Heroes of South Dublin Life…
Brian O'Driscoll
Drico. The Dricster. BOD. God. Call him what you will, Brian O'Driscoll is Ireland's first rugby superstar of the professional age and a role model for all South Dublin males. The irony is that, despite the designer clobber and the signature Disney Club voice, ODriscoll isn t from the Southside at all. In 2005, after almost a year of surveillance, a tabloid newspaper exposed his darkest secret – Ireland's inspirational captain is from Clontarf, on the city's Northside. However, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Ireland's 2007 Six Nations campaign revealed O'Driscoll imploring his teammates, ‘Oh, sure, we've been good – but we could be great!’ and his Southside credentials were immediately clear and, like Bono, he has used his enormous wealth to build himself a home on the right side of the city. Apart from that, there's not a lot more to say. A hat-trick of tries in Paris at the tender age of twenty; one of the greatest tries of all time for the Lions at twenty-one; Captain of Ireland at twenty-two; three Triple Crowns; cool cars; fit birds; Ireland's Sexiest Man award. His life story reads like every South Dublin adolescent's wettest dreams come true.
Robbie Fox
Bon viveur, raconteur and confidant to the stars, Robbie Fox is also the owner and gatekeeper of Renard's, Ireland’s most exclusive nightclub. Everyone in South I Dublin knows his face. The question is: does he knowyours?
Liz O'Donnell
Her name literally means, ‘Angel sent by God to make sure Southsiders never give up on democracy’. O'Donnell was a TD for South Dublin between 1992 and 2007, when the electorate decided that her work in the Oireachtas was done and she should spend a lot more time on television, where we can see her. O'Donnell represented the Irish government at the multi-party talks at Stormont that led to the Good Friday Agreement – snore! She is better known as the poster girl for South Dublin's yummy-mummy movement and a Paul Costelloe-dressed rebuttal to the argument that women can't be brainy and beautiful. Since she lost her seat in 2007, Dáil Éireann has returned to being the world's third ugliest parliament – after Turkmenistan and Westerm Samoa.
George Hook
For most South Dublin males ‘Hooky’ is the old man they never had. The ursine sixty-something is not only Ireland's most outspoken pundit and broadcaster, he's the quintessential South Dublin dad. In other words, he lives in Foxrock, he's not afraid to have his voice heard in public, and he's a member of Milltown Golf Club.
Sharon Ní Bheoláin
The RTÉ newsreader is more than just eye candy with an IQ of, well, something ridiculously high. She edges out fellow Bulletin Babes Gráinne Seoige and Claire Byrne as every South Dublin schoolboy's fantasy Irish teacher.
Graham Knuttel
Sylvester Stallone saw Knuttel's work on a visit to Ireland a few years ago and ordered just about every painting he had in his workshop. Now South Dublin I can't get enough of his work either.
Sean Dunne
The man they call ‘Dunner’ is the CEO of D4 Inc. Nobody has ridden the wave of Ireland's economic miracle better than the Carlow-born quantity surveyor, who has amassed a vast fortune from property development since the 1990s. Lately, he's been buying up half of Ballsbridge and is rumoured to have plans for his own Trump Tower on the Jurys Hotel site. He has a house on Shrewsbury Road, a stunning wife, access to Aristotle Onassis's yacht, and he's good to charity. You'd have to hate him if he wasn't so nice.
… and anti-heroes
Michael O'Leary
Since becoming the Chief Executive of Ryanair in 1994, the former Clongowes boy has shaken up the airline industry with his abrasive, what-the-fock-do-you-expect-at-these-prices? approach to business. Offering flights for as little as €2, he has made mainland Europe accessible for poor people. Paris, Rome and Venice are now full of boggers and skobies – and for that, South Dubliners will never forgive him.
Michael McDowell
The former Tánaiste, leader of the Progressive Democrats and TD for Dublin South East made an enemy of the Southside's youth when, as Minister for Justice, he introduced a number of measures to curb underage and binge drinking – two of South Dublin's most cherished traditions. The loss of his Dáil seat in the 2007 general election was his fitting reward.
TK Maxx
This chain of department stores has made its reputation by selling brand-name clothing at ridiculously affordable prices. As a result, Southsiders have lost their exclusive claim on labels such as Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. Now every Anto in town can afford a designer shirt. It's little wonder that South Dubliners are using the term ‘TK Maxx’ as rhyming slang for a toilet, or jacks.
Flora and Fauna
South Dublin people love their animals, and there's no animal that receives more love than the yappy dog. The term is used to cover a number of breeds, but typically refers to any cantankerous, miniature-sized dog with silky hair that barks incessantly and at an annoyingly high pitch. These include Pomeranians and toy poodles. They are often named Saskia or Poppet, fed like family members and indulged like children. They are commonly seen being carried by rich, middle-aged women, appearing to grow out of the armpits of their fur coats. Their natural belligerence and tendency to snap at anyone who isn't their owner can be easily corrected by a swiftly delivered kick to the testicles.
Whether riding a chestnut mare around a private equestrian centre or having a fun bet of a few thousand ‘squids’ on a 10-1 outsider at Leopardstown, South Dubliners have always had a special affinity with horses. Of course, as they're descendants of Ireland's landed gentry, that's perhaps not so surprising. South Dublin girls generally receive their first pony at the age
SSIAs
The so-called miracle boom in Ireland's economy, which began in the late 1990s, left a nation once accustomed to being skint in the unusual position of having money for the first time in their lives. In May 2001, concerned that many Southsiders were squandering this new-found wealth on hot tubs, pool tables, decking and swimming pools, the government introduced the SSIA, a special savings investment scheme that promised savers €1 for every €4 they put away each month, provided they left the money untouched for a period of five years. These accounts reached maturity between the spring of 2006 and the spring of 2007, with hundreds of thousands of people collecting lump sums of up to five figures.
Most then squandered this money on hot tubs, pool tables, decking and swimming pools.
of seven or eight, and it usually remains their favourite thing in the world until they get their first Mini Cooper or Volkswagen Beetle at the age of seventeen.
South Dubliners are a famously green-fingered lot. Most Saturday and Sunday afternoons they can be found perusing the aisles in one of the area's several hundred garden centres, or looking on as some Lithuanian called Szolt mows their lawn or powerhoses their decking. Due to its hot climate, South Dublin is home to a large number of exotic plants, trees and flowers not found anywhere else in Western Europe. Beautifully coloured orchids grow in abundance, flowering at all times of the year. Palm trees, which usually survive only in the tropical latitudes between 23.5°N and 23.5°S, thrive and abound and you'll find more palm species here than in Madagascar.
You can walk down most streets, pick a fresh mango, guava or coconut from a tree and eat it – though few South Dubliners do, as they're available in Superquinn for as little as a few euro.
Architecture
South Dubliners are known the world over for their impeccable taste in architecture and the region boasts some of the most exquisite buildings in Europe.
The Radisson SAS St Helen's Hotel in Booterstown is the place where magnificent Georgian splendour meets glass. St Helen's House was built around the mid eighteenth century and was home to a great many top knobs. Lovingly restored by one of the world's best-known hotel chains, and with two giant, three-storey steel-and-glass wings added to either side, it's now a luxury hotel where you can eat asparagus and truffle scent – just like the top knobs of yesteryear.
T
ake a sliproad off the M50 motorway and you can experience something like the wonder that Marco Polo felt when he first arrived at the court of Kubla Khan. Dundrum Town Centre is a shopping Xanadu, almost 100,000,000 sq. ft of brick and Perspex, housing South Dublin's biggest retail Pleasuredome.
The magnificent Blackrock Clinic on the Rock Road could be best described as a six-star luxury hotel that just happens to carry out operations. The building's grey façade, which has been likened to something from the Soviet era, belies its breathtaking interior, the centrepiece of which is a 30-ft waterfall in the central atrium, around which toucans, parakeets, macaws and birds of paradise fossick gaily. At the same time, the soft, playful music of the pan pipes acts as balm for your mind as you're wheeled into theatre to have your cataracts removed, or your vasectomy reversed. Provided, that is, that you are a private, or VHI-positive, patient.
The all-new Killiney Dart Station is where public
service mass-transportation meets concept art. Damien Hirst is rumoured to be among its admirers, the man who once sawed a cow in half, put it in formaldehyde and got called a genius. The new design, which was completed in 2006, was inspired by movies such as Battlestar Galactica and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and few would disagree that this enormous tubular steel and plate-glass structure greatly enhances the view of Killiney Bay. An interesting piece of trivia is that, along with the Great Wall of China, it's one of only two man-made structures in the world that are visible from space.
South Dublin Homes
South Dubliners love their homes, which explains why so many of them own two or three. It also explains why people come from all over the world to marvel at their splendour. South Dublin houses are famous for combining contemporary architecture with historical building styles in a manner that's very tasteful. Here are some of the most celebrated types:
Mock-Tudor is an imitation of a style that first became popular in England during the reign of Henry VIII. Its most distinctive feature is its black-and-white, half-timber design. This style, also known as Tudorbethan, became popular again in the twentieth century in a number of former British colonies, especially those that maintained an emotional attachment to the Crown. There are hundreds of examples of Mock-Tudor houses in Foxrock and Dublin 4.
Difficult as it is to believe as you're gazing in wonder at the turrets, pointed arches and flying buttresses of Killiney's skyline, Gothic was a pejorative term used by Renaissance critics to deride the architectural style's deviation from Classical Greek and Roman precepts. In this case, Gothic meant Barbarian. How times have changed! Nowadays, Mock-Gothic, which was born out of an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revival, is South Dublin's most romantic architectural style, as well as its most popular, implying, as it does, an ancient yet
A WORD FROM FIONN
South Dublin is home to a number of buildings of historic and architectural interest – and not all of them have been razed to make way for shopping centres. Personally, I love Monkstown Parish Church, a huge structure that was built, if memory serves, in 1832 and which dominates the centre of the village. It's amazing that thousands of people pass by it on the bus every day and don't give it so much as a glance. Of course, it's had its critics over the years. Weston St John Joyce described it as a ‘nondescript structure that disfigures its site’, and Dr Richard Brooke, its first incumbent, said it was, ‘large and gaunt and lofty and ugly – a satire on taste, a libel on all ecclesiastical rule, mocking at proportion and symmetry’.
Which is interesting…
entirely spurious lineage. A Mock-Gothic house in Killiney – complete with imitation pointed towers, ribbed vaults and clerestory stained-glass windows – would set you back €25 million, which just goes to show that those Renaissance critics weren't half as clever as Sherry FitzGerald.
Most of the new mansions being built for South Dublin's arrivistes are Mock-Georgian, a style characterized by its rational sense of symmetry and proportion. Features to look out for include the large, vertical sash-and-bay windows, sober grey stone frontage and heavy wooden doors with round-headed windows above, which were first in vogue during the reign of the Georges in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Education
You've been to the doctor and it's confirmed – fertilization has occurred. What do you do next? Call your partner, then your mother, or perhaps a friend to share the news? Head straight to Mothercare to buy a babygro as a visualization exercise? Draw up plans to convert the spare room into a nursery? Not if you're from South Dublin, where the first imperative for all parents-to-be is to get the little one's name down on the waiting list for one of the area's elite, fee-paying schools. To outsiders, this might seem a tad premature. But remember, once the male sperm cell has fused with the female ovum, the baby is already a zygote – the stage of pregnancy that occurs thirteen or fourteen years before the child enters the second level of the education system. For South Dubliners, that's barely enough time to get them on the register of a prestigious institute of learning. In fact, a number of these schools now request prospective parents to undergo a standard pregnancy test in their presence before agreeing to enroll their unborn child in the school.
South Dublin children are the most expensively educated students in the world. So seriously do their parents regard education that many are prepared to send their little ones to schools outside of South Dublin to ensure they get the best advantages.
Finding the best school for their child is an obsession with most Southside couples from as early as the ‘trying for a baby’ stage of pregnancy. Many parents consider league tables to be an accurate index of the quality of a school, while others go with their lifelong allegiance to their own alma mater.
The best schools for boys, in no particular order of preference, are: Blackrock College, St Michael's, St Mary's College, Terenure College, Castleknock College, Clongowes Wood, Newbridge College, St Andrew's and St Columba's. For girls it simply must be one of the following: Mount Anville, and then Loreto on the Green, Holy Child Killiney, Loreto Foxrock, Alexandra College, Muckross, Loreto Dalkey and Rathdown.
The exam that goes a long way towards defining the course of many Southsiders’ lives comes at the end of their final year in secondary school. The Leaving Certificate is essentially a memory test. Students spend two months of their final school year reading past exam papers in an effort to anticipate what questions might be asked in each subject by trying to discern the pattern in which topics have come up in the past. They then memorize pages and pages of information they don't necessarily understand, using various retention techniques, such as mnemonics. This information is then regurgitated onto a page during the course of the exam, and forgotten within minutes of the student leaving the exam hall.
Even stupid kids who can't manage this simple mental exercise aren't without hope. South Dublin has a large number of grind schools that will drill into a child's head the causes of the Franco-Prussian War, the difference between a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan sonnet, and the principles of trigonometry – for a fee equivalent to that of maintaining gambling and crack cocaine addictions for a year.
South Dublin is the site of Ireland's two most famous third-level institutions, namely UCD (University College Dublin) and DBS (Dublin Business School). There's also TCD (Trinity College Dublin), one of South Dublin's premier tourist attractions, where the Book of Kells is housed. It offers classes in a number of subjects. Young people in South Dublin have more educational opportunities than their contemporaries anywhere else in the world. There are a large number of private third-level colleges where you don't need to have your Leaving Cert. – or even an ability to write your own name – in order to be accepted. These centres of academic excellence offer degrees and similar equivalents from such prestigious institutes of learning as the University of Bishkek, the Advanced Technical Institute of Maseru and the College of Marketing and Legal Studies in Bandar Seri Begawan. Many South Dubliners are pleasantly surprised to discover that these qualificatio
ns are recognized by their fathers’ companies or their fathers’ friends’ companies, where many of them will spend the rest of their working lives.
National Service
Unlike young people in many European countries, South Dubliners are not required to serve a period in military service. However, at some point in either their late teens or early twenties they are required by law to go to Australia for a year. The majority of Southsiders choose to undertake this obligation immediately after finishing third-level college. It's often referred to as ‘taking a year oush’ or ‘doing a bit of travelling’, though in truth they will spend an average of ten of their twelve months in Bondi, a suburb in Sydney that has been nicknamed ‘County Bondi’ because of the way it has been colonized by the Irish. The rest of the time these young people will spend ‘doing Cairns’, which means learning how to surf, paraglide, abseil, pothole, bungee jump, scuba dive – and have intercourse with other backpackers in several different languages.
It's not all adventure sports, binge-drinking and indiscriminate sex, of course. There is also a serious, educational dimension to ‘doing the whole Australia thing’.
Many who make the trip are keen to discover once and for all whether the water does in fact flush down the toilet in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere. Others will gain a keen insight into Far Eastern culture when they visit a tattoo parlour in King's Cross and have some Chinese letters inked onto their arm or leg as a permanent reminder of their visit to a city that's 3,500 miles away from Beijing. And just about everybody under the age of twenty-five who goes to Australia learns how to receive money from their parents through Western Union – the most important life skill many of them will ever need.
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