Auntie May in mourning on Black Thursday

NO, seriously, don’t panic – there’s enough cash stuffed under the bed to keep things going until April – we won’t have to start shutting down the hospitals and Garda stations until then at the earliest.

Thank God for Auntie May – otherwise known as the NTMA, the National Treasury Management Agency – she was the only one to stay off the champers during the bubble boom and put a few billion quid away for that day when she knew the country would wake up halfway between drunk and hungover.

And here it is. We’re all in the gutter now – well, we soon will be after the looming Rocky Horror Budget Show anyway – and poor old Auntie May just stands there, quietly weeping as she looks down at the two Brians floundering around in the mire as they keep denying the fall from economic grace to being caked in economic effluence was anything to do with them.