An Irishman's Diary

NO SOONER do I suggest that being “passionate” has become the key requirement for a career in business (Irishman’s Diary, March 8th) than I tune into Dragon’s Den on Sunday night last and see that even that may no longer be enough.

Among those roasted on the programme was a would-be entrepreneur seeking €25,000 investment for his fledgling business, which involved odour-eating shoe inserts. And twice after his presentation, the panel of dragons saw fit to mention how “passionate” he was about his product.

It surely followed, I thought – instinctively rooting for the guy – that they would give him the money. After all, even in a world where passion is so rampant, it can be no small achievement to feel it about the problem of smelly feet.

But, alas, there was no €25,000 for the shoe man. On the contrary, the five potential investors all declared themselves “out”, one after another, with something bordering on alacrity. You wouldn’t see as many emergency exits in a football stadium.

Which suggests that the change I predicted – whereby “passionate” becomes devalued from corporate overuse and joins “enthusiastic” on the scrap-heap of dead adjectives – has already begun.

Soon the rhetorical ante will be upped again. Then you will no longer impress anybody by just being “passionate about property” (thanks to Justin Kilcullen for that one, from an estate agency in Kildare), or about food, or foot odour, or whatever. Thenceforth, “in paroxysms” will probably be the minimum emotional state required, although you might get away with being “apoplectic” in the less-demanding back-office roles.

IN THE MEANTIME, Sligo reader Richard Allen urges me to forget about the passion pandemic, even though it's still gripping the country, and instead asks if I could do something about the mass misuse of the prefix "pre".

He refers to such linguistic outrages as “pre-planned”, “pre-booked”, and “pre-recorded”, which he hears everywhere. And pointing the finger at a certain former Irish rugby international named Ward, he makes special mention of the phrase “pre-rehearsed move”.

Sure enough, we do hear that last one a lot in connection with the Irish rugby team. But at least until now, I have always assumed that the concept of pre-rehearsing moves was a genuine innovation of rugby’s professional era.

Before that, I reasoned, moves had been merely rehearsed, and come match-day, the amateurism of the approach was all-too-often exposed. Whereas in the new era, full-time players could be required to perform a rehearsal before the rehearsal, as it were, and top coaches would settle for nothing less.

I imagined Declan Kidney walking players through a move first, like a director setting his actors’ marks. Maybe, like actors, the players would also work out their motivation at this point. Only when everything was clear in their heads would they move on from pre-rehearsal to the rehearsal proper.

And who could criticise such an exhaustive approach? Certainly not I, whose sporting career – such as it was – relied heavily instead on the post-rehearsal. How this worked was that I would be playing a game of soccer, say, and occasionally find myself through on goal with only the keeper to beat, if I could side-foot the ball calmly past him.

Unfortunately, as a rule, the pressure of this situation would cause me to suffer a nervous breakdown, and maybe kick my standing foot instead of the ball, before falling over in an ignominious heap. Later I would enter the post-rehearsal stage of my routine. In which, for a week afterwards – or in the case of the more shameful incidents, for several years – I would run through the move again mentally, over and over, until I got it right.

Truth to tell, I have yet to achieve closure on some of the worst incidents. So far be it from me to knock the Irish rugby team for pre-rehearsing moves – if that’s what they really do, and they’re not just codding us into paying them for the supposed extra work.

AS FOR THEother phrases Richard mentions, well, yes, "pre-booking" and "pre-recording", are both surely prefixes too far. On the other hand, I might give "pre-planning" a pass. Not that it's in any way correct: indeed the "pre" is an unsightly and unnecessary addition to the "planning", like a lean-to on a Georgian mansion.

That’s just the point, however. Given the shortcomings of our planning system (especially during the years when so many people were “passionate about property”) maybe there’s an argument for allowing retention of the prefix in this case, to emphasise the concept that planning is something that should happen before an event, rather than during or after it.

But getting back to the P-word, finally, reader John Scott writes about being at a hurling match in Carlow last year and hearing one of the players described as “very passionate”. This didn’t imply a high skill level, clearly. So when he inquired what it did mean, exactly, the speaker explained that the player in question “would cut the legs off you”.

I don’t know if that hurler plays rugby too. If so, he sounds like a potential late call-up for Ireland’s game in Twickenham on Saturday. He wouldn’t be the first Carlow GAA player to become an overnight star in international rugby. And if he hurried he could still make a couple of training sessions, although I presume he’s missed the pre-rehearsals.