The last thing astronaut George Naylor remembered was a curious glow to the side of the spaceship. He had vague memories of some kind of inter-stellar whirlpool but after that it was all blank.

He checked the instruments on the ship and blinked. It couldn’t possibly be correct. The reading said the year was 3977, that meant they had travelled over 2000 years through time, into the future. With his two companions, Todge and Brandon, he left the crippled craft and set out to find shelter and civilisation.

They followed some footprints away from the ship, heading into a dense forest. The three men spoke little as they tried to make sense of what had happened to them. All of a sudden they were set upon by a cadre of highly evolved apes. Todge put up a fight and was killed on the spot. Brandon was injured in the fight and when they were brought back to the laboratory run by the apes he was lobotomised and spent the rest of his life drooling like a Leeds United fan.

The elders of this new civilisation want Naylor for experiments and over the course of many months they perform all kinds of invasive tests on him. Despite their education and perspicacity they have yet to discover the enema, and Naylor loses two stone in a matter of days as they perform a series of them on him.

Soon they accept him as part of their lives, realise he is not dangerous and allow to him move freely within their community. For his part Naylor is bereft. It’s not that he can’t associate with the apes, he simply cannot get to grips with the fact that he is the only human left. He takes to wild partying, drinking heavily and generally being quite maudlin. On one of his nights out he comes across a strip club. Sexually frustrated, but not so that he would consider inter-species breeding, he is shocked to discover that one of the dancers is also a human.

He cannot believe it. While other ape strippers are more discerning about which tunes they will remove their clothes to, the human doesn’t care. Whatever the song, she will get them off. Naylor looks on in amazement and at the end of the night, as the apes have finished putting ape dollars in her g-string he approaches her.

“I can’t believe it”, he blurts. “Are you real? Are you … human …? It’s so long … my God … what are you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”, she says. “I’m a primate dancer, a dancer for monkeys … and any old music will do”.

After they stopped having hit singles the lead singer of the Fine Young Cannibals found himself down on his luck and tried his hand at providing sexual services to the truly perverted.

His speciality was with animals and after some initial success he embarked on an ambitious plan to make clones of ponies who would specialise in oral sex.

He invested all his savings in it but it turned out be a complete disaster as nobody would fuck a Gift horse in the mouth.

Stinking Pete and Dirty Dave were both keen par 3 golfers. They would play a couple of times a week but every time Stinking Pete would win.

No matter how well Dirty Dave played or how much he practiced he always lost. Stinking Pete got a hole-in-one on the 18th in their tightest ever game to win and take the few bob they bet on it.

Dirty Dave knew he needed an edge, something to give him an advantage. He decided it was all in the tools so he set about making his own clubs. Trial and a considerable amount of error finally paid off and soon he had the perfect prototype – a stuffed bird from Trafalgar Square attached to the end of a titanium shaft.

Stinking Pete laughed at first but when Dave won a new era dawned – and that was how the game of pigeon putt was invented.

It was most interesting to read that MCD are taking Prince to court over his no-show at Croke Park last summer. He says it was all someone else’s fault and MCD say it was all his fault but if anyone talks about it they’re going to get Carter Ruck to take them to task. The truth will out in court sometime next year.

However, I can exclusively reveal that Prince was in Dublin last summer. You see, me and him have been pals for years now. Ever since he wrote that song about me. No, not Sexy Motherfucker, Purple Rain. Back then if I ate enough blackberries my urine would turn a bright reddish-violet and he would implore to me relieve myself from his thirty-sixth floor balcony spattering passers-by with my song title inspiring piss.

We have stayed in touch over the years and he paid a secret visit to Ron’s last summer just to ensure everything was going ok for the gig. Don’t believe what you read about him cancelling it because of poor ticket sales. That is so far from the truth as to be really far away from the truth. He is notoriously temperamental and it was in a fit of pique that the concert was cancelled.

As he glugged a pint of Guinness and chomped away on one of Ron’s famous Scotch Eggs, he, being somewhat in his cups, decided he’d invite everyone to dinner. But not at a fancy restaurant or anything like that. No, dinner in my house and he would be the chef. I was a bit put out at the fact he had invited people to my house as I generally do not like people being in my house but I went along with it as he’s an old friend and a bit stroppy if he doesn’t get his way.

Now, Prince is a vegetarian and steadfastly refuses to even look at meat, let alone handle or cook it. I am a rampant carnivore but earlier in the day I gorged myself on offal pie to make up for the fact that dinner was going to be meat free. That afternoon I took Prince shopping. Off we set on my trusty Honda 50 and went to various supermarkets as he sought ingredients for his vegetable and bean stew. We went from grocers in Crumlin to Tesco and Superquinn and Dunnes Stores and corner shops for the various bits and pieces.

He was, I thought, completely satisified and after driving him and 7 stone of vegetables around for three and a half hours I was rather tired and ready to head home. But no. He had other plans. I have to say we argued. Me craning my neck to turn around and berate a stroppy rock star who was insisting we got the nearest German discount supermarket at once. It was quite the contretemps, I have to admit and in the end I simply refused despite him insisting we needed a specific kind of zucchini to make the menu complete.

“Look”, I said, “you’ll simply have do without. Haven’t you got enough anyway?”

“No”, he screeched, beside himself with temper. “I need it. It’s the vital ingredient. You must take me”.

But I did not. And Prince, having been unable to source his Lidl Red Courgette, swore never to return to Ireland again.

Some years ago I had a friend called Andy. He was an odd chap. Rather too curious about the lives of other people and partial to wrapping bits of his body in clingfilm for days at a time until the dampness caused a strange fungal mould which he would then scrape off and use in his cooking.

He was determined to live life differently and in the 80s became one of the very first Irish people to move to Luxembourg before it became one of the most popular emigration destinations. He settled in the hilariously named town of Differdange which many of you will recognise as the name of an STD picked up in various parts of South-East Asia.

While there he was focussed on living life as the Luxembourgers did and this involved taking part in their customs and traditions instead of forcing his own on a population not yet ready for that kind of change. So he found work in factory which manufactured cassette tape covers and the little metal bits that hold the rubber on at the top of a pencil.

He took part in the local community activities and fairs, the old Luxembourgian traditions bringing joy into his life. For example, on the last Thursday of every month they would form teams to scour the woods for a red squirrel and the first one to paint the entire tail of the animal with white emulsion would win a boiled pheasant, a traditional delicacy of the area.

And at Easter time parents would hide brightly coloured eggs on cliff faces for their children to find and Andy was very much involved in the clean-up and splinting side of things.

However, after some time he grew a bit homesick. He dreamt of his friends back in Dublin and longed to hear an Irish voice again. There was an Irish bar in the town but it was run by a crotchety Iranian and populated entirely with disaffected Walloons. He heard rumours that there was another Irishman in the town but he had never seen him.

One night, after drinking rather too much gooseberry ale, he was walking home through the narrow streets when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A green shirt. It looked like an Irish football shirt. He thought he saw the name ‘Grimes’ on the back of it and he knew no Luxembourger would have that word on the back of a shirt for in the local dialect it meant ‘To insert a brush handle in one’s anus’, a custom much frowned upon since World War II (although underground Grimseing clubs could be found if one looked hard enough).

The green shirted man appeared to be pushing a wagon of some kind. Andy staggered through the streets hoping to catch up with him but took a wrong turn and ended up some hours later in Northern France. He returned home and was filled with a desire to find this person. He spoke to colleagues at work but as they were all abstemious types who did not go out in the evenings they were unable to help him.

Night after night he went out and soon, speaking to people in various bars in the town, he had information that the person he was looking for sold Mexican snacks from a portable transportation device, the likes of which had never been seen in the country before. There were all kinds of rumours about this mythical man. That he was a war criminal, that he had a cloven foot and a hand which more closely resembled a paw than anything human, that he had been a founder member of Kid Creole and the Coconuts and even that he was the heir to the throne of ‘Oesling’, the nothern region of the country where it was perfectly legal for a man to marry up to five times as long as at least two of the women were his first cousins.

Yet nobody could tell him if the proprietor of this mobile food contraption was Irish.

He scoured the streets, night after night, but had no luck in finding him. Andy was upset, not only because he wanted to find another Irishman but because he would, from time to time, get the faint odour of tacos or burritos or crispy tortilla chips. He had practically given up hope when one night he turned the corner and there, right before him, was a ruddy faced, ginger haired man in an Ireland shirt selling his Tex-Mex wares.

“My God”, said Andy. “I thought for a time you were merely a figment of my imagination”.

“Not at all”, said the man. “Sure amn’t I here in front of ye and if I wasn’t in front of ye where would I be?”

“And you are Irish! Oh heavenly joy”.

“Aye, I’m as Irish as Flann O’Brien getting the length off James Joyce”.

“I can’t believe this. It’s so great to have another Irisman to talk to at last. This country would leave a longing in you, for sure”.

“That it would. Like Brendan Behan going ten minutes without a pint or calling Samuel Beckett a cunt”

“Well, I’m so pleased to meet you. My name is Andy. And you?”

“Oh Andy”, said the man handing him a complimentary bag of snacks, “I’m Nacho Paddy”

It is the future. A dark, bleak time after a great war which has left humanity on the brink.

A few stalwarts struggle to right what went wrong but the forces of evil prevail. They are pervasive, easy to follow, they give people what they want without struggle and because of this the light of goodness than exists in man is almost extinguished.

A desperate alliance strives not to overthrow the pernicious overlords but to remind those who they control that there is a better way. It takes intelligence and bravery to see the way of life they try and expound. Many listen but few hear.

The dark ones know that they have nearly completed their task, that in a short time the cabal which troubles them will have to give up. They grow arrogant and mocking. Previously happy to let the resistance exist they now round them up. Such is their hubris their leaders offer them a deal. A once off battle of the resistance’s choosing, winner takes all. They give them 24 hours to think about it, never considering for one second the possibility they might lose.

The next day the resistance return and accept the offer. The battle shall take place in the form of a game of football between players of goodness and virtue and players of a fiendish and heinous disposition. It is agreed that each side shall choose 11 players from the past. Those players will then cloned and duplicated, for this is the future, so that each team has a squad of 22. Two of each in case of injury.

It takes time to recreate the players but eventually the line-ups are complete.

The Evil XI: Andy Goram – Cristian Panucci – John Terry – Alan Hansen – Ashley Cole – Cristiano Ronaldo – Joey Barton – Roy Keane – El Hadji Diouf – Didier Drogba – Malcom Christie

The good XI: Packie Bonner – Dave Langan – Bobby Moore – Franco Baresi – Paolo Maldini – Liam Brady – Cesc Fabregas – Ashley Grimes – Johann Cruyff – Pele – Ferenc Puskas

Many debate the goodness and evil of the teams but eventually the debates die down and each side is given two weeks to train and work on tactics and set-pieces. The venue is the only football stadium left standing in the entire world, Richmond Park in Inchicore, home to former League of Ireland team St Patrick’s Athletic.

In the annals of history many will claim to have been there that fateful day, many more than the 5,500 capacity that’s for certain. If the Evil XI wins then the resistance must disband, allowing the dark forces to engulf the world with no turning back. Should the Good XI win then those same dark forces will cease their malign influence over the human race.

A watertight contract is drawn up. Despite the war and the billions who have died lawyers still remain.

The day of the match arrives. There is an intense atmosphere. A small pocket of fans supporting the Good XI stands on a terrace, huddling together for warmth for the night is cold. The teams emerge. The Evil XI strut onto the pitch, cocky, self-assured, while the Good XI have suffered problems in the build up to the game. They suspect foul play but they are down one Pele, one Fabregas and one Bonner through injury and poorly completed clones. They cannot afford to lose any more.

The game begins, refereed by a clone of Graham Poll, and it is the Goods who start the brighter. They zip the ball around the pristine turf, leaving the Evils chasing shadows. An early move sees Cruyff take down a 60 yard crossfield ball from Baresi, he performs an himself-turn, chips it to the back post and Pele rises highest to head home. 1-0 Goods.

The Evils are stunned. They react the only way the know how: evily. Barton goes in neck high on Ashley Grimes, slicing open his cartoid artery with his studs. Medics take the fatally injured midfielder off and replace him with his clone. Cristiano Ronaldo does 100mph stepovers giving credence to rumours that the Evils have been genetically modified. He runs past Langan, gets into the area and with nobody anywhere near him he falls over and shrieks loudly.

Penalty! John Terry steps up, slips, the ball hits the post. Terry starts to weep uncontrollably but just as Maldini is about to clear Diouf snaps his neck and rolls the ball past Bonner for the equaliser. The Goods object, the ref waves their protests away, poses for a picture and restarts the game. Maldini’s replacement is brought on.

The Goods are on the back foot, shaken by the depths to which the Evils are allowed sink. Drogba wins a free kick with an outrageous dive that sees Baresi blinded in both eyes. He is replaced but it turns out his clone is faulty and is also blind in both eyes. Ronaldo crosses it and Malcolm Christie performs an overhead scissors kick to make it 2-1. At halftime it is 3-1 when Ashley Cole’s anus makes a sound like the referee’s whistle, the Goods stop and Drogba races through, slides the ball home then jumps in two-footed on Bonner’s left leg, snapping it like a dry twig.

The second half starts with the second Bobby Moore in goal but the Evils are too strong. They almost score again and again but somehow the Goods keep the ball out with a mixture of valiant defending and sheer luck. Graham Poll misses an obvious Brady handball in the box while giving an in-game interview to Sky Sports News about how great he is.

There are just 10 minutes left when Liam Brady turns Roy Keane inside out, then right side out again, then inside out once more, leaving a pile of skin and guts. Joey Barton throws a hunting knife at him but misses. He skips one tackle, then another, gets to the byline and pulls the ball back where Puskas dinks it over Alan Hansen and buries it in the top corner to make it 3-2.

The Evils are rattled. The Goods can sense something special might happen. They work the ball out to the right hand side, Fabregas nutmegs Panucci, crosses and Baresi, having charged upfield making high-pitched beeps so he can navigate by sonar like a bat, flings himself at the ball to score a 20 yard diving header.

The supporters of the Goods go wild. It’s on. It’s really on. The Evils fight back, pressing for the winner which would complete their nefarious plan. An intricate passing move in midfield sees them 3 on 2 against the Goods. Drogba passes to Cole who gives it to Ronaldo whose unfeasibly quick and cheaty feet put Malcolm Christie in but at the vital moment he hesitates and the chance goes begging.

Every single member of the Evils stops to wave their arms theatrically and to berate Christie for wasting the opportunity. Fabregas thinks quickly and takes off upfield with the ball. They barely notice so consumed are they in their vicious tirade against their team-mate. Only as he’s heading towards their penalty area do they react. But it’s too late. He’s through on goal. He must score. If he scores the Goods win and life can begin to get back to normal.

The crowd is deathly silent. He’s at the edge of the box. Goram looks on with schizophrenic protestant panic in his eyes. He can see that Fabregas will not miss. Nothing he can do will prevent the goal. Hands are on mouths. Arms are raised in anticipation of the goal. Fabregas shapes to shoot, draws his leg back, and bursts into flames.

“Haha”, laughs the manager of the Evils, turning to the manager of Goods as his midfield hero burns on the pitch in front of him, “your Cesc is on fire”.

“Here Twenty”, said Dirty Dave. “Did you hear that Simon Cowell did a series of X-Factor in Iran?”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, and the bloke who won it … had to be a bloke by the way, women weren’t allowed … was a butcher”.

“Ok”.

“And he’s going to get a million Iranian pound recording contract”.

“I see”.

“They’ve just finished making his first video. It took some time due to his strict Muslimic code, or whatever”.

“I eagerly await its debut on MTV”.

“And he’s already recorded his first single”

“Fair play to him”.

“Guess what it’s called!”

“Halal-ujah?”

“Awww … you bastard”.

Stinking Pete’s cousin was a specialist doctor who worked with dwarves and midgets, helping them with the various small associated complaints they suffered.

However, he was not as calm as many of his colleagues. His lack of composure would see him lose his temper on a regular basis and ultimately his deficit of stoicism meant that the hospital had no choice but to sack him.

He said he was fired because he had little patience.

It is 1987. The world is a strange place. Kylie has just released her first single and Rudolf Hess has died. Are the two events connected? Nobody can say for sure but many of us just know.

Platoon won the Oscar for best picture, Hurricane Charlie has swept through Ireland and the UK causing damage and deaths and Senator Gary Hart has dropped out of the US Presidential race after his affair with Donna Rice, mother of Damien, is exposed.

There are massacres in Hungerford, England and in Melbourne when gunmen go rampaging through the streets, cutting down innocents. There is much talk of why. Were these men insane? Did they hear voices? Could medication and counselling have prevented these disasters? The answer is, no. For years the cover-up has ensured that the real reasons behind it were never known to the public. Now is the time for the exposé. 1987 was the year in which the global cake shortage made the world go crazy.

Such has been the extent of the hush-job that most people don’t even realise that it happened. But I do. As a man who loves a bit of cake it is etched into my brain. You might ask why I haven’t spoken out before but I saw those who tried to speak out and what they did to them. I’m no fool.

Ask the workers of the Gateax factory in Finglas who were required to come to work every day but instead of making delicious swiss rolls and the like they merely sat around doing crosswords, playing chess and discussing the issues of the day, such as ‘Would Ireland qualify for Euro 88′ and Johnny Logan’s success in the Eurovision Song Contest, a source of much pride for the country at that time.

If you went into the supermarkets you could find no apple pies, no battenburg, no tiramasu, no black forest gateaux, no chocolate cake, no pavlova, no Victoria sponges, not even a bit of gur cake. Weddings had no wedding cakes – brides and grooms were convinced by those seeking to continue the cover-up that their guests would prefer jelly and ice-cream instead.

I struggled through that year, I have to tell you. Artisan bakeries were strictly forbidden to produce any kind of cake at all and even eggs were rationed to prevent people from making them at home. Finally I could stand it no longer. I thought about who might be brave enough to make this scandal public. Politicians? No. Spineless cunts the lot of them. Priests? Too busy rimming young boys. TV personalities? What personalities?

The only answer was those who were willing to lend their name to any old thing. Pop stars. This was the era of the charity record. Whenever there was any kind of disaster someone assembled a load of singers and made a record about it. Who can forget Bono, Christy Moore and Dickie Rock’s outraged tune at the resignation of Garret Fitzgerald as leader of Fine Gael – The Return of the thin white Dukes?

So one by one I contacted them and begged them to help make the issue public but this was one they weren’t touching with a 10 foot barge pole. Limahl, Paul Weller, Bros, Jermaine Stewart, the lead singer from Living in a Box, Colonel Abrahams, Atlantic Starr, Johnny Hates Jazz, Climie Fisher, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and even Boy George, smacked out his head as he was, all point blank refused to help. Miserable fuckers. Here we were, the cake eating public who had made them famous, asking for a little help and they refused. All we wanted was some off-key singing to some terrible Midge Ure written song and they were saying no.

I kept at it and at it but every time the answer was negative. I was at my wits end. That was until I found one brave soul. One man who would stand up and be counted. Who would rise above. Who would overcome. A man whose insistence on bringing the world’s attention to the cake shortage would ultimately cost him his career. A man who had been riding high in the charts but who would never again enjoy that kind of success. A man who reworked one of his old hits to fit the cause at hand.

So while today you can enjoy all the sweet desserts you want you should spare a thought for him. Without him you’d be cake free and that is no kind of existence for anybody. It may not have been much but his small effort made those who had caused the shortage to think again and go back to withholding grain from African countries instead.

So today, Fergal Sharkey, I salute you – and how right you were,  ‘A good tart these days is hard to find’.

A group of old aged pensioners set off one day on a three week trip to the USA. There was Seamus Doyle and his wife Winnie from Ballymun, Jarleth Ryan from Drumcondra, Mary Agnes O’Toole who was born in Palmerstown but now lived in Kimmage, Pat and Deirdre Hanlon from Rathfarnham, Anto and Ethel O’Leary from Castleknock and the Coleman twins, Raymond and Hubert who hailed from Rialto.

They were a mixed bunch but they figured that as they were all from the same city they’d have enough in common to keep them going throughout the holiday ahead. It was New York first and after they landed at JFK airport the first little disaster happened. Winnie Doyle was taken aside by customs officials and given a full body cavity search which turned up nothing useful but it put her in a very glum mood. Poor Seamus tried to cheer her up but it wasn’t until they got to the hotel bar and Anto O’Leary gave them a rendition of ‘Come back Paddy Reilly’ that her spirits lifted.

That night in the bar they drank beer from pitchers for the very first time, wandered around Times Square, ate cheese steak and soon they felt right at home. The second night they got talking to an American in another bar who gathered his friends around to listen to the authentic Irish stories his new friends were able to tell non-stop. They got on famously with this man, whose name was Clint Mayweather, and Hubert Coleman opined that the last time he’d seen a fellow as dark as that it had been Micky Cassidy who had been tarred by the Hughes brothers down in the Church Street tenements. As their trip was to start and finish in New York they made arrangements to meet with him again and he promised to bring them to the casinos of Atlantic City before they left.

The rest of their trip went without too much incident. They enjoyed the many splendours of the United States. They gasped at the maginificence of the Grand Canyon, although Pat Hanlon was dinstinctly unimpressed saying it looked a lot grander on the TV and suggested they change its name to the Adequate Canyon. Nobody agreed and Pat was a generally disagreeable man anyway. Jarleth Ryan found San Franciso much to his liking and would leave the group for hours at a time to follow his own path. Of course they all speculated as to his whereabouts and not a one of them would ever guess that he was standing at the top of Nob Hill throwing tennis balls down when nobody was looking.

Seattle rained a lot and reminded them of home and most of them enjoyed a fine meal in the space needle restaurant. Mary Agnes O’Toole was apparently very susceptible to gravity and while none of the others even noticed the rotation it made her most nauseous indeed and she barely made it to the bathroom to vomit copiously. Deirdre Hanlon went to help her as the pair had become fast friends.

Raymond Coleman enjoyed Chicago a great deal. Partial to smoking maraijuana, a habit he formed while serving with the French foreign legion, he found a local dealer who sold him bags of hydro which he would smoke while wandering the streets. He knew that if a policeman had stopped him he’d be in trouble but he figured he was too old for anyone to take too much notice of and so it was. He spent the happiest three days of his life in the summer sunshine strolling, smoking, stopping for a beer and a slice of pizza. His brother, being the straightlaced one, did not approve but kept his counsel.

All of them had a wonderful time in Florida. From shooting alligators in the Everglades to riding Space Mountain in Disneyworld (which made Mary Agnes O’Toole vomit so much when she got off she didn’t notice she had puked her false teeth into the rubbish bin) to cocktails and a bit of old time dancing on the Sunset Strip to getting caught up in a hispanic drug cartel shoot out in Miami they enjoyed everything the state had to offer. But soon the holiday was coming to a close and they made their way back to New York.

The night they returned they went back to the bar where they met Clint Mayweather again and the native New Yorker entertained his Irish guests, telling them stories of his childhood. Jarleth Ryan and Hubert Coleman got into a bit of an argument over the merits of Bohemians and St Patrick’s Athletic but soon they realised arguing about league of Ireland football was like getting worked up over who was going to be the next leader of the Progessive Democrats. Nobody really cared. Clint told them of his plans to bring them to Atlantic City. A good friend of his was going to drive them in a specially hired minibus which would cater for their every need. There would be a toilet, some bottles of Jameson and as many packets of Reeses Pieces peanut butter cups as they could possibly consume. He was to meet them there as he business to take care of beforehand so they continued their good night, drank beer and all looked forward to a good day’s gambling the next day.

And, as promised, after they’d finished breakfast there, outside the hotel, was Clint’s friend D’Lorean, who was to drive them all the way to the casinos. They all piled all the onto bus like happy children going to the beach and at first the journey was fine. But after a less than 25 miles, unknown to anyone, D’Lorean had a small stroke. Not enough to make him all dribbly and limp but it did funny things to his brain. He thought the other vehicles on the road were out to get him and as such he figured he’d better get them first. So he upped his speed and began to blast his horn and drivers who thought, quite rightly, that he had gone mad.

He swerved from lane to lane trying to ram cars off the road, he pulled in front of buses to make them brake suddenly, trucks and vans were in his sights too and all the while he cackled maniacally to himself. The poor old people in the back were terrified. Seamus Doyle staggered up to the top, grabbing the seats with all his strength to try and stay upright, but when he got to the top and bellowed at the driver to slow down D’Lorean merely turned his head, smiled like he was about to eat the heart of a small child, and sped up even more. Seamus made his way back to the seat beside his wife, held her hand and began to pray that they would make it out of this situation alive.

The other people on the bus did likewise, apart from Anto O’Leary who had long since given up on God. At this point the police had been alerted and soon they were following the minibus. There were squad cars and helicopters and TV crews following this crazy spectacle. All the while D’Lorean was driving like he was ridding the world of evil and, God bless him, he thought that’s what he was doing. He knew he had to get his passengers to Atlantic City and nothing was going to stop him. There were scrapes and smashes and at one stage the bus went on two wheels for a hundred yards, which made Mary Agnes vomit out of her arse, but eventually he got to his destination and stopped the bus, proudly beaming that he had accomplished his mission.

He couldn’t understand why the police dragged him off the bus at gunpoint. Clint Mayweather was there to greet them and clambered on board having been informed what had gone on. He found all the old people in hysterics. They were weeping and keening and making strange noises. No matter how much he tried to talk to them they just would not calm down. After an hour of this the police were most concerned and called in some pyschologists to see if they could help but they couldn’t make head nor tail of the bizarre shrieking and bawling that was going on. An hour later and they called in the FBI who couldn’t do a thing about it either.

All the while the pensioners lamented and whimpered and made odd grunts and snorts that nobody could understand. It did appear that some of them were trying to communicate but nobody could work out what it was they were trying to say. As they held an impromptu conference on the side of the road a passing gentleman who hailed from Clonsilla asked what was going on and if there were any way he could help. Figuring they had nothing to lose the officer in charge told them about the group of elderly people who had been on a trip from Ireland and were now in such a state of sorrow that they had been howling and making a worrying cacophony of sound. They were shocked when he told them he knew what it was.

“You have the answer?”, the CO asked.

“Yes”, said the man, “sure this is what it sounds like when Dubs cry.”