Roysh here, Roysh now

So, I meet Paul Howard at the Davenport Hotel, and I’m like, “Howya’ doin’?”. And he goes, “All roysh”, and I’m like, “Do you want to do this interview, then?”. And he goes, “Sure, do you want me to get the drinks in?” and I’m like, “Yeah, mon, nice one”. So he focks off and I’m like, checking out the receptionist. She’s blonde and the image of Kelly out of Bellefire, and she’s wearing, well, a receptionist’s uniform, actually. She cops me checking her out and I can tell she’s GAGGING for me. Then she leans across and she’s like, “If you don’t stop staring at me, sir, I’ll call security”. So I peg it to the bar to talk to Paul.

Paul Howard, in the flesh, is the antithesis of his Ross O’Carroll-Kelly character. A professional sports writer in his thirties, he’s a working class lad from Loughlinstown who laughs when I ask if he created Ross as an act of revenge?

“My girlfriend, who was a head-girl at a very posh Dublin convent in her day, though she won’t thank me for mentioning it, insists it is. She says I’ve got a massive chip on my shoulder about the whole upper-middle class, rugby school scene, since I didn’t get to go to Blackrock College or UCD! Some years ago I was researching an article about a school’s rugby team in the run-up to the School’s Rugby Cup final and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There’s an almost fascistic element to it, the suppression of the individual for the overall good of the team and the school.

“All these guys look the same, and speak the same way, and behave in an identical fashion and I just thought it was really funny. I mean, they’re all normal kids but it’s the mob mentality that the schools encourage. Assembly is like a Hitler Youth rally! And it’s all about loyalty to the school. I’ve heard that in one school they give graduates a list of past pupils, so that if you’re ever busted for being drunk and disorderly in Senegal you can ring a past pupil to bail you out!

“Later, when I was living in Blackrock I used to travel on the 46A bus I came across the same kind of guys and girls and I decided to create Ross. It was the easiest writing gig I’d ever done since I just sat there with a notebook and wrote down exactly what they said. The route goes from Foxrock through Mountdown flats to Blackrock and Donnybrook, so you’ve got all these posh kids at the front being mercilessly slagged by the tough kids at the back. Ross has fleshed out a bit since then, mind you.”

He certainly has. His collected adventures have been collated in the novel The Mis-education of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly and he receives dozens of e-mails a week mainly, ironically enough from fans of schools rugby.

“I found that really surprising. I thought I was having a real dig at these people, and in truth, many of them get the joke. A friend of mine who owns a bookshop told me that groups of rugby kids come in dressed in rugby shirts with the collar up and a jumper tied around the waist and read each other extracts. Except they always insist that it sounds like someone else they know. They’ll read a bit and go, ‘That’s SO Christian’, so maybe the irony is lost on them.”

This reader found himself strangely sympathetic to Ross as I read the book. Has Paul developed the same fondness for the character?

“I suppose in a way I have, he’s not intrinsically a bad kid but he’s very rich, very young and very dim. He knows that there should be more to life than this but he’s not mature or clever enough to work it out.”

Is he suggesting that people like Ross don’t enjoy the roundabout of beer, bonking and rugby?

“Bloody right they enjoy it, wouldn’t you?”

While master O’Caroll-Kelly is currently continuing his antics at UCD, there’s talk of a possible film for the boy wanderer.

“I’ve been approached by some people who see a possible screen adaptation”, explains Paul, “but I’ve no details as yet. I’d quite like to see it, if we working class guys got The Commitments I think the rugby boys deserve their crack of the whip! b

The Mis-education of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly is published by Sunday Tribune books