Ross O’Carroll-Kelly: ‘I thought Pythagoras was something the Greeks dipped their bread in’

The old man is Scooby Dubious and so is Sorcha. We’re sitting in the kitchen and I mention to them that I was thinking about setting up my own estate agency and there’s no response, other than – like I said – this look of doubt on both their faces.

The old man actually tries to change the subject. "Ireland versus Scotland, Kicker! Have you given much thought to who might play? God, I love this time of year. 'Sixmas' as you famously call it!"

I’m there, “You don’t think I have what it takes, do you? Do you know how many letters of censure I got this year from the Property Services Regulatory Authority? Those are, like, the Oscars of our profession.”

Sorcha’s like, “We’re not saying you’re not a good estate agent, Ross, because you obviously are?”

I’m there, “Oh, that’s good. Because my bonus this year paid for that Audi A8 I bought you for Christmas. The red bow and everything.”

“The point that Sorcha is trying to make,” the old man goes, “is that being in business takes, well, brains.”

I’m there, “You’re saying I don’t have brains?”

“I’m talking about a certain type of brain. You look at the world differently to other people. I always said that’s why your grades were so poor at school. You exist on a different level of rationality to the people who are correcting these papers.”

“It wasn’t down to the fact that I’m thick, no?”

“Oh, you’re far from thick, Ross.”

Line her stomach

I thought Pythagoras was something the Greeks dipped their bread in. I actually said it in maths class. I said you can get it in Thomas's in Foxrock. My old dear uses it to line her stomach before her first Bloody Mary of the day. The teacher laughed so hord, he herniated himself and we had a relief teacher for the next seven weeks.

“Speaking as someone who’s been in business,” Sorcha goes, “I can vouch for the fact that it’s – oh my God – so much horder than it looks.”

She’s obviously talking about Sorcha and Circa, her contemporary and vintage fashion boutique in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre that her old man opened for her basically as a tax write-off. It went belly-up along with the rest of the country in ’08.

She goes, “It’s a huge amount of pressure running a business.”

I’m there, “I can handle pressure. You saw me play rugby, Sorcha. Two hundred people booing me and calling me every name under the sun as I stepped up to take the kick to win the match. Did you see me flinch on that occasion?”

“It’s a different kind of pressure, Ross. When you work for someone else, you’re not obliged to take the troubles of the business home with you every evening and every weekend.”

"You're forgetting. I've been in business? I made a huge success of the old man's shredding company before I unfortunately ran it into the ground. And anyway, I'm pretty much already running Hook, Lyon and Sinker as it is."

JP’s old man is still involved behind the scenes, but I’m in chorge of the day-to-day operation of the business.

“You’re doing amazing work,” she goes. “Amazing, amazing work. And you’re earning really good money. So why do you want to change things?”

"Because," the old man goes, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? Robert Browning, ladies and gentleman!"

Robert Browning? No, me neither.

Sorcha goes, “There’s something else you’re not considering, Ross.”

I’m like, “What’s that?”

“What do you think Mr Conroy’s reaction is likely to be when he finds out you’re planning to set up a rival estate agency?”

I’m there, “He’ll be cool with it.”

Competition

He won’t be cool with it. Competition is good for business, he always says. But no competition is even better.

Sorcha goes, “I doubt he’ll be cool with it. He took you on, Ross. He helped make you the estate agent you are today. Like you said, you’ve got all these letters of warning about your future conduct. That was down his training.”

“It was also down to me having no morals,” I go. “Or human feeling.”

“I’m talking about how he’ll see it? He treated you like a son. He made you managing director of the business ahead of his own son. He’ll be devastated.”

“He’ll understand.”

He won’t understand. He’ll try to destroy me, which is why I’m going to need my wife and my old man to support me – my wife morally, my old man financially.

“Look,” I go, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life working my hole off to make someone else rich. I want other people to work their holes off to make me rich?”

That ends up doing the trick. I watch the old man’s eyes slowly fill up.

"Oh, Charles, you silly old sod," he goes, wiping away tears, then looking at them on the tips of his fingers like he can't believe they're even real. "You know, Kicker, I thought I could never be as proud of you as I was the day you won the Leinster Schools Senior Cup for Castlerock College. But that little speech you just made could have sold Fidel on free market capitalism!"

I’m like, “Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. God, I remember saying something similar when I started out in business. I didn’t put it quite as eloquently as you did, though. Oh, the proverbial apple doesn’t fall far from the quote-unquote tree.”

Sorcha still doesn’t believe in me. But my old man does. Which is good because he’s the one I’m going to be tapping for 400 Ks to set it up.

“Ross,” Sorcha goes, “I really think you’re making a mistake here.”

I’m like, “It’s happening, Sorcha,” and then – I’m really proud of this, it has to be said – I go, “This is going to be the year when Ross is the Boss.”