Saturday, February 25, 2012
Proposals have flooded in to the fisherman who plucked a wedding ring out of the River Lee.
Pat O’Flaherty, from Glasheen in Cork City, was offered €1,000 for the "River Lee ring" by a leading wedding planning website last night, which said it would auction it for charity if its owner wasn’t traced. And Specsavers invited him for a free eye test after he compared his catch to the company’s TV ad, which features a shortsighted woman throwing her engagement ring into a lake.
Pat was fishing at Carrigrohane last Saturday when he spotted something bobbing at the water’s edge. He used his net to retrieve the red jewellery box, which had a beautiful gold wedding band inside. It has been valued at over €400.
The catch was featured in yesterday’s Irish Examiner in the hope that its owner could be traced, thrusting Pat into the media spotlight. "I was amazed at the reaction. I was on Radio One, Today FM, and RTÉ and TV3 were filming me fishing yesterday down on the river. I’m going to have to get an agent," he said.
The story was the talk of Twitter, with various theories floating around on how the ring got into the river.
They ranged from a hapless best man losing the ring on his way to his friend’s wedding, to a furious fiancee flinging it in the river after a row.
Irish wedding website, weddingface.com, came forward last night and offered to donate €1,000 to a charity of Pat’s choice for the ring.
"We’ll then remove the inscription and raffle the ring off and donate all proceeds to childrens’ charity Barnardos, so two charities will benefit," said director Alan Joyce.
However, Pat said he’d like to wait a few days to see if someone comes forward to claim the ring.
"Things are tough out there at the moment and I know of one or two charities who would really benefit from the money. But I would really like to find the owner," he said.
*The ring has a distinctive inscription and anyone with information can email eoin.english@examiner.ie — or you can share your theories on how it got into the Lee.
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