Listen — Ask Audrey: There's a better class of lobbing the gob at the Six Nations than at the GAA

Sorting out Cork people for ages

Ask Audrey has been sorting Cork people out for ages.

Hello, it’s Rosealeen here from Ballydesmond. Myself and Berna always go to the Six Nations rugby matches, you get a better class of lobbing the gob than you would at the GAA, where it isn’t unusual to come across a lad with webbed feet. Our modus operandi — look it up — is to travel for the away matches, but we don’t bother going to the match itself because you’d need a brain the size of a small planet to understand the rules of rugby. So we just force ourselves into a pub in our greenery, belt out Ireland’s Call and wait for the local lads to fall at our feet. Well didn’t I meet a lad this time from Wales, don’t ask me how to spell his name, it has seven Ls in a row. And God between us an all harm, but I’m after falling hard for your man and I’ve even moved into his place in Swansea. (It’s Cork with less flooding.) The problem is that his accent makes me giggle, he sounds like a Scartaglin man after a feed of pints. He told me my accent is ridiculous as well, I reared up at him for that because it isn’t like I’m from Boherbue. We’ll never be able to take each other seriously if this carries on. How the Jesus can I get myself a Welsh accent?

— Rosealeen, the outskirts of Swansea

I’ve a cousin in Cardiff called Dafydd. We used to throw things at him when we were small and shout ‘Dafydd duck’! I rang him there and said, how would someone get a Welsh accent? He said, don’t bother the Welsh accent is awful. I said, it will still be an improvement Dafydd — she’s from north Cork.

It’s getting ECO on our WhatsApp group, Douglas Road Stunners Whose House is More Air-Tight Than Yours. Fifi_A1BER started it all off when she said she fainted due to lack of oxygen in her huge villa last night, but it was worth it because her house is better insulated than a polar bear whose habitat is threatened by people with A2 ratings or lower. That’s aimed at me — my kimchi cupcake side hustle is after hitting a lull so we had to postpone our retrofit plans for a while and now I’m the only person in the Douglas Road Stunners who doesn’t have an A1. I asked my Ken how his mother is getting on and he said, she’s much better after the operation. I’m devastated as you can imagine because the old bag’s house is worth north of 2 million, so the minute she kicks the bucket we can splash out on a heat pump. Anyway, that won’t be this year so I was wondering, is there a TV show like Room to Improve for tree-huggers where the latest energy-efficient stuff is installed in your gaff for free?

— Jenni, Douglas Road

I rang RTÉ there and asked them if such a show exists. They said, why not go on Room To Improve? I said, because Cork people don’t like taking instructions from Dubliners . #NoThanksDermot

C’mere, what’s the story with whiskey? I started dating this posh one from the Blackrock Road recently, the deal is she don’t correct my grammar as long as I don’t mock her for sounding like she lives in Los Angeles with one of the Kardashians. It was going well until I went out with her friends last weekend, real knobby pub, wall-to-wall beards, and not just on the blokes. Worst of all, an alarm went off when I ordered a pint of Fosters and the whole gaff starting laughing at me. (I never knew there was such a thing as a posh laugh. But there is.) Anyway, I went back down to your one and I could see I was on my last warning so I said I’d order an expensive whiskey just to play ball.  I’d normally shy away from the foxy stuff, my Mam still isn’t over the time I was found balls naked on the roof of the bus station. But this was gorgeous stuff now, particularly if you sip it, which I did before I got a lip and drank 14 of them, cue Dowcha Donie in the fountain in the Grand Parade, how bad. So like, is it possible to become a whiskey aficionado without people thinking you’re a proper gomie?

— Dowcha Donie, Blackpool

How would I know? Here’s a joke instead — what do we call my cousin who swears that whiskey makes him into a superhero? Paddy Power.

Hello, it’s Andy here from Leicester, recently moved to West Cork. I get a lot of grief down the pub here for being English, more than I think I deserve to be honest. By the end of the night, there’s an actual queue of people lining up to ‘educate’ me on things like your Famine and something called the penal laws. We didn’t study these at school back home, it was more about brilliant inventions and out-witting the French. What do I need to know about Irish history? 

— Andy, Drimoleague

The only thing you need to know is that there were 800 years of oppression. Unless you buy a round for everyone and we reduce it to 700 years for good behaviour.