...and it starts with a hangover. Not that I was out celebrating the birthday or anything but Thursday night is always good for a few pints. It's close enough to Friday so you can scrape through the Friday no matter how rough you feel. There's always the Friday evening pints to put a bit of life back into you.

Anyway, I went around to Ron's and there was a bit of gentle ribbing about the blog thing.

"You soft cunt", said Jimmy. "You'll be celebrating your first shag next. When you get it. You VIRGIN"

"I wish you wouldn't make me out to be such a loser, Twenty", said Dirty Dave. "I'm like a clumsy, stupid fool always making a show of myself."

"Thanks for telling everyone I'm stinking", said Pete.

"That'll be €3.90, Twenty", said Ron with his hand out. "Oh, wait", he paused, "seeing as it's your gay website's birthday an' all...make it an even €4."

So we had a few pints, discussed the state of the world, decided it was all the fault of the politicians, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Catholics and Phil Collins fans and had a few more pints.

Then in walked a stranger, although he did look familiar. He ordered a pint of Guinness and from his accent Jimmy had him copped as a Norwegian straight away. Jimmy lived for a couple of years in Oslo, went out with a Swedish girl and had a Finnish butler so he knows one from the other even if they sound exactly the same to you and me. Meanwhile Dave ordered one of Ron's famous sirloin sandwiches. A great hunk of meat, nice and bloody in the middle, between two massive doorsteps of batch loaf.

So the Norwegian sat at the bar humming to himself and doing nobody any harm whatsoever. He had a guidebook to Dublin and given how we were all feeling good and charaitable (it is nearly Christmas after all) we decided we'd give him a hand.

"Need some recommendations or anything?" I asked.

"That'd be great!" he said. "My name is Morten, it's my first time in Dublin and I'd love to know my way around a bit better."

"No worries, Morten. Me and Jimmy here will sort you out, give you the full flavour of the Fair City."

So we told him which bars he should go to, the sights he should see, the places he should go, the bars he could shelter in the rain from, the bars he could run to while waiting for the rain to stop and so on. Then he asked about food.

"What about the restaurants?"

"Ahhh, there's loads of those. Full of Irish beef, Irish lamb, Irish sausages, black pudding, lamb stews, a bit of coddle, bee-"

"Erm, the thing is I'm a vegetarian. I have been ever since me and my band travelled around America and on one of our days off we were brought to a veal ranch and it made me sick. All those poor baby veals with their legs broken in little boxes so they don't make their meat stringy and tough. It was disgusting. And to this day I've never seen an adult veal, which is a bit of a mystery, but still. Ever since then I've been off meat.'

I looked at Jimmy. Jimmy looked at me. We know that vegetarianism is a terrible disease which leads to gayness and anal sex with other men but seeing as it was a tourist and all we thought it best not to say anything. Norwegians are all right, really. They're certainly preferable to the influx of Portuguese we've been getting.

"Well, to tell you the truth, Morten", I said, "I really don't know any vegetarian restaurants. I'm a carnivore. Every meal I eat must contain meat of some kind, be it beef, lamb, chicken, duck, veal, turkey, pork, horse, venison, aardvark...whatever. Everything except monkey. Those cunts taste like shit."

"Oh no" he said. "Meat appalls me. I can't even bear to be near it."

Right then Dave had picked up his sandwich from Ron and was coming over to introduce himself and join in. Dave being Dave though tripped over the nothing that was on the carpet and his plate went flying. Slow motion it was. The plate fell. The bread came away and soon there was a massive chunk of sizzling beef heading straight towards our new pal. Nobody said a word. We were all wide eyed just following its flight through the air.

Eventually it landed straight in Morten's face and slid down his front into his lap. I could see the juicy blood dripping from his chin. There was silence for just a moment then he jumped up shrieking.

"AAAAAAAAAAH. STEAK OOOOOON MEEEEEEE! STEAK ON ME."

"Well, I'll be gone", said Dave and got his coat.

Next time I'll tell you about Dave, Boy George and the Chameleon that got what was coming to him.

That's right, this blog is 1 year old today.

What larks it's been. From no people reading to some people reading. From no comments to some comments. Mentions in the newspapers, RTE radio and even the BBC. So how to commemorate this momentous occasion?

A Best Of Twenty type thing, taking snippets of past posts?

How about some type of quote thing where people talk about how much they like Twenty Major, e.g "I know he says I'm a boring, acoustic cunt but the first thing I do every morning is read Twenty's blog. Even before I write more lyrics a 15 year old goth wouldn't put in their poems" - Damien Rice.

I could have had a Swearathon®© and raised money for starving, Romanian, traveller, tsunami victim orphans every time I said the word 'cunt' but chances are enough might have been raised to save at least one of them and I don't want that.

Then I remembered how my teachers in my hedge school all those years ago used to say how autistic I was. I'm sure they meant I was skilled with a pencil and paper in a van Gogh style though. So I put together a self-portrait to celebrate the first anniversary of the blog. I expect I'll be fighting off the Louvre and the National Gallery will be replacing all the Jack Yeats stuff with copy after copy of this masterpiece.

Enjoy the art and thanks to all you cunts* for reading and coming back to read more. Cheers.



* One use of cunt is not enough to save one of those feckless little bastards either.

My house is old, Victorian in fact, and sometimes I hear things I know aren't the normal creaks of the house moving around or the pipes expanding with the heating. I'd never, ever seen anything till last night though.

I got up to have a slash, as a man of my advancing years is wont to do, and to get to the bathroom I have to go into the hall, through the kitchen and out the back. Not the back garden, the back of the house, smart fuckers.

Anyway, I had my jimmy riddle and plodded back through the back hall and through the kitchen. For some reason as I was closing the kitchen door I looked back and that's when I saw the ghost. It was silhouetted in the kitchen window which looks out onto the back garden where I didn't have a wee.

I'm pretty sure it was a man because it was tall. It was either a man or Geena Davis. It didn't move. I didn't move. I blinked my eyes and it was still there. I wasn't scared, there was no sense of menace or badness but I have to admit I felt a bit of a chill go down my spine.

I backed out into the hall, closed the kitchen door and kind of scuttled back to bed. Then I went back to sleep. When I woke up this morning I didn't remember at first but when I was having my coffee it came back to me all of a sudden.

Do I need to call Ghostbusters or is this thing just going to leave me in peace? Will I have Amityville style dripping walls or is this presence in my house here to tell me something before it can go in peace to wherever it's supposed to go (Cabra probably)?

A ghost in my house. Interesting.

Playing football. We're defending. Pacy forward gets the ball. He's running at me. He fakes left, goes right. I turn, stick out my left hip. He thwacks into it, tumbles to the ground. Play goes on.

"FUCKING HELL, REF! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?"

"Get up, cunt."

"I'LL FUCKING SHOW YOU 'GET UP'!"

"Show me then, loudmouth cunt."

Later. It's out on our left. Their winger cuts inside our full back. Whips in a great cross. Pacy forward's eyes light up. It's coming right at him. He cranes his neck. I steam in, eyes on the ball. Mostly. I launch myself at it, head it clear. Somehow my knee ends up in his back.

"FUCKING HELL, REF!" he says with a mouthful of grass.

"Stop chewing the cud, cow cunt."

"COME HERE AND FUCKING SAY THAT YOU WANKER!"

"I'm right here, unable to judge distances cunt."

Even later. They launch it forward. He takes it. Plays a 1-2 with the tall target man. Our other central defender is lost. He's going clear on goal. I steam in. Take ball and man. He tries to hurdle the keeper, continues stumble-running, arms flailing, trying to keep his balance. He nearly gets himself together. Nearly. His head hits the post. There's a clang of bone on metal.

"FUCKING HELL, REF!" he bleeds. "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?"

"Stop spilling on the pitch, inconsiderate cunt."

"Eh? Where am I?"

"Playing football, stupid cunt."

"Eh? What day is it? What's my name? Where do I live?"

"Haha, amnesiac cunt."

He never did remember his name. I call him "Mr Cunt".

The Daily Mail is a right-wing, xenophobic rag of an English newspaper (see Mailwatch for more). Over the years they've run some tremendously anti-Irish crap, be it editorials, badly written articles, cartoons and headlines. And it's not just the Irish they hate. It's anything non-British, immigrants, non-caucasians, immigrants, people that aren't white and rabidly right wing, the EU, immigrants, foreigners and immigrants.

So you can imagine it was a bit of a surprise when I read in one of the papers this weekend that they're going to launch an Irish edition of the Daily Mail, with Irish journalists, writing about Irish things. Why would a newspaper which has offended so many people in this country think that it's a good idea to launch a paper here? Why would a publication which thinks all Irish people are stupid, IRA supporting, fist-fighting alcoholics even want to set up here?

It'd be like me setting up a bar for travellers or for Americans to start a HOLIDAY USA in Paris.

The Daily Mail is a horrendous excuse for a newspaper written by bigots and cunts and we have enough fucking rags in Ireland as it is.

The Irish Star is a miserable shitheap of a paper, the Evening Herald is to quality newspapers what Michael Bolton is to quality music (sorry Mr Delevan but you don't work there anymore so it's ok), the Irish Sun is a greenified version of the English one so I don't to say much more than that while the Sunday World has at least been consistent - it's been fucking shite for years and years.

With that in mind there really is no need for the Daily Mail to publish an Irish edition. If I was caught short after a particularly heavy night on the tiles and I scrambled my way into a public toilet and unleashed the full fury of my bowels only to find there was no toilet paper I still wouldn't use the Daily Mail to wipe my arse. I'd rather just use my hand or my underwear. If I went to get fish and chips and they only had an old piece of cheesecloth with smooshed up insects on it I'd rather they used that than wrap my food in the Daily Mail. If I was sent to prison for the rest of my life and given a choice between a copy of the Da Vinci Code or an edition of the Daily Mail every day I would choose that cunt Dan Brown's book every time (which I could use for toilet paper if I needed it).

To any Irish readers I would urge you to never, ever buy the Irish Daily Mail if and when it does launch. You wouldn't have lunch in Pol Pot's Bistro. You wouldn't hire Ian Huntley as your babysitter. You wouldn't take flying lessons from Al-Qaeda. You wouldn't let Ted Kennedy give your daughter a lift home at night. You wouldn't get Hitler to open your bagel bar. You wouldn't invite Satan to your birthday party. So why would you buy the Daily fucking Mail?

The Daily Mail can fuck off and go fuck itself up its fucking arse while it's fucking off. I won't ever buy it. I won't even read it if somebody leaves it behind. If I see someone come in to Ron's bar carrying a copy of it I will glass them. Ireland does not need the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail needs to be fucked up the arse by a black, welfare claiming, AIDS carrying immigrant. That would fucking teach them, the cunts.

I was round in Jimmy the Bollix's house last night planning a job ...erm... I mean discussing the state of world affairs and how we, as responsible citizens, might improve the hand that some of less fortunate have been dealt by life. Well, fuck that. We were planning a job.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. Jimmy does not like unexpected visitors since the time he answered the door and found his long, lost brother standing there. Jimmy and his brother, Johnny the Bollix, do not get on to say the least. That, however, is a story for another day.

This time he asked me to get the door so out I went, undid the security latch, the top bolt, the bottom bolt, the chubb lock and the 9 digit key code to open the main lock. Of course I should have probably looked through the spy hole because staring me in the face was a ventriloquist's dummy. Not an Orville the Duck or some other cuddly animal but one of those really sinister looking, old style fuckers. Like this cunt.

"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGHHHH!", I said.

"Here Twenty, look what I'm after finding!" said the doll in a stunningly accurate Dirty Dave impression. It took me a moment to realise that it was now Dave I was staring at as the image of the dummy was burned onto my retinas.

"Fuck off, Dave, you wanker."

"Scare ya, Twenty?"

"I said 'fuck off'. Where did you get that thing anyway?"

"Bought it on eBay off some Polish bloke called Lech."

"Right. eBay. Not being funny or anything Dave, but you find it hard enough to make your own mouth work in sycnronism with the words that come out of it. What the fuck makes you think you're going to be any good at ventriloquism?"

"Dunno, just reckon I'd be good I'd it."

Dave also reckoned he'd be able to pilot a space fighter because he was good at that sit in "3D" Star Wars game they had in the arcades way back in the early 80s. Somehow it was lost on him that he could barely drive his brother's 2CV without smashing into the back of something. I shut the front door.

"Right. Go in there and show, Jimmy. Just stick the head of it round the door and shout 'Howya Jimmy?!' Go on. It'll be a right laugh."

"Are you, sure? You know the way Jimmy can be a bit cranky."

"Don't worry, Dirty Dave", I said. "It'll be hilarious."

So off Dave trotted up the hallway, stuck the head around the kitchen door and ventrilioquised "HOWYA JIMMY?!"

"ARRRRRRRRRRGH", I heard Jimmy say then the head of the dummy disintegrated as a massive 'kaboom' rang out. A dark stain started to spread down Dave's light gren pants.

"Ho... Ho... Ho... Holy Mary, sweet jumping Joseph and the sacred heart of the divine crucified Jesus" said Dave, eventually.

Jimmy stepped out of the kitchen holding his shotgun.

"You stupid cunt, Dave. What the fuck were you doing? I thought Graham Norton had broken into the house."

"Jesus", said Dave.

We removed the rest of the dummy from Dave's arm and sat him down with a hefty glass of Glenmorangie. Luckily Jimmy's house is soundproofed so there was no chance of the neighbours hearing the gun go off or any of the people he keeps in his cellar shouting for help.

I can't blame Jimmy at all, those dummies are fucking minging and more than a bit creepy. They're what Romanian child-molesters would look like in doll form. If you crossed a traveller with a poet with a court jester that's what you'd get. They are to not creepy what Paris Hilton is to not showing your flaps in public all the time.

I remember reading a story in a book back when I was a kid and it was a macabre tale about a ventriloquist's dummy that came to life and started fucking around with the mind of the ventriloquist. There was something in it about a lift as well but I don't remember the details too well though. What will always, always stay in my mind is the drawing they had of the dummy. It was almost like an etching, a really old fashioned type illustration but this thing was the most evil thing I had ever seen at that point as Paris Hilton's gee was years from existence.

As a young lad reading that story I would bend the book in half - cardboardy old hardback that it was - so as not to look at the picture on the opposite page. I would cover the top half of the page when it was time to turn over and eventually I knew that page off by heart so I wouldn't have to look at it because if I did look at it the dummy would come to life and most assuredly kill me. But it would kill me slowly and nobody would be able to stop it and it would know that and taunt me with it as it killed me. Once I fell asleep reading that book, which had other stories in it too, and when I woke up the next morning it was open on the very page with the picture of the dummy.

In the end I think the ventriloquist killed himself to get away from it. Or he locked it in an old suitcase or something. There's no point using half-measures where these things are involved.

They're kind of midgety too, those dummies, and a touch clownish, so you can understand my deep aversion to them. You don't see too many ventriloquists around these days because with all the hi-tech entertainment at our disposal a man with his hand up the arse of a sinister looking doll pretending to make it talk seems, you know, pretty fucking shite.

Ventriloquists will be extinct soon and that is not a bad thing.

I really can't understand the furore behind the shocking discovery that Kate Moss does cocaine.

Imagine, a supermodel with millions of pounds and pop-star, junkie boyfriend doing cocaine. Who'd have thought it?

It's like when Bill Clinton had his fling with that girl with the spunky dress. Why was anyone surprised? He's a politician. That's what politicians do. They screw people then lie about it.

So now Kate Moss has lost contracts with two big companies and is set to be probed by police and we're supposed to care because it's so shocking that somebody with that lifestyle does drugs. Or are we supposed to care because we saw pictures of her doing drugs? We all knew anyway but once we were presented with the evidence we were supposed to 'tut tut' and jump on our high horses.

Lovable old George Best gets a new liver, continues drinking and gets into fights with his girlfriends but he's an old rascal. Kate Moss is 31, has loads of money, does coke and has lots of lesbian sex with her friends. Where's the fucking problem? Let her do what she wants. When her nose falls off and she looks like a concentration camp vicitm ...erm... scrap that last bit ... so when her nose falls off she will only have herself to blame.

But please don't try and make me care. Please don't run story after story on the fucking news about some bint with enough money to do as much drugs as she likes. Don't try and make out like it's important. It's not. It's pointless but it's just part of the celebrity obsessed world we live in now.

If Kate Moss has done so much cocaine her brain exploded and her guts came out through her nose and she was found dead lying across the 5-day old corpse of Pete Doherty then I'd be interested because that is newsworthy. There's blood, there's death, there's the possibility Doherty died in tremendous pain. But telling me what I already know is stupid.

SUPERMODEL TAKES DRUGS

POLITICIAN HAS AFFAIR

DAMIEN RICE IS A BORING CUNT

SUN RISES FROM EAST

Fucking earth-shattering.

Away from cocaine and scrawny girls with no boobs this is the perfect example of why people like that should be, at the very least, castrated. If a 19 year old tries to rape a 6 year old, gets caught and gets away with 9 days in borstal then is it any surprise that he goes on to spend the rest of his life assaulting and killing women? No.

If that 19 year old, having been caught trying to rape a 6 year old, had his bollocks cut off then his life would have been very different, not to mention the lives of his victims and their families. I wouldn't be into that old chemical castration shite either. I'd do it while he was stone cold sober with a pair of rusty scissors.

500 yards away on the table there would be a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a lighter which he could use to cauterize the wound. Between him and the table would be a minefield. This procedure would be televised.

And people like that cunt should be chipped. If they know he's an evil cunt then put a fucking microchip in him so he can be found any time.

Really though, when you think about it, anyone who would try and rape a 6 year old should just be killed on the spot. There's no rehabilitating fuckers like that.

Twenty heard the alarm. Twenty hit snooze. Twenty was unable to snooze. Twenty knew he had to be up. Twenty farted. Twenty gagged. What was in that fart? Twenty remembered the foie gras.

Twenty gagged again. Twenty burped. Twenty guzzled water and two tablets.

Did he take a Tiger Cab home? Twenty didn't recall.

Twenty turned on the news. JFK dead. Shot in Dallas. Twenty's heart sank. Flashes. Grassy knoll. Book despository. Twenty recalled Oswald. Lee Harvey. Not Cobblepot. The bar. The money. Twenty zinged some cheap hooch. Some dame. Blue Damsel? Black Dahlia?

Twenty went back to bed.

It was a quiet night in Ron's. I was sat at the bar with Jimmy, Lucky and some bloke with an enormous birthmark on his face. We call him 'Splodge' and he rarely says a word but he doesn't smell and laughs in the right places when stories are being told.

So it was a bit of a surprise when he opened his mouth and said "Lads, if you could choose one person to have a pint and a chat with who would it be?"

"Good question" says Jimmy. "I reckon I'd pick Johnny Cash. He's always been a bit of hero of mine. Hard drinking, hard living, tough as a camel's ringpiece. I'd say he has some fucking stories to tell. Those gigs in San Quentin, those scars. Yep, Johnny Cash for me. What about you, Ron?"

Ron pondered it a while.

"Not an easy one this" he said. After pondering it a bit more he chose. "Liam Brady. I'd ask him what it's like to be the best Irish footballer ever, what it was like playing in England and Italy. How did it feel to take the penalty that you knew would win the league for Juventus even though you knew they'd already signed Michel Platini to replace you for the following season. I'd ask him how much he hated Jack cunting Charlton who forced him out of the Irish team. And all those dressing room tales, imagine. I'd even give him a second pint on the house."

Me, Jimmy and splodge all whistled that impressed whistle in perfect syncronicity.

"My turn" I said. "Phil Lynnot for me. I'd have to ask how the only black guy in Dublin (in the years before we were importing Nigerians by the truckload) managed to be as cool as fuck and everyone loved him. You never hear anyone say a bad word about Phillo, sure they've made a statue of him now. That was a man with the cool running through his veins. Shame about the heroin in them too but there you are. Aye, Phillo."

There were nods all around. Good choices from all of us.

"What about you then, Splodge. Who would you sink a pint with?" asked Jimmy.

"Robbie Williams," he said.

"ROBBIE FUCKING WILLIAMS?" shouted Ron. He shouts when he's surprised.

"Aye."

"Why Robbie Williams?" asked Ron, less shocked now.

"So I could finish my pint then glass the cunt in face and cut out his eyes."

There was a pause. Then Ron said "Another pint, Splodge? On me..."

Jimmy and I whistled that whistle...

Do you remember a few months back there was a story in the papers about some bloke in Galway or some other western county who had an enormous tumour and instead of seeing a real doctor he went to see some kind of homepathic quack?

This person told him that despite the fact the humungous growth on the side of his neck he was fine and that if he just rubbed some dock leaves off it three times a day he'd be fine. Then when it was seeping blood and pus and parts of his organs they told him that he just needed to take the head off a dandelion and collect the white jism that comes out of it, combine it with some magic crystals that she alone could provide and this gigantic cancer would be cured.

Unsurprisingly the patient did not survive and died in terrible pain as this thing burst all over him and by the time he actually did go to a real doctor there was nothing they could do for him.

For reasons I need not go into I saw some of these people on the Late Late Show (Ireland's longest running talk show) on Friday. One of them was a horrible man in a minging vomity brown suit with a very high forehead who was balding. You can't trust people like that. Another was an English woman who spoke a lot but said very little. Another was a woman who has some centre called Healing Hands, you can look it up as I'm not linking to it from here, and she was a Reiki master. She looked like a goblin.

There were also two real doctors on the show, two men who had studied and learnt about medicine, chemistry and how to treat people who have illnesses that need to be treated. The main argument from the homo-paths was that because 2,000 years ago someone had discovered that if you rub cabbage leaves off the nipples of pregnant women while they breastfeed it makes them feel better because, it turns out, cabbage leaves contain estrogen.

They talked about tradition and years of practice amongst people in every country. All well and good but if you have a gigantic cancer on your neck are you going to go to a hospital or are you going to treat it with some kind of poultice they used 2000 years ago? Exactly. The man in Galway was stupid but he was hoodwinked by a charlatan. If you think people 2000 years ago didn't die of cancer and other ailments then by all means put your faith in ground up plants and potions made by people who are no better than Love Potion sellers at a county fair.

If people want to go to someone like this as well as a real doctor then I don't think anyone can have any problem with it. Maybe they get some psychological benefit from it and that can be important but too many of these flimflammers convince truly sick people to forgo conventional mediciine for a course of treatment that is as useful as a burst dinghy in New Orleans.

There is no evidence their 'treatments' work. So you've studied for 5 years to be a Reiki master? So fucking what? I could say I've studied 10 years to be a Twentosity Master and it's exactly the same thing. Your magic stones can see a person's aura and tell us something that medical science can't? FUCK OFF.

These people are cheats, fraudsters, charlatans and hoaxers. They give people false hope. They don't help them and by that I mean they do nothing and I mean nothing to cure the illness they're suffering from. The sick people still die. They still suffer the pain and discomfort of their illness while the plant prescribing, magic stone sporting cunts just go away with a few extra quid in their pockets.

To a man, and woman, I hope they all get cancer in all of their major organs and their faces. I hope they try to cure themselves with their useless elixirs. I hope their families see them suffer. I hope they hurt for a long, long time, the cunts.

They should be outlawed, every single last one of them.

I was reading a website earlier today where they had a story about Jennifer Lopez wearing fur coats and Paul McCartney's stumpy wife turning up at some place or other to protest. Lopez's bouncers took objection to her being there, perhaps they thought she was Linda, and blocked her way. Then her false leg fell off.

You have to laugh but she'll have the last laugh when she gets offered all the plum roles as a female pirate. Yo-ho-ho and bottle of rum, indeed.

Still, she was giving about people wearing fur coats on behalf of PETA. PETA is a group of people mindless cunts who want ethical treatment for animals. They must love animals so much. They certainly wouldn't, you know, just kill hundreds, if not thousands, of animals each year and keep their mouths shut about it. Of course they say they only kill animals that can't be saved but PETA objects to animals being kept as pets so to 'save' healthy animals from this terrible fate they just kill them instead. They drown puppies in bins full of water, the miserable cunts.

Then they get the wife of the world's most famous and annoying, frog song singing vegan to go on a campaign against a lard-arsed pop star as if that's going to stop her or anyone else with enough to buy a fur coat. I'd have been much more impressed if she'd gone hopping in, flailing her false leg around like a Braveheart style club shrieking like Xena.

If I had enough money I'd buy a bag full of minks and go to PETA's HQ. I would then threaten to make a coat out of the little rats unless PETA demonstrated how much they love animals by letting me make a coat out of their skin. Or a lampshade. Or a xylophone made from their bones. We'd see how much they love animals then, wouldn't we?

Anyway, we've been down the PETA road before. The point is Paul McCartney's wife's was legless in public. How embarrassing.

Leaving aside the question why anyone would want to ever go to Cork in the first place the 1cent fare, excluding taxes, from Ryanair is a bargain. If you have to go to Cork. Which I don't.

I'm all for these bargain airlines. The way things are going soon they'll be paying us to fly with them.

'How much to Rome, please?'

'We'll give you a fiver and one of those mini-cans of Coke.'

Ciao bellos! It would make you wish some other industries got involved in the this price war business though. Nobody really needs to fly with Ryanair to one of their airports miles from where they say it is. I once flew for 1 and a half hours with Ryanair to Paris. We landed in a field with a runway and a shack for a terminal, then had to take a fucking bus for more time than the actual flight to get into Paris itself. That's beside the point though. There should be price wars for the things people really need.

What if Guinness, Murphy's and Beamish got into a stout war, constantly slashing the price of a pint of the black stuff, thus giving us more for our money? Of course those scabby cunts in the government would still make sure we pay through the fucking nose for a drink the miserable shylocks.

Pampers v Huggies, Avonore milk v Premier Dairies, Dubliner cheese v Kilmeaden, Denny's v Galtee, Mars v Cadburys, Nike v Puma, Sony v Panasonic, Kramer v Kramer.

Proper fucking price wars, not these handy little cartels they have going on nowadays. We need an Archduke Ferdinand figure of Irish consumerism then someone to assassinate him. There's only one person whose death would spark the required ire and reaction from consumers.

That's right, we have to kill Eddie Hobbs and make it look like the government and every single major brand in the world did it. Prices would plummet, we could buy even more crap that we don't need but for so much cheaper. I'm sorry about you, Eddie, you seem like a decent bloke an' all but you have put yourself in a position where your martyrdom will do more than any television program ever could.

All it'll take is some careful planning. Over to you, readers...

I told you previously that I had a dog called Bastard Face. I keep him out in the back garden at night because he's a very big dog and most people know that if a house has a big dog in the back garden it's a good idea to stay out of it.

Most burglars worth their salt will do a little bit of casing along with a spot of army style reconnaissance before they decide to get out their jemmy and pilfer the house they've been watching. Of course for each professional, well trained, swag bag carrying raider there are approximately 13.57 stupid shitheads who couldn't burgle a home for paralysed octogenarians.

It was one of those who made the mistake of entering my back garden last night. I was just reading in the sitting room, sipping a malt, when I heard a ferocious racket outside. Imagine the noise of a T-Rex (dinosaur, not curly rocker) snarling through a loudspeaker, followed by the sound of flesh being torn away from bones, followed by a high pitched shrieking that would put Christina Aguilera to shame.

Naturally my curiosity was piqued and I looked out the back to see Bastard Face savaging some little cunt in a tracksuit and a Liverpool top.

I waited a minute or so until the shrieking had become more of a gurgling and then I opened the back door.

"Bastard Face, stop!" I commanded.

Bastard Face looked at me like I'd told him he was about to butt-fucked by Mick Hucknall.

"Enough!" I said and despite the fact he wanted to continue eating the scuttery little fucker who had invaded his territory he came to my side. He understands English better than most Chinese bar workers here in Dublin.

We both stood and looked at the shredded football jersey and the shredded torso underneath it. It wasn't moving much but after a while it groaned. Then it spoke.

"Urgh!" it said. "Urgh. Mister, I tink oi need a doctaw."

"Yes," I replied, "I think you probably do."

"Me shouldaw horts, so it does", he said.

"That's because my dog has eaten rather a large portion of it. If I wasn't so upset with you for trying to break into my house I might be thankful that you've saved me a handful of dog biscuits. Bastard Face here looks like a veritable blimp now. He's as full as an egg."

"Seriously mister, I'm fuckin' wrecked. Yiz have to help me."

"Well, I'm really under no obligation to help you at all, although I will admit you're making rather a mess on the paving stones there with your incessant bleeding. Are you feeling tired? Close your eyes, sonny. If you see a bright light go towards it. Honestly, it'll make you better."

"Please mister, please. Call me an ambulance."

"You're an ambulance, you little cunt."

He began to cry then, just slowly weeping at first, then he racked with sobs and each sob made his shoulder hurt so he went "Boo hoo, OW! Boo hoo, OW!"

It was pathetic and hilarious. I brought Bastard Face inside where he slept at the bottom of my bed the whole night long. When I woke up the side-gate was open and the scumbag was gone.

In the absence of pure-bred velociraptors Bastard Face is the best pet a man can have.

Three homeless people have died on the streets of Dublin in the last 7 days.

One homeless person dies on the streets you think 'Well, this kind of thing happens from time to time. Even though it's summer and not cold so they didn't freeze or anything.'

A second homeless person dies 12 hours later, within spitting distance of the first one and you think 'I suppose it's not beyond the realms of possibility.'

A third homeless person dies, supposedly from a drugs overdose, and you think 'Right, who is this deadly angel of the night-time that is going around putting these poor fuckers out of their misery?'

With any luck it's just somebody sharpening their technique on people nobody will miss before launching a sustained and brutal campaign against all my enemies. I would just like to point out that if that is what happens it's certainly nothing more than an amazing coincidence and anyway, why would I write about it here if it was something I was planning. Would I, in Basic Instinct style, write about something beforehand so I could just use it as an alibi?

I certainly would not. If it does happen it's obviously a copycat who has read my site and just happens to know who all my enemies are, where they live and work and the best time to catch them unawares to do them in. With a length of lead pipe and a homemade garrote.

Meanwhile in Belfast they're going mad for the rioting and the marching. Apparently it's a fundamental right of protestantism, the world's most peaceful religion after Islam, and whatever you might think about them you have to say they're equal opportunity bigots. Take this picture for example - there's a bloke choking on his own bile and hatred because of his poorly developed gag reflex while the obviously down's syndrome man behind him is living proof that the Orange Order believes in equal rights for all.

Except Catholics.

As an old fart I am greatly opposed to change and lots of other things, like teenagers, ringtones and Romanians. However, I do think cloning is a good idea and I'm all for stem cell research.

That's because I think the world could benefit from having a team of Twenty Majors.

"Veinte mayor" in Spain and South America.
"Venti maggiori" in Italy.
"Major Zwanzig" in Germania.
"Vinte major" in Brazil and Portugal.
"20 専攻学生" in Japanese
"clack sprang flurp" in Congolese.

And so on. Obviously the first couple of efforts would be problematic and may not work properly. Twenty Major 1.01beta and Twenty Major 1.5 release 12.45.98.a. might putter along for a while then their beards may fail or they may forget to drink the necessary beer but soon there would be a team of perfect Twenties in every country ready to make things better with my wisdom and sagacity.

Once those Twenties got into the hearts and minds of the respective local populations I could then fiddle with the old gene pool thingy and make Mega-Twenties with which I could implement my changes. These 18'6" handsome devils would be bullet proof and could shoot lesbian hornets from their arses with frightening regularity.

Once Twentyism had been put in place on every continent then in general it would become a much safer, albeit slightly drunker, world. The Mega-Twenties could solve famine by distributing the EU food mountains and grinding up non-desirables into the cheap but effective meat.

So when you think about the wars, the famines, the strife, the terrors that we face on a daily basis doesn't it make sense to explore the benefits of cloning and how cloning Twenty could change the world for the better?

Send your stem cells today to PO Box 6969, Dublin. I'll send you a free juicer for each kilo you send.

Now, it would not be untrue if I was to say I've pilfered a few things in my time. I've robbed things but only for the greater good. The greater good being my good, naturally.

But I have only ever stolen from people who completely deserved it, wouldn't miss what I was stealing from them or who I didn't know (or like very much).

Like the bloke whose BMW 323i me and Jimmy nicked from outside the Pines in Walkinstown a few years back. We were just after coming out of the pub having ended up in that area the previous night and kipping over at Stinkin' Pete's who lives out that way. There's nothing like a few pints for breakfast to get rid of that hangover. Those few pints put you in the mood for a food based breakfast which then lets you go and drink more pints for the rest of the day. You know you haven't had enough when they're showing Villa v Bolton on Sky Super Sunday and you still can't sleep. Anyway, I digress.

We had just come out of the pub when up pulls this bloke in a brand new 323i, spoiler, stripes, cool as fuck it was. He got out and headed into the newsagent and I looked at Jimmy. Jimmy looked at me. There was no need for the nod. Let's rob the cunt. Then we spotted the auld one in the passenger seat. Now, there are lines I will not cross. Killing junkies and setting fire to caravans on halting sites is one thing but robbing a car with a little old lady in it is something different altogether.

Not to worry, I thought. We'll just grab a cab. Then, as if God himself was giving us a sign, the granny got out of the car and headed into the newsagents herself. Probably to buy a few sweets for the grandkids. Well, you take your signs where you can get them and we didn't need a second invitation. In we popped and off we sped. I saw the moustachioed man shaking his fist at us in the rear view mirror as we made our getaway. We sold the car to Hotwire Harry who gave us a nice price.

Anyway, the point is if you can afford to purchase, tax, insure and maintain a BMW 323i then you can afford to lose it to a couple of malcontents like me and Jimmy. Nobody got hurt (apart from the Romanian we winged on Thomas Street, but that doesn't count), we got a nice chunk of money and the bloke whose car it was got a new one with the insurance money.

However, I'm not much into stealing from people who might really feel the effects of it. There are plenty of faceless corporations, pop stars and rich executives you can rip off.

I like to read and I like to go to a little bookshop I know to buy my stuff. Waterstones, Hodges Figgis, Hughes and Hughes, Easons - these are the big boys you can steal from but I don't steal books because anyone who sits down to write something deserves to be paid for it - unless it's Cecilia Ahern who deserves to peeled and dipped in vinegar, the hopeless geebag.

Yesterday I was calling in to see what new bits and pieces old Larry who owns the shop had put aside for me. He knows my tastes very well and he never lets me down. As I was walking up the road to see him I notice a bloke coming running towards me. Then I hear Larry shouting.

"Stop him! Somebody stop him. He's after robbing the money from me till."

Of course Dublin being Dublin everyone just stared at the fucker running away from the scene of the crime. Nobody wanted to get involved. Well, you don't fucking rob stuff from small time traders and you sure as fuck don't rob stuff from old Larry. Yer man was coming belting up the road, he saw me and thought because I'm an old cunt I wouldn't do anything. I caught his eye then looked away. He kept running. I stuck my foot out. He went stumbling and running. Rumbling. Stunning. His arms pinwheeled. He tried desperately to keep his balance. He failed.

His forward momentum was halted abruptly by his face hitting a cast iron, corrugated lamp post. He spat teeth. He groaned. Robber boy rolled over. He opened an eye. He got my foot in the bollocks.

I took the money he robbed from Larry. Someone else felt brave now that he was bleeding all over the road and called the Gardai. They took him away. I gave the money back to Larry and bought a load of new books with the robber's credit card, gave them back to him and bought the ones he'd put aside for me myself. Larry's not stupid.

Now I'm reading about two detectives in Dublin while the robber is behind bars being bummed. What larks.

I was watching the news last night and they were interviewing Ireland fans before our famous 1-0 loss to France and they stopped some toothless fellow who had this pearl of wisdom:

"Zinedine Zidane is back from retirement but Robbie Keane, well Robbie Keane is just a nest egg."

Classic. I wonder has anyone told Robbie that soon a retired couple are going to use him to go on a round the world cruise and get new double glazing in.

He's got an enormous chin, does Robbie. One good thing you can say about Ireland losing last night is that Robbie Keane didn't score and we didn't have to suffer the site of him doing that stupid six-gun tumble salute he does. I honestly think each time he does it a person from Tallaght should be killed, starting with members of his family.

He's a disgrace to the game of football with his acrobatic carryings-on. You're on a football pitch, Keane, not cartwheeling around a sawdust ring like a fucking circus entertainer.

And anything that reminds me of circuses is wrong.

I saw our esteemed, and by esteemed cunting wankbag, taoiseach was at the game. I'm surprised he wasn't off handing out million dollar donations to the Haughey estate or Michael Smurfit because it happened to rain today.

I'd love to have been sitting near him. I'd have got a bic biro and chewed up bits of paper and spat them through the pen at him like an old pea-shooter. I'd have got one right down his ear as well and they'd have to operate and maybe he might die under the anaesthetic.

Now that's what I call an assassination.

A German man was in hospital last night with abdominal injuries after a supposed 'collision' with a dolphin off the coast of Clare.

'Collision' my arse. That dolphin ram-raided him, I'm 100% sure of that. I've mentioned dolphins, and my distrust of them, before when Stinkin' Pete asked me what kind of animal I'd like to be.

Dolphins have a reputation for intelligence which obviously has some merits. This dolphin saw the man swimming then thought 'It's only a German. Nobody would mind if I battered a German with my bottle nosed snout. In fact, most people would understand why I tried to cave in his kidneys. Nobody would ever think any less of the dolphins if I tried to kill a German.'

Well I'm onto you, you squeaking underwater cunts. That's clever and shifty. Dolphins also have a permanent smirk on their faces like they know something we don't and I bet they do know something we don't. They're not fucking telling though, are they, the cunts. That's how clever they are. They give us enough to make us know they know something but you could make tuna steaks out of all of them before they'd tell.

If there's a land-based version of the dolphin it's the beagle. They are also really shifty looking fuckers with their legs that look just too long and spindly for their bodies and those eyes that follow you, squinting, boring into yours and you just know that if they had any way of executing the plan they had for torturing you to death that beagles would surely take over the world.

Think I'm making it up. Look at this cunt.

Now, do you see what I'm talking about? Beagles are the anti-Lassie. If they found you trapped in a well they'd piss on you as quick as you like and they'd go tell their beagle friends to come and do the same until you drowned in beagle piss.

What we have to ensure is that dolphins and beagles never cross-breed as I'm sure that would bring about the destruction of man quicker than George Bush can.

Imagine the terrifying consequences of the Beaphin. Of course now I've just given the idea to some mad scientist but when it does happen and we bow before our new shifty eyed masters you can say 'Bollix. Twenty knew.'

I don't suppose there's anybody who can't feel sympathy for the people who are suffering in New Orelans - apart from some lunatic Jesus freaks who thinks it was all God's idea because the city had become a modern day Soddom and Gomorrah.

Anyway, the news that Ireland has donated €1m in aid just strikes me as pointless and is just a cack-handed gesture from Bertie so he can stay buddies with the chimp whose troops he lets land at Shannon.

America is the wealthiest country in the world. They print their own money. I'm all for giving a hand to those who can't help themselves but for the Government to pledge €1m of taxpayer's money to a country with enough resources to take care of itself is obscene.

Give the money to somebody who really needs it. Give it to the homeless people on the streets of Dublin. Give it to help the people who, despite the Celtic Tiger, exist below the poverty line here in our country. It might stop the Sinn Fein vote sky-rocketing during the next general election. Give it to the people who have to fucking queue for so long then pay to cross the M50 motorway each day, it might just stop a Michael Douglas 'Falling Down' situation - and let me tell you the M50 is on my list.

Give it to Twenty Major and watch him buy drinks for everyone in the pub that night. Give it to anyone who needs it but America doesn't need it. America has the money to buy a squillon fighter jets and tanks and missiles and submarines and aircraft carriers (although not enough to give proper armour to its soldiers in Iraq) and if it has enough money for that then it has enough money for something that is actually important.

Where are the philanthropists? Where's Bill Gates' contribution to this? Where is the help from the people who can really afford to help? Nowhere, as far as I can see. There's aid coming from places and people who can't afford to give it and that it's got to a stage where that aid has been pledged is just wrong.

The American administration need to sort this out for themselves. Ireland, nor any other country with their own problems, shouldn't be paying for their incompetence.

Stop the million now, Bertie, you shitebag, feckless cunt of a shop steward, or feel my fucking wrath.

...what a fine weekend we had in Italy. The weather was good, the food was good, the drink was good and the beating administered to the bloke who was hassling Lucky's wife was nothing short of spectacular.

He certainly won't be sending any text messages again, the thumbless cunt.

We had dinner on Saturday night in Lucky's uncle's seafood restaurant. That was something a bit special, let me tell you. It would take too long to tell you what we had - it's easier to say we just had one of everything that lives in the sea. Fish, octopus, squid, shellfish, sea horses, blue whales, everything. And this being Italy you had to eat it all. Not that it was a problem because it was so good.

Funnily enough for an island nation most Irish people are not big fish eaters. They might have a few fish fingers or fry up some Donegal catch and think they're being exotic. Of course the old cod and chips from Burdocks is always popular but it's rare on a day to day level to eat fish (unless you're Biddy from Glenroe, that is).

Maybe the problem is those cunting Spaniards keep sneaking in and fishing all our fish off us. Most likely it's because of the culture of eating frozen shite. Convenience food. 10 minute meals. The frozen section is most supermarkets is bigger than the fresh produce section. We're becoming a nation of fat cunts, with tubby little children, because we don't eat right.

Anyway, that's another rant. I see you lot had a party while I was gone.

Now, are you going to tell me who got sick behind the sofa or am I going to have get Lucky around?

...whatever will be, will be. I'm going to Italy, que sera, sera.

Yes, I know I told you I wasn't allowed back after my last trip there but needs must. Lucky Luciano needs some help in his home town and he asked me and Jimmy to come along and give him a hand.

Turns out Lucky's wife's ex-boyfriend has been ringing her up at all times of the night, sending her text messages and telling her he's going to come to Ireland to steal her away from our new chum. For those of you who don't know Lucky is a compassionate assassin. He only kills people who really deserve it.

This cunt really deserves it.

I told Lucky that I had some history with Italy and might not be able to get into the country on my passport. He made a phonecall, told me to get some pictures done and within 24 hours I had an Italian passport all of my own. Apparently I was born in Treviso and my new name is Giuseppe Bocchino. If the customs ask me anything Lucky is going to tell them I'm a deaf mute which is probably a good idea as me spouting "Pizza! Mafia! Mortadella! Fatti i cazzi tuoi!!" is not going to get us very far.

So, we're off today. Flying to Milan and then onwards to Lucky's hometown of Livorno. I might even go for a swim.

I know Mrs Lucky's ex will be.

See you in a few days.