That’s Ireland

I’d like to thank the Irish Independent, the Star on Sunday and FM104’s Strawberry Alarm Clock for their support in my attempt to become Ireland’s next football manager. Still no word back from the three wise men, though.

Here’s the full article from the Star on Sunday, in which Ken Sweeney does that newspapery thing of putting my age in brackets after my name, and kindly knocks a couple of years off it: >>> (more…)

Today I have applied for a third time to manage the Ireland football team, citing on my CV my three games with Willow Park Wanderers U-11 side. I am by far the most experienced applicant, having previously been beaten to the job by Jack Charlton in 1986 and Mick McCarthy in 1996 (see above). So I have written to the FAI selection committee, enclosing a CD of the I, Keano show to demonstrate my approach to becoming The Gaffer. Here is the application letter and CV that I have sent to my future employers in Abbotstown: >>> (more…)

This is the last of the prank dog-bowl letters from the good old days when pet-food magnate Albert Reynolds was Taoiseach, and when the hint of a Taoiseach’s support for a crazy project would result in Government agencies falling over each other to help. I published the letters in the book Dear John, which I co-wrote with Sam Smyth in 1993, so that meant we had to finalise the correspondence before the book came out. Here’s the last letter: >>> (more…)

In the last prank dogbowl letter, I contact Bord Trachtala for further assistance. Here is their reply: >>> (more…)

In the last prank dogbowl letter, the IDA suggested that I contact Bord Trachtala for further assistance. So I did: >>> (more…)

In the last prank dogbowl letter, I had sent a proposed advert for the project to the IDA. Here is the reply that I got. The second paragraph is a cracker: >>> (more…)

It’s been a while since I updated the prank dogbowl letters, so here we go. You may recall that I had enlisted the support of the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, for a daft project to manufacture dogbowls modelled as dinner plates (which nobody seemed to notice was actually just a dinner plate). When the Head of the Small Business Division of the IDA wrote asking to arrange a meeting, I replied with the above proposed advertisement and a letter that included numerous clues to the silliness of the project. Here is the letter: >>> (more…)

Now that the prank dogbowl letters were starting to get a reaction from officialdom, with nobody noting that a dogbowl modelled as a dinner plate was actually just a dinner plate, I decided to keep the then Taoiseach in the loop. Here’s my next letter to Albert Reynolds and his reply: >>> (more…)

The next prank dogbowl letter came from the IDA. It read: >>> (more…)

Some of you may remember a paper called JobNews from when jobs were scarce in this part of the world. Well, here’s a prank letter that I sent to them:

Dear Editor,

Congratulations! At last, a newspaper devoted entirely to helping people to get a job. I’d love to be involved - is there any chance of a job working on JobNews? I’ll do anything!

Yours sincerely,
John Mackay

And here is the reply that I got: >>> (more…)

Just to recap: I wrote a prank letter to Albert Reynolds when he was Taoiseach, about the very silly concept of dogbowls modelled as dinner plates. He wrote back that he would check with the IDA about it. I then wrote to the head of the IDA, who wrote back to me. Now here is what happened next:

• The Taoiseach’s office wrote to the IDA, enclosing a copy of my letter to him.
• The IDA wrote back to the Taoiseach, enclosing a copy of his letter to me.
• The Taoiseach’s office wrote again to me, enclosing a copy of the letter from the IDA to the Taoiseach telling the Taoiseach that the IDA had written to me.

Ah, the wonders of democracy. Here are those letters: >>> (more…)

This is the fourth prank dogbowl letter, from the days when petfood manufacturer Albert Reynolds was Taoiseach. The first three were to the then Taoiseach, and this reply from Reynolds, followed by this letter to the Managing Director of the IDA. Now here’s the first reply that I got from the IDA: >>> (more…)

After writing this prank letter to the then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds about dogbowls modelled as dinner plates, and getting this reply from Reynolds saying that he would check with the IDA about it, I decided to follow up directly with a letter to the Managing Director of the IDA. I enclosed a sample design of what a dogbowl modelled as a dinner plate might look like (unsurprisingly, it looked not unlike a dinner plate). Anyway, here’s the letter: >>> (more…)

This is the second of the prank dogbowl letters, from when the dogfood-manufacturing Albert Reynolds was Taoiseach. It’s his reply to this prank letter about a domestic problem with a family’s pet Spaniel: >>> (more…)

This is the first in my favourite series of prank letters, from the days when Albert Reynolds was Taoiseach. It ended up involving several State agencies, but it began with a simple request to the dog-food-manufacturing Taoiseach arising from a domestic problem with the family’s pet Spaniel: >>> (more…)

On Wednesday I posted this prank letter that I sent to Michael D Higgins when he was Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. Here’s the reply that I got from the poetic politico: >>> (more…)

In my prank letter to Brandon Books, publishers of the poetry of Michael D Higgins, I mentioned that I had also written to Michael D, who was then a Government Minister. Here’s that letter, again from an up-and-coming poet. >>> (more…)

This is one of my favourite replies to a prank letter. On Friday I posted this prank letter that I sent to the Brandon Books, who had published the poetry of Michael D Higgins, with some proposed poems of my own. Here’s the marvelous reply that I got from Brandon Books: >>> (more…)

Here’s a prank letter that I wrote a good few years ago to Brandon Books, who had published a book of poetry by Labour Party TD (and, at the time, Government Minister) Michael D Higgins. It’s from an up-and-coming poet. >>> (more…)

On Monday I posted this prank letter that I sent to the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, wanting to confirm an unusual urban-legend-style anecdote about her for a book. Here’s the reply that I got: >>> (more…)