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Fifty grandingtons. That's what this crowd in, like, Budapest want to share the secret of Dr Holger Esterházy's hair restoration miracle with me. I tell Winker Raymond – who did the Sportsman Dip course with me in UCD – that it seems a bit on the, I don't know, steep side? But he reminds me that a year ago he had a head like a plucked scrotum and his confidence was on the floor – and now he's dating a woman who's, like, 26.
“Twenty-focking-six?” I go. “Yeah, no, you’ve got me convinced. Don’t worry, Dude, I’ll get the moo,” then I hang up on him.
It's not a hair transplant, Honor. It's a secret serum that promotes follicle regrowth
“No,” Sorcha goes – this is, like, straight away, before I’ve even opened my mouth.
We're in the kitchen. She's making her traditional Dublin coddle with a southside twist – the sausages are venison sausages and the potatoes are roasted in duck fat – even though she was accused of cultural appropriation when she shared the recipe on social media and had her Instagram account suspended for a week.
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I’m like, “Come on, Sorcha, how much do you spend every year having yourself, I don’t know, shaved and botoxed and panel-beaten into shape?”
"Ross," she goes, "you are not squandering €50,000 of our money on something you don't even know will work. It's not the Celtic Tiger anymore."
It’s not the Celtic Tiger anymore. The same thing she said to me when I bought a jet ski the day after the famous bank bailout – and she’s been reminding me of it pretty much every day since.
My phone beeps. It’s a text from, like, Honor, telling me to come upstairs, which is what I end up doing. She’s in her room, stretched out on her bed.
“What’s that focking smell?” she goes, looking up from her phone.
I’m there, “Your old dear’s doing her famous gourmet coddle for dinner.”
"Er, the one that nearly got her, like, cancelled?"
“Yeah, no, that one. Hang on, was it you who reported her?”
“Dad, it’s a classic case of someone from a dominant culture stealing something from a minority culture.”
“But you whipped all those randomers up into an actual frenzy about it.”
"That's because it was disgusting and I didn't want to ever have to eat it again. Anyway, I was just listening to your conversation with her – about the 50 grand for your hair transplant?"
“It’s not a hair transplant, Honor. It’s a secret serum that promotes follicle regrowth.”
“Yeah, whatever. I know where you can get the money.”
“If you’re going to mention the college fund that Sorcha’s old pair set up for you when you were born, don’t bother. I spent it on that jet ski that’s rusting away in the garage.”
“I wasn’t going to mention my college fund. Dad, have you ever heard of, like, Cameos?”
“Cameos? It sounds like a late-night chipper in Dún Laoghaire where you’d be scared to make eye contact with people.”
“Cameos is this, like, social media platform where you can get celebrities to, like, say s**t for money.”
“What kind of s**t are we talking?”
"All kinds. You can get Mary Byrne off the X Factor to sing happy birthday to you in the style of Mariah Carey or someone from Fair City to say, I don't know, good luck with the colonic irrigation on Wednesday."
“What a world we’ve created – and I genuinely mean that. So what does any of this have to do with me needing 50 capital Ks?”
“I’m saying you should sign up to do it.”
I’m like, “Me?” and I laugh. “Who the fock would want a message from me?”
“You’d be surprised,” she goes. “Okay, I took the liberty of, like, signing you up. Like, you used to play rugby –”
“Understatement of the decade, but continue.”
"– and it turns out that a surprising number of people know who you actually are?"
“I made grown men cry, Honor. And not in the way that your old dear does when she’s trying to parallel pork.”
"You've already got, like, more than 100 requests for videos."
“Are you serious?”
She goes, “It’s random, I know, but you’re actually quite popular,” and she points her phone at me. “Okay, look into the camera and say, ‘Happy birthday, Noah! You’re a total legend!’ Oh, and do that finger guns thing that you do.”
So I end up doing what she tells me – and we get it in, like, one take.
“Congratulations,” Honor goes, “you’ve just earned €200.”
I’m like, “200 yoyos? For that?”
"Yeah, no, I decided to price you at the high end of the price range?"
“At this rate, I’ll have the 50 big ones in… well, do you the math. Let’s do another one.”
“Okay, look into the camera and go, ‘Good luck in the mocks, Hugo! And remember, what you get in the Leaving Cert doesn’t define your life! Where you went to school does!”
Again, I say the words – this time, I do it in, like, five or six takes, because it’s a long one with a lot of words – and Honor goes, “200 yoyos.”
I laugh. I’m there, “Gimme another one.”
“Okay, can you say, ‘Hey, Blackrock, wishing you all the best in the Leinster Schools Senior Cup this year! Hope you get that trophy! You can’t knock the Rock!”
“Hey, Blackrock, wishing you–. Hang on, I’m not saying that.”
“What? Why not?”
"Honor, I wouldn't say that for 200 thousand yoyos."
“Dad, do you know how bald you’re going? Do you want me to show you a picture I took of your head?”
“How many of those 100-or-so video requests are about the Leinster Schools Senior Cup, Honor?”
She sort of, like, huffs. She’s like, “All of them.”
I’m there, “And what about the two I just did?”
"I made them up just to try to get you into it. There's, like, 60 or 70 from Blackrock. Quite a few from Newbridge. Some from Gonzaga. Mary's. Terenure College – oh my God, those goys really hate you."
I’m there, “I couldn’t bring myself to do it, Honor – not for all the money slash follicle regrowth serum in the world.”
But then she holds up her phone and shows me a photo of the top of my head, which she seems to have taken while I was re-watching Ireland versus France two nights ago.
“Dad,” she goes, “I don’t think you have any choice.”