Roysh, it was the year we said goodbye to an Irish rugby ledge, the great comic creation Ross ‘The Rossmeister’ O’Carroll-Kelly.
Ross’s alter ego, Paul Howard, surprised us all when he called full time on the pride of D4, Dublin’s rugby postcode.
Whose adventures we have been enjoying over a quarter of a century, 21 novels and three plays.
But as Paul/Ross consoles us with his last novel Don’t Look Back in Ongar we should celebrate our times together.
A Celtic Tiger cub
It began for this journalist in the knocking hours of the Celtic Tiger.
For an introduction to D4 where I would work for the next 13 years Ross would provide invaluable.
As a rugby jock in the heartland of Irish rugby and accidental social satirist.
Now many a time I would refer back to his How To Get By In South Dublin On, Like, €10,000 a day.
And familiarise myself with the lingo, the characters, politics, culture and places in liveried South Dublin.
And its opposite, the earthy, GAA-loving, gangster glorifying North side.
Bridge the generations
I’d have discovered them myself but here’s where I found Ross and where he still lingers.
Although Paul has sent him into the sunset no doubt on the cusp of leading Ireland to lift the Rugby World Cup.
The best place to find Ross is The Bridge.
Around the corner from my old paper The Irish Daily Mail in Embassy House.
And knew it and drank in it as Bellamy’s and continued to when Jamie Heaslip, Sean O’Brien and the Kearney brothers took it on.
The D4 drinking dens
Of course, Ross and his crew are well known around the hostelries of Ballsbridge.
The dearly-departed Kiely’s, Paddy Cullen’s Crowe’s and The Horse Show House.
Where I was a regular too, as I was at Ross’s fave bunk down.
The D4 instution that is The InterContinental, when Sorcha threw him out.
Wicklow ways
Few figures have done more to promote South Dublin and south Co. Wicklow or W4 as it is called.
And bear in mind that this is the land of Joyce, Yeats and Beckett.
So Bono’s Killiney & Dalkey gets a shout-out, Bob Geldof’s Dun Laoghaire.
And, of course, our old stomping ground of Greystones, the last stop on the line.
Which is where we’ve got to at the end of 2024 and a quarter-century of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.
The year we said goodbye to an Irish rugby ledge.