by Peter Quinn
Can’t wait for tomorrow!
1 September 2009
When I finished a customer’s hair today and had shown him the back in the mirror he looked quite pleased . . . Customer: That’s great. Now I can’t wait until tomorrow.
Barber: Why tomorrow?
Customer: ’Cause I’m getting better looking every day!
L’Oréal economics
2 September 2009
Customer: I can’t get over how everyone is in such debt with personal loans and credit cards and negative equity. It just shows how most people were borrowing money just to subsidise their lifestyle, and they justified it all with L’Oréal economics.
Barber: L’Oréal economics?
Customer: You know, ‘Because I’m worth it.’
Euro-style
3 September 2009
Customer: I was walking round town last week near Grafton Street. I was off, and the weather was great— warm and sunny. Now, I hadn’t been in town for a long time, and, as I looked around, you know, I couldn’t believe it. There were street entertainers, people sitting outside coffee shops and bars, talking and reading papers, and I thought to myself [he says in all seriousness]: ‘You’d think you were in Europe!’
Classic.
The writing’s on the wall
5 September 2009
A customer told me today that Mary Coughlan, Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen are now referred to as the ‘drinks cabinet’.
A creamy pint of black
6 September 2009
A barman told me this one. One of them should write a book: they always seem to have great stories!
Customer (the barman): Had a tour of Americans in the other day. I was handing out a few pints of Guinness. One of the Americans was watching and came up to the bar and said, ‘That looks real good! Hey, I’ll have to try a pint of your Guinness, now that I’m here in Ireland. But can I get one without the cream? I’m lactose intolerant.’
An expert at partitions?
7 September 2009
An older, well-spoken gentleman was describing the haircut he wanted.
Customer: Can I get a partition there on the left?
Barber: A partition?
Customer: Yes, you’re an expert at partitions, aren’t you?
Barber: The only experts on partitions I know of are Moses and Michael Collins. I think you mean a parting.
Dry hair
8 September 2009
Customer: The girlfriend says my hair is like a dry Weetabix!
Barber: It is too!
Jekyll-and-Hyde weather
9 September 2009
Customer: What’s going on with the weather! We’ve had another bad summer, and the Met Office said it would be good. From day to day they consistently get it wrong.
Barber: There’s just no accountability in the Met Office, and if the people who tell us the weather keep getting it wrong they should be fired. Three wrong forecasts and they’re out. That should be the way, and it would make it more interesting for the rest of us.
Customer: Three strikes and they’re out! I think a trapdoor would be great too: everyone would be watching the forecast then. Did you hear about that lad who forecasts using the sun spots? He’s said the weather will be great from the 7th to the 21st, I think, so we’ll see if he’s right next week.
Barber: It should be good, because the kids are back at school—you know, Murphy’s Law and all that. The Met Office said his method is like reading tea leaves in a cup, so I’m told. There’s no science involved.
Customer: It’s raining again. Look [pointing out the window], the sun was shining a minute ago. It’s Jekyll-and-Hyde weather out there!
Even your tractor isn’t safe!
10 September 2009
Customer: Did you hear the banks called in the loans they’d given farmers to buy tractors?
Barber: No, I didn’t.
Customer: Well, down the country they went around repossessing them. Some farmers had only two or three years left to pay off. But they got their own back, as they filled the tanks with acid and sand, so they’re totally useless. The banks can’t sell them off at auction.
Barber: When you think it’s us the public, farmers and all that who backed the guarantee that’s kept them open for business, and this is how they repay the people. Can’t they give us some time to get back on our feet before they come knocking for your house, your car or your tractor?
Customer: It just shows how desperate they are for cash flow. They’re auctioning off cars all the time for a fraction of their worth, just to get some money in. My guess is they’re still in trouble. There’s still the threat— a rumour I hear a lot—that one of the major banks will go under in the new year.
Far and Away
13 September 2009
The film Far and Away, with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was made in Ireland, and a lot of the New York set was filmed on the cobbled streets of Temple Bar. There were lots of jokes going round in the pubs in the evening when the cast and crew had wrapped up. I remember someone in the Temple Bar pub with a plastic milk crate telling people that it was the one Tom Cruse stood on when he was in a scene with Nicole so he’d be the same height as her.
Anyway, this story is true, as I was there myself, and I met some of the regular Saturday customers there. The Boston scenes at the end of the film were shot around Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin, and they needed to cover everything in snow, as it was supposed to be the depths of winter in Boston. This was achieved by spraying some chemical compound over the houses and the streets, and it really looked like snow. It even stuck together like snow, much to the delight of the folk coming home from Leeson Street’s clubs in the early hours, who found a winter wonderland around the corner, and in their mildly merry state it was an invitation to mayhem.
As soon as people realised that they could make snowballs from this ‘snow’ it was like a school yard at break time. There were snowballs flying everywhere and more and more people joining in as they came down the street. It was total chaos. I met a couple of guys I knew who were regulars in the barber shop, and they showed me a snowman they’d made that was even wearing a scarf one of the lads had donated. I’d say that at the height of it more than a hundred people had been involved in the snowball fight.
The next day, when the film crew arrived, the set was destroyed, and at great expense they had to respray the entire set with fresh fake snow. The next night, clubbers were looking forward to another snowball fight in Fitzwilliam Square, but this time there were a number of guards along the street. Although everyone was disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a snowball fight, one of the lads, who was a bit worse for wear, shouted out to one of the guards, ‘So what are you doing here?’ And the guard replied, ‘We’re guarding the snow.’
Well, I don’t need to tell you that people were in tears laughing!
A new style
14 September 2009
Customer: Can I have a carpet, please?
Barber: You’ll have to go to Des Kelly’s for that. We just cut hair!
Turns out he wanted a crop.
Time machine
16 September 2009
Customer: There’s a story out there that the hadron collider is so dangerous to humanity and the planet that it’s being sabotaged.
Barber: I never heard anything about that. I did hear lots of talk about the world ending when it was turned on. So who’s trying to sabotage it?
Customer: [whispers] People from the future!
Barber: Like Terminator?
Customer: Exactly.
Dino’s Bar and Grill
18 September 2009
Customer: You know that line in the song there [Phil Lynott was playing on the radio in the shop] where he says, ‘Down at Dino’s Bar and Grill’?
Barber: I do. Why?
Customer: Well, that’s a chipper in Terenure. They have a picture of Phillo up on the wall too. He used to get chips there. It was Dino’s for years, but
it’s a new name now—can’t remember. But look for the one with the Phil Lynott picture on the wall.
The spud
19 September 2009
Customer: You know the potato isn’t indigenous to Ireland? It was brought to England by Sir Walter Raleigh. He lived here for some time and is said to have planted the first potatoes here! It was grown in Chile and Peru—the Incas were big potato-eaters. Since before the Famine it’s been a staple food, and we’re almost defined by it: Guinness and potatoes!
Barber: I can’t believe it. The spud is an immigrant!
The wit of George Bernard Shaw
20 September 2009
Customer: George Bernard Shaw received a letter from a young lady. I was told she was a model, but nevertheless she was well known in Dublin social circles at the time. She wrote to Shaw in the hope that he might marry her, and she very cleverly added that with her looks and his brains they would have beautiful, intelligent children. Shaw wrote back: ‘I must decline your tempting invitation, on the basis that the children might be born with my looks and your brains.’
‘Just a Minute’: The sixty-second quiz
22 September 2009
Customer: Hearing that [a clip of Larry Gogan on the radio] reminds me. A friend of mine told me there was a book with all the funny wrong answers from the sixty-second quiz.
Barber: I guess it’s just another urban myth. It’d be a great one, though.
Customer: Best one I heard was Larry asks the contestant to complete the saying ‘As happy as . . .’ and he can’t get it, so Larry gives him a clue and says, ‘Think of my name,’ and your man says, ‘a pig in shite!’
Barber: I love the one where he says, ‘What star do travellers follow?’ and the guy says, ‘Joe Dolan!’
Charlie Chaplin in Co. Kerry
23 September 2009
A customer from Waterville told me this story.
Charlie Chaplin was a regular visitor to Co. Kerry, in particular to Waterville, where there’s a bronze statue of him. He would arrive in a hotel and set up his projector and put the word out that he was going to show films on a big screen. He attracted a large crowd of all ages and would show selections from his films and private film of Hollywood. As you can imagine, it would have been nirvana to any film buff.
So everyone would arrive in the evening, and the kids would be sent in to watch the films. The adults were nowhere to be seen. They were of course in the hotel bar for the night. So Charlie ended up babysitting, but he didn’t seem to mind. He did it many times and would show films over an entire weekend. Maybe he even inspired a few budding directors.
On Bertie’s re-election in 2007
24 September 2009
Customer (a pensioner): I’ve no time for that Bertie fella. It was the women of Ireland who voted him back in after he turned on the waterworks on TV.
Barber: I remember hearing about him shedding a tear in the interview. I haven’t seen it, though.
Customer: Just as well. It’s shameful! I’ve no time for a lad who plays the victim to get what he wants!
Bushy sideburns
26 September 2009
Customer: Will you trim the Brillo Pads there? Keep them long but not so bushy.
More on Bertie
3 October 2009
Customer: Bertie was a good housekeeper. He kept things ticking over, but we needed a lot more.
Barber: Yeah, we needed a Taoiseach!
The Lisbon Treaty (round two)
4 October 2009
Customer: Did you see Michael O’Leary and Eamon Dunphy were calling for a Yes vote?
Barber: I had a lad tell me he was voting Yes because it’s so much easier going on holidays with the euro currency!
Customer: Jaysus. There’s all sorts out there. Well, I’m voting Yes because there’s no-one to lead us out of the bankruptcy we’ve found ourselves in. When things were good here during the Celtic Tiger days the health system was crumbling and education needed more cash to build schools—there are still many rented prefab schools around the country. Industry was ignored. The main business being done was in construction. This is particularly annoying: when the money was there, job creation should have been a priority. So, if our leaders couldn’t do it, how are we to get the country up and running when we’re now post-boom, borrowing money just to pay the wages? So a Yes vote sees the Irish people throwing a lifeline to Europe to save our sinking ship. Eamon Gilmore summed it up well, saying we were gritting our teeth while voting Yes.
Barber: I see you’ve been putting a bit of thought into your vote. I agree. We had no choice this time: it was sink or swim.
Customer: If only Castro wasn’t so ill!
Weird cravings
5 October 2009
Customer: My girlfriend is pregnant, and I’m down in the 24-hour every other night buying stuff she’s craving.
Barber: So what’s the weirdest thing she’s asked for?
Customer: Firelighters.
Tsunami warning in New Zealand
7 October 2009
A concerned parent told me this story while we were talking about the recent earthquake in Indonesia.
Customer: My son is in New Zealand at the moment, so I rang him when I heard about the earthquake and tsunami warning they had over there. I wanted to see if he was okay.
Barber: That must have been a worry. Was he all right?
Customer: Well, he was. He told me there was a warning on the radio to go to higher ground, and he said that, instead, everyone was heading to the beach with their surfboards!
Barber: No-one wanted to miss out on the ride of a lifetime!
Prison stories
9 October 2009
Customer: I was doing some work in Mountjoy Prison this week, and they have those disinfectant handwash gels everywhere because of the swine flu.
Barber: We have them here too. They’re everywhere now.
Customer: Well, they were going through so many each day that the staff were confused. So they were keeping an eye, and they found that the prisoners were drinking them!
Barber: They have a lot of alcohol in the gel. It’s probably like vodka if you mix it with orange juice. You must see some sights in there!
Customer: I do, but my favourite is the retro page-3 girls. Depending on how long the lads have been there, they could have pictures on their cell wall from the day they arrived. Someone serving time since the eighties would have pictures of Sam Fox or Linda Lusardi. It’s a real blast seeing them again.
Barber: Wow, that was so long ago. Lusardi is in ‘Emmerdale’ now.
Customer: She’s wearing more clothes now! Still a good-looking woman, though.
Shane MacGowan’s tipple
10 October 2009
A barman from Eamonn Doran’s (recently closed) told me this story:
Customer: Shane MacGowan was in Doran’s a while ago. I think he’s a friend of Dermot Doran. Anyway, he asked me for a pint of gin and lemon. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Do you want lemon cordial or fizzy lemon?’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘a slice of lemon!’
Paddy Hitler
14 October 2009
Customer: Did you know Hitler’s brother worked in the Shelbourne Hotel as a waiter?
Barber: Ah, that’s not true.
Customer: It is true. He was a confidence trickster. He pretended to be a wealthy Austrian hotel-owner on a tour of Europe, and he ended up marrying a woman from Clondalkin. I’m telling you, look it up. See for yourself. His son was called Paddy Hitler.
Barber: Come on, now, I know you’re having me on. Paddy Hitler?
Customer: You can say what you want, but that’s a true story!
Short-sighted
15 October 2009
Customer: I had laser surgery on my eyes the other day!
Barber: I hear that works really well.
Customer: It’s fantastic. It’s like high definition. I was at a match the day after the surgery, and I could see the ball so clearly. Before it was just a blur
!
Barber: I have that problem, but I never considered laser surgery. I can see perfectly close up, but I can’t see anything clearly if it’s far away.
Customer: You should try it. You won’t believe how good it is. I decided to get my eyes done after I was waiting on a bus one day and I put my hand out to stop a Brennan’s Bread van!
Remodelling
17 October 2009
Customer: I’d like a new style. Can you use a different bowl this time?
Barber: Smartarse!
On John O’Donoghue
25 October 2009
Customer: Did you see John O’Donoghue was flying up and down from Kerry to Dublin with his driver going earlier in the car so it would be there when he arrived? We were paying for an empty car going across the country. Spending like there was no tomorrow!
Barber: I heard someone on the radio say he was living on the other side of the wardrobe—in Narnia!
White overnight
27 October 2009
Customer: Take those hairs out of the ears there. Wait till you get to my age, they start growing everywhere except where they should. Did you know that?
