The old dear doesn't know it yet, but she's about to have an extra guest to cook for, writes Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
I WALK INTO RTÉ reception like I own the place. The bird behind the desk - think Lindsay Lohan except, I hope, more reliable - looks at me with her eyes out on stalks. I am looking well, in all fairness to me.
"I'm looking for Fionnuala O'Carroll-Kelly," I go. "Late fifties, bet-down, dresses like a vagrant," and, without saying anything, the bird points to a spot on the wall over my right shoulder, where there's a humungous TV, with the old dear's big melted welly of a face filling every inch of the screen.
They really should be more careful. A kid could wander in here - end up wetting the bed for the rest of his life.
I didn't even realise FO'CK Cooking went out live.
"Er, what's your name?" the bird goes, cracking on not to know.
I play along, roysh, tell her it's Ross O'Carroll-Kelly and she says she'll let them know in the studio that I'm waiting. So I give her the guns, then wander over to this big leather sofa to see what the old dear's got cooking today.
It turns out, roysh, to be breakfasts.
As luck would have it, her guest in the kitchen today is none other than Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh. Now everyone in the world, I'm pretty sure, knows how I feel about Bla - in other words, she's a goddess to me.
Up there, standing next to the old dear, it's like Beauty and the Beast, of course.
Still, I need somewhere to live.
The old dear is cooking devilled kidneys with sage polenta discs - which are beautiful, roysh, because I've had them, like, a million times - but you can see that Bla's a bit Scooby Dubious about it. "Devilled kidneys?" she's going.
Of course, the old dear's suddenly on the big-time defensive. "Just because there's all this talk of recession," she goes, "doesn't mean we have to start living like animals. What better way to face into a day of economic downturn, et cetera, than with a good salmon kedgeree inside you? Or - my speciality - coffee granita with panna cotta . . ." Also incredible. I will say this for the axe-faced wench - she knows how to cook.
"Don't mind me," Bla goes. "I get a bowl of cereal in the morning and that's it." In fairness, she could boil me one of her old slippers in the morning and I'd eat it. "But devilled kidneys - is it not a bit, I don't know, elitist?"
The old dear gives her what I'm pretty sure is called a withering look.
"Bláthnaid, I get inquiries from all classes about my recipes, from senior counsels to - what's this they're called? - longshoremen. Pikelets with kumquat conserve is nothing to be ashamed of in this day and age . . ."
Bla holds it together, in fairness to her. "I hope your family know how lucky they are," she goes.
Which is the old dear's cue to launch into one of her bullshit speeches about how much her husband and her son mean to her, all for the benefit of the cameras, of course.
"For me," she goes, "cooking is the most intimate, non-physical way of expressing love. My favourite thing in the entire world, alongside my writing, of course, is to cook for Charles and, em . . . Ross." I swear, she nearly forgot my actual name. No mention either that she literally turfed me out on the street a year ago. Or that her husband's been sleeping in the spare room since he got out of chokey.
She's like, "My family is the most important thing in the world to me," which is suddenly my cue. I hop up from the sofa and just, like, charge the doors, before Lindsay Lohan gets a chance to call for security.
I'm suddenly in this little corridor, roysh, but I don't know which studio it is. I'm like
one of those Bisto Kids, though - I end up following the waft of Chanel No 5 into Studio 6.
She's wearing enough to drown a cow in.
All these total randomers with, like, clipboards and earpieces stort making their way towards me. Of course I'm like that Luke Fitzgerald - three or four swerves of the hips and I'm straight past them, walking onto the studio floor - live television, remember.
Bláthnaid goes, "Oh my God, Fionnuala - look, it's Ross!" at the same looking me up and down, as if to say, has he been working out?
The old dear puts her hands up to her boat race and goes, "What a lovely surprise!" which it obviously isn't - she's thinking, why didn't somebody Taser him?
Of course I'm playing the loving son for the cameras, roysh. I'm going, "Can I just echo everything that my mom said there. Without her cooking and general home-making skills, I would never have become the rugby player I once was. And can I also say, I've been living away from home for the past, I suppose, twelve months. And I've missed her cooking so much . . . I've decided to come home."
There's, like, a round of applause from the studio floor. It actually looks like it was a surprise purposely set up by RTÉ. But the tears she cried while she was closing out the programme were not tears of happiness, I can tell you that.
The next thing, roysh, the credits roll. I've got one orm around the old dear, one orm around Bláthnaid, and a big-shitting grin on my face.
Lip-readers may have noticed me turn to the old dear and go, "Tomorrow, I'll have Eggs Florentine - make it sometime after eleven."
www.rossocarrollkelly.ie