comportment and hand him my licence through the window, roysh, and he gives it the once-over and he goes, ‘This is a provisional licence,’ making no effort at all to hide the fact that he’s a bogger. It’s like he’s actually proud of it. I go, ‘Your point is?’ and the way he looks at me, roysh, I can tell he just wants to snap those bracelets on me and haul my orse off to Donnybrook. He’s like, ‘Provisional licences are issued subject to certain restrictions. One is that you have a fully qualified driver accompanying you at all times.’

I turn around to the bird beside me and I go, ‘Have you passed your test?’ and she’s like, ‘Oh my God, ages ago,’ and she storts rooting through her Louis V for her licence, which she eventually finds and I hand it to focking Blackie Connors through the window. He throws the eyes over it, roysh, then he hands it back to me and I’m thinking of taking a sneaky look at it myself, maybe find out this bird’s name, because she’s a total randomer and at some point between her telling me her name in Annabel’s and us doing the bould thing out in her gaff in Clonskeagh, I’ve managed to forget what she calls herself. In the end I don’t. The goy goes, ‘Where are your L-plates?’ and I have to admit, roysh, that he has me there, although he knows he can’t lift me for it, which is what he’d really like to do. I go, ‘Don’t own a set. Never did. To me they’re a total passion-killer,’ and I smile at the bird beside me. Martinique rings a bell. The goy goes, ‘Did you know that it’s an offence for a driver operating a vehicle on a provisional licence not to display Learner plates?’ but I don’t answer because it’s not, like, a real question, and he looks at my licence again – like it’s a forgery or something – and he tells me to, like, stay where I am and then he walks back to his cor, roysh, and in the rear-view I can see him getting on the radio. The bird’s there giving it, ‘OH! MY! GOD! Why are you giving him such attitude? I am SO not being arrested, Ross. HELLO? I’ve got cello in, like, half an hour,’ and I tell her to drink the Kool-Aid, the goy’s only trying to put the shits up us.

I’m always getting pulled over by the Feds, especially here, just after you go under the bridge at, like, UCD. I’m too smart to get caught doing more than forty, but what happens is they see the baseball cap, they see the Barbie doll next to me and they hear ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ blasting out through the windows at, like, a million decibels. Boggers or not, they’re not thick, these goys, and because it’s a focking Micra, they know straight away that it’s a young dude driving his old dear’s cor and – probably out of total jealousy – they end up pulling me over. I’m still looking at the goy in the mirror. He’s finished talking on the radio and now he’s just trying to make me sweat, which I’m SO not.

People always ask me, roysh, how did I get this cool? Not being big-headed or anything, but they genuinely want to know how it is that I pretty much have it all – Dead Eye Dick with a rugby ball and the stor of the school team, good-looking, amazing body, big-time chormer, great with the ladies and absolutely loaded.

But to be honest with you, roysh, I wasn’t always shit-hot. Between me and you, when I was in, like, transition year I was actually as big a loser as Fionn. I used to basically get bullied. I remember the day I found out that we didn’t always live in Foxrock. Two or three fifth years were in the process of, like, stuffing my head down the toilet one lunchtime when one of them happened to go, ‘Go back to the focking Noggin.’ So that night, roysh, I went to the old man, who’s a complete and utter dickhead by the way, and I go, ‘Did we live in Sallynoggin?’ – straight out with it, just like that – and he looks at me, roysh, and he knows there’s no point in lying, so he goes, ‘It was more Glenageary than Sallynoggin, Ross,’ and he tells me it was a long time ago, before the business took off.

But that whole Noggin thing followed me around for years. If they weren’t stuffing my head down the pan and flushing it, they were giving me wedgies, or setting fire to my schoolbag, ha focking ha. Then one day, roysh, I’m walking down the corridor, minding my own business and these two fifth years grab me in a headlock and drag me into, like, one of the locker rooms. They stort giving me the usual crack, roysh – ‘Are you getting a spice burger from the Noggin Grill later?’ and ‘Are you going up to the Noggin Inn for a few jors?’ – when all of a sudden, roysh, I hear a voice behind them go, ‘To get at him, goys, you’re going to have to come through me first,’ and I look up and it’s, like, Christian. So all hell breaks loose and the two of us end up decking the two fifth years and afterwards he tells me that Obi Wan has taught me well and I tell him he’s the best friend I’ve ever had, which he is, roysh, even if it sounds a bit gay.

Of course the word went around, roysh, that we’d basically decked two goys who, it turned out, were on the S, and nobody laid a finger on me after that. Then the next year there was, shall we say, an incident that helped me complete the change from geek to chic – basically I got my Nat King Cole before anyone else in our whole year. AND it was with an older woman.

To cut a long story short, roysh, our school arranged this thing called The Urban Plunge, which was basically an exchange programme between us and a school from, like, Pram Springs. It was typical of the Brothers in our place. They knew we were loaded, roysh, and most of us would never have to work for a thing in our lives, but it was their ‘Christian responsibility’ to show us how people less fortunate than ourselves – meaning skobies – lived, as if we wanted to know.

The way it worked, roysh, was that you got paired off with some Anto or other – in fact, I think my one was actually called Anto. Anyway, he ended up half-inching everything in our gaff that wasn’t nailed down. I remember the old man and the old dear, the silly wagon, walking around the house making a list of all the stuff that had disappeared, the old dear going, ‘Your Callaway driver, darling,’ and the old man shaking his head and writing it down. Of course Castlerock agreed to pay for everything on condition that they didn’t involve the Feds.

But while this was all going on, roysh, I was getting my own back by scoring his older sister, we’re talking Wham, Bam, that’s for the old dear’s Waterford Crystal limited edition votive, Ma’am. Tina was her name, roysh, a total howiya, but she was, like, twenty and I was, like, sixteen and by the time I got back from my two-week tour of duty in Beirut – every meal came with curry sauce, roysh, and they never answered the door in case it was the rent man or a loan shork – I was a legend in the school. The head-lice were gone after a couple of weeks and I settled well into my new existence as a complete focking stud.

‘What speed were you doing?’

Glenroe’s finest is back at the window. I was miles away there. I’m like, ‘I think you’ll find I was just under forty,’ which he knows well from his speed camera. He’s just trying to put the shits up me. He hands me back my licence and he goes, ‘I’ll let you go … this time,’ and I have to stop myself from going, ‘Oh, I’m SO grateful, orsehole,’ and he goes, ‘Get a set of Learner plates when you’re in town, Rod.’

I’m there, ‘Rod? Rod? It’s Ross! Ross O’Carroll-Kelly! You might not know the name now, but by the seventeenth of March you will.’ He goes, ‘Why? What’s happening on that day?’ The smell of turnip and spuds off him. I go, ‘What’s happening on that day? That’s the day I become

 

Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, living focking legend.’