Chicken first in pecking order for Giovanni

GIOVANNI Trapattoni is looking forward to a Christmas day dinner at the family home outside Milan but when asked what would be on the menu, the result was one of those classic ‘lost in translation’ moments with the Ireland manager.

“We eat, it’s like a big chicken, a fatter chicken,” he began, and then, confronted with an array of baffled faces, he mimed a snipping motion with his fingers, and said, laughing, “they take the balls!”

At which point, his interpreter Manuela helpfully interjected: “It’s a castrated chicken.”

Turns out the dish – called capon in English and cappone in Italian where it is a popular Christmas roast – is, to quote a culinary dictionary: “A castrated cockerel fed a fattening diet to make them particularly juicy and full of flavour.”

So now you know. Even if you didn’t want to.