An Irishman's Diary

IN A PUB in my home town some years ago, I met a man I hadn’t seen in decades who, after the usual pleasantries, asked me if I’d heard about the thing that happened out the road earlier. I hadn’t, so he related a tale that was slightly bizarre, although not implausible, especially when it was corroborated by others who joined our conversation.

We needn't go into details here. Suffice to say that, had the event happened, it would have been a news story. Not a "hold the front page" story, but certainly enough for me to have to phone a couple of paragraphs to the Irish Timesnewsdesk.

It’s just that one or two alleged facts didn’t quite add up. And that, even as my informant answered questions about them with a poker face, I remembered he was a man well known locally for his sense of humour.

So I picked away at the narrative until, after some length, he broke into a smile, admitting he and the others had concocted the tale to test the Dublin journalist’s gullibility. In turn, I admitted having been nearly had. Then we laughed and shook hands like chess players agreeing a draw.

The incident reminded me how much Irish people love playing pranks. Or at least they used to. One of the reasons I was off-guard is that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in Dublin much any more. But then again, I suspect it’s in decline everywhere, and that we are now living through the demise of the practical joke, in general.

There are any number of reasons. Maybe the biggest is that, like most self-generated entertainment, prank-playing takes too much time and energy, especially when you have a TV or laptop or iPhone to entertain you instead.

As for the more extreme jokes – the kind that used to feature at Halloween, or during student rag week (whatever happened to that?), many of these would now have health and safety implications, or invite litigation. Maybe changing tastes are a factor too. Whatever the reason, the urge to create humorously embarrassing situations for others is trumped more often than not these days by the fear that a joke will go too far.

THIS IS not always a bad thing, of course. A fact I'm reminded of by a book I've been reading – Graham Robb's Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris– which includes the story of a joke that, for going too far, must hold the all-time European record.

It's not a new story. On the contrary, it inspired part of a famous 19th-century novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. But the prank at the heart of the tale really happened, it seems. And like many a prank before and since, it started in a bar.

The victim was a cobbler named François Picaud, who on the night in question, February 15th, 1807, was celebrating his engagement to a girl called Marguerite. (Funnily enough, 205 years later, a man’s impending marriage remains one of those occasions on which practical jokes are still not only licensed, but obligatory). In any case, no sooner had he left the cafe where he broke the news than the proprietor, one Monsieur Loupian, and three regulars, Messieurs Allut, Chaubard, and Solari, dreamed up a suitable prenuptial ruse: to wit, they would tell police that Picaud was an English spy.

Unfortunately, this was the era of the Napoleonic wars, when paranoia was rife. So, to cut a long story short, Picaud was duly arrested and, without being told the charge, locked up for seven years in a hellhole fortress in the Alps. But there was worse than that. In time, Margeurite came to be comforted by Loupian, whose idea the joke had been. Worse still, Loupian soon overcame whatever guilt he felt to marry her himself and, with the help of her dowry, to open a bigger cafe.

The full details of what followed are now lost to history, except for an account written by a Parisian police archivist, who in turn had heard it from Monsieur Allut’s confessor. The gist of it is that, during the years Picaud languished in jail, he befriended a wealthy fellow prisoner who subsequently bequeathed him his fortune.

Thus, when the cobbler finally returned to society, he did so as a very rich man with a very dark heart and unlimited leisure to pursue revenge. Adopting a false identity, he first secured himself a job in Loupian’s cafe. And there, posing as their new best friend, he was a great comfort to the proprietor’s family as a series of unfortunate accidents reduced them to poverty and despair.

The accidents included poisoning of the owner’s pet parrot; arrangement of an aristocratic marriage for his daughter that scandalously fell through during the wedding banquet when the bridegroom was revealed to be escaped criminal; and eventually the burning of the cafe itself.

This last event expedited Madame Loupian’s early demise from a nervous disorder. In the interim, Picaud had also caught up with Chaubard, whom he stabbed to death, and Solari, who was dispatched in the manner of the parrot. When Loupian’s humiliation was complete, he too was knifed.

Only Allut lived to tell the tale, and he may have exaggerated. Having himself suffered a spell in prison as a result of Picaud’s revenges, he re-emerged to kidnap his nemesis and, in his own account, to kill him by disembowelment.

There are grounds for suspecting Allut and other narrators embellished certain facts. Even so, the story is a salutary one. You may find it useful to reflect on it the next time one of your friends is getting married and, over celebratory drinks, someone suggests playing a joke on him.