Brendan Gerad O'Brien

Being Irish and living in Wales I've been the butt of a few jokes in my time, but some real events that my wife Jennifer (she's Welsh) and I have witnessed during our visits to Ireland have had us in stitches.

One incident happened when we were driving down to Kerry in an old Ford Cortina. I noticed that every time I took a sharp turn to the right there was an irritating clunk from the back axle. This was annoying as I'd only just had the MOT done and had the grommets changed on that back axle! When we got to Tralee I decided to have it checked out. The old guy in the garage told me that his nephew was the expert and he'd look at it, so we gave him an hour to look it over.

When we came back the nephew shook his head slowly and gave a shrug of his shoulders.

"I'd say you need a new axle - this one's had it." he said in a grave whisper.

"How much will that cost?" we queried, aware that we only had so much holiday money to play with.

"About £100," he answered.

In those days, £100 was all of our holiday money. We couldn't afford that!

"What about a re-conditioned one?" I asked him.

He scratched his head with a rusty piece of pipe that he was holding in his hand.

"A re-conditioned one would be about £150," he mumbled.

After a shocked silence I thought I'd better challenge this quote.

"Are you saying a re-conditioned one costs more than a new one?"

"Of course it does," he said, indignantly. "Shur doesn't a lot of work go into a reconditioned one!"

I decided to risk driving it back to Wales, where I took the car back to the garage that did the orignal MOT. The problem? They'd only put the grommet on upside down! Total cost of a grommet - £1.30 ...

...and there's more ...

One beautiful Sunday morning we decided to drive back to Dingle. Hot and thirsty, we arrived at a lovely old pub about eleven forty-five, and decided to have a quick drink before exploring the famous Conor Pass.


We'd positioned ourselves at a comfortable table by the window when the cheerful young barman obounced over.

"As tis Sunday," he said, full of apologies, "I'm afraid I can't serve you until twelve o'clock."

"Ok," we said. "As it's only ten minutes, we'll wait."

"That's grand," he beamed. "And would you like a drink while you're waiting...?"

Finally ...

...did you know that an Irish jester developed the bagpipes for King Brian Boru, just to annoy him?

The King was annoyed all right - and he gave them to his Scots cousins as a joke.

So far the Scots haven't seen the joke ...