SCARY MARY FROM TIPPERARY

Scary Mary from Tipperary, a fellow refugee from the former anonymous multinational that we worked for a few months ago, has just announced she is moving back to Cork. I should have known when Duncan's horses did turn and eat each other and other portents of a grisly doom. She told me she was coming back when I bumped into her in that must-go venue the Brog - Cork's number one dive, endowed with a special blend of wee-wee and waiting-on-that-grant-to-through unwashed academic. Immediately after she told me she was to return, she thought for a moment and with due delight said: "I'll be on your website again, yay!" So, I can't disappoint the fans eh? Although fan is a bit too strong a word maybe. If she's a fan it'd be one of those pissy ones you get in a pound shop that offer no relief from the heat and break after two days anyway.
Since I started working in the airport, Mary has taken great interest in the celebs I've been spotting there. With that in mind, on my birthday she gave me a 'Fame & Fortune' card with an inscribed card: "Here's a chance to meet your hero Marty Whelan." With excited anxiety I scratched away that grey filmy shite they put over those cards, wondering: would I match any amount and thus gain that fame and/or fortune they so brazenly promise? Or would I get the three stars I needed to get on the telly? I'm telling ya, the millions of grannies countrywide scrubbing away that heavy lead membrane every day, it becoming dust and evaporating up into the atmosphere, is probably the single biggest cause of greenhouse gases - why won't people realise?!
But, as I scratched, the environment took a secondary concern over the glitz and glamour of RTE studios, as the third star slowly revealed itself (all in an above-board kind of way) and the thought filled me: Telly here I come! I was sure Marty would pull mine from the pot, I was sure of it...

When I say that Mary was interested in the celebs I saw, I say "celebs" very tentatively because most of them wouldn't be quite on the A-list, lets just say. In fact most of them would be another 26 imaginary letters behind Z, about two letters up from yer ma and her friends. Nevertheless, here's a little list: Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio (yer one Maid Marian from that Kevin Costner yoke), Jeremy Irons , Dylan Moran, George Hook, Dave Fanning and parliamentary pin-up Brian Cowan. Mary, hoping to better me, took herself off to the national ploughing championships - like the welly-wearin bog warrior that she is - in order to catch a glimpse of Bearlgoir Hector, as the crowning achievement of our spot-the-celeb game. Instead all she got was a paparazzi snap of winking weatherman Ger Fleming.

And now I'm cross. Why? Cause that mustachioed orange-faced baxtard Marty Whelan never pulled my name from the drum. So now all I have is my imagination to whisk me onto the programme.
"Hello there Flash..." says Marty, the light playfully sparkling the glitter in his quivering moustache as he speaks.
"Is that your real name?" he continues, glancing up from his information card.
"Well obviously not Marty."
"Oh right, well it says here that you've been working in Cork airport, tell me any big celebrities passing through there?"
"Well, Marty, there's the likes of Dave Fanning and that, it's all on my website there."
"And..." she says with a smug chuckle, "have you ever seen me there?"
"No Marty."
"Oh... well."
"But I did see you in a newsagents the other day in Malahide, Marty"
"You did?"
"I did Marty. And I followed you home then Marty."
You did..."
"Yes Marty. I know where you live now Marty. I've been back a couple of times there now Marty. Lovely place Marty."
Marty now looks around somewhat nervously.
"And I befriended your youngest daughter there Marty. And she let me have privileged access to your home Marty."
"What the..."
"And I've taken a few pictures, Marty."
"You took...?"
"Yes, in fact I've brought some of them along here tonight..."
Marty lets out a small gasp as I whip out enlarged photos pasted to card and mount the first one facing camera two.
"Here's Marty getting into the shower." I flip to the next one.
"And here's Marty coming out of the shower. It's a certain favourite of mine this one, I like the little bit of suds on the moustache particularly.And here... Here's a picture of two men in gimp masks, doing... strange things to one another, and there in the background,in the leather shorts, it's... yes: Marty Whelan."
Marty has a frozen quizzical look on his face.
"And here," I say holding yet another picture upright,"Is Marty Whelan in drag."
I take a closer look.
"No wait.. that's actually Thelma Mansfield."
I take an even closer look.
"No, wait, I was half right, it's actually George Hamilton in drag, yes! I dunno how that got in there now."
I hesitate with the last picture privately reviewing it before I decide to flash it at the camera.
"... And this one... this one, well I'm not sure if I can show this one on the television Marty, it's... well, let's just say it's Sean Moncrieff with a Dyson." "Marty?"
But Marty is now after running out of the Mmntrose complex, trying to hail a cab on Nutley lane.
But all this is just in my dreams. Sigh! I may never get to show those photographs...