Get Up the Yard

Roddy Doyle arrived at court in a blazer and a crisp white shirt, sans tie. He wore jeans over his shiny black shoes, and his face bore only glasses and his smug grin, which seems written into his DNA. Brendan O'Carroll was clad more formally, sporting a suit with a gaudy pink waistcoat and bowtie, which he may have borrowed from a cheap wedding band. The high-level of public interest meant they walked into a full house for their hearing. Both agonisingly close to the prize of writing the quintessential, ungainsayable portrayal of working-class Dublin, the two men had become locked in a blood rivalry to prove who is the true custodian of authentic Dublin life. Other writers had expressed interest in the chance to depict the life and rise of Irish hero Jimmy Nugent in a theatrical film, but only two remained undeterred, after a distasteful level of competitiveness. Unable to resolve the issue amicably, the two parties were summoned to court, suing and counter-suing each other for libel and slander. It is here where the situation devolved beyond any resolution or credibility.

Our two brick-wall aficionado malcontents. 

The trial proceeded smoothly at first, everyone involved agreeing that he who represented Dublin best deserved the film rights. As the hearing proceeded, both contestants grew visibly more agitated. Doyle was the one who broke first. After some impassioned interjections and heckling from both sides, he stood up, and, with the palms of his hands facing outwards, he began a monologue.

"Look," he implored. "Look. It's basically like this."

Walking to the front of the room with a self-assured smile, he began a defence of his credentials. O'Carroll, intimidated and irked by the theatrics, promptly joined him, and the real, gloves-off battle commenced. Prowling around each other, the two men argued their cases, like to stags caught in the lock of their antlers, blood-rivals pitted in mortal combat.  

"I have an intimate relationship with Dublin," Doyle asserted.

"You do in your bollox." O'Carroll retorted. 

Doyle tried to return to the matter-of-fact flow of his soliloquy, but the star of Mrs Brown's Boys was quick with his interruptions. 

"Ah, Jaysus, me mickey's all itchy after your ma last night."

Doyle continued. "I suppose you could say I have… revelled… in the very soul and character of this city. I like to walk along the streets of this fair city. [O'Carroll rolled his eyes.] Maybe I'll have a coffee or do some pottering around the shops. I hear people talking, watch them in their daily… habitat. I see their lives, their struggles, their joys, their triumphs. Even their grief. " And so Doyle meandered on, never straying from the narrow path between the commonplace and the sublime, a path so ineffable that nothing is actually said. O'Carroll mimed a yawn, provoking giggle from some quarters of the audience. He gave his own statement, which was about thirty percent the length of Doyle's, primarily because of the accelerated speed of his speech. It comprised of crude jokes and working-class Dublin idioms, such as, "I'll burst ye" and "I did in me hole." With his opponent attracting much laughter, Doyle tried a few idioms of his own, but the sheltered implausibility of "me auld segosha" and "gerr ourra dat garden" produced more silence than was comfortable, and cringe seeped out of the pours of the audience.

"Ah, there's been some real characters in this city", he mused, feigning feelings of reminiscence and trying to change the subject. "I know them all so well," O'Carroll butted in, initiating a game of blatant name dropping, where both men fought to hold back their burgeoning resentment. They claimed to have met them all: Luke Kelly, Eamon Dunphy, Phil Lynott, auld Mister Brennan, the "Ah, leave ir out" woman, Molly Malone, Brendan Behan, Ana Liffey, Maureen Potter, Dustin the turkey, Leo Burdock, Conor McGregor, Bella from Fair City, Zozimus "the last gleeman of the Pale", Glenn Hansard, Liam Brady, Ronny Drew, and every single resident of the Liberties. Within several minutes, the names began to dry up, and both men reached for increasingly implausible and less prestigious names. O'Carroll tried to convince the audience that 40 Coats was a real person, and Doyle spent several minutes regaling the audience with his encounter with the imposing spectre of James Joyce. 

From the many alibis of authenticity, the argument moved to defining events of the city, and the competitors had experienced it all: they were both at U2's first gig, remembered the Liberties in the rare old times, cheered on Heffo's boys in the 1976 All-Ireland football final, felt grief and outrage at the Stardust fire and the 1974 bombings, got lost in the hazy euphoria of Italia '90, drank tea at Bewley's in its heyday, ached with nostalgia for Nelson's Pillar, derided to this day the Millennium Clock and that weird multicolour fountain on O'Connell Street in the late 1990s, ate every morning a bowl of coddle as pale and unappetising as is possible. They both rode on the trams when they were kids, watched films in the Ambassador, revelled in the orgy of the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Classic, and spent an inordinate amount of time chatting to Pat Ingoldsby on the Ha'penny Bridge. 

The men increasingly resorted to interrupting and speaking over each other. Their voices became louder, and their ridicule of each other's work became more and more vicious. Foam forming at the corner of their mouths, the antagonists squared off against each other, pushing and eyeballing one another, until O'Carroll suddenly smacked Doyle in the face with a perfectly placed head butt. Doyle's glasses flew away from his face as he fell to the ground. O'Carroll circled his opponent, trying to outflank him, in order to arrive at a better kicking position. Doyle, taking advantage of the comedian's dancing movements, hooked his right leg from under him, bringing him also to the ground. The severity of the body slam told O'Carroll he had underestimated the soft-spoken novelist, and when the two returned to their feet, he lunged at him more ferociously, pushing him quickly against the wall. Lost in a bout of savagery, O'Carroll let fly with rapid-fire punches to the torso. Doyle pushed him away from the shoulders, and when O'Carroll reflexively dove back in, he adroitly side-stepped him, delivering him to the wall. They pierced each others souls with their eyes, both men full of burning hate. "I'll batter you, you dopey prick." said O'Carroll with venom.

"We'll let me tell you now,", Doyle started, short of breath, into another banal anecdote, "I decided a couple of years back to take up a martial art. Now, I would hardly describe myself as Bruce Lee, but…". O'Carroll lunged at Doyle once more before he could continue, but he was struck down by a decisive judo chop. When he returned to his feet, the men circled each other once more, locked intensely in a deadly game of chess. Eventually, they were separated, and the hearing was suspended until further notice.

As is the way with all farce, it came to nought. Unimpressed with the indulgent self-promotion of the two men in the courtroom — though somewhat pleased with the fight — Jimmy Nugent has withdrawn his permission for either parties to make a biographical film about his life. With a sonorous cadence, and the near-divine authority of an Egyptian Pharaoh, he decreed that, "der both gobsites."  And so, neither James Drives Home nor Jimmy's Mickey will see the light of production. But the battle doesn't end there; Roddy Doyle and Brendan O'Carroll have brought their dispute into other arenas. Unable to let go of the non-existent prize of being the champion and oracle of Dublin culture, they fight on endlessly, across Twitter, on the streets of working-class Dublin, in interviews and newspaper columns. Doyle has avowed to write another one of his working-class pub-dweller dialogues, where the two interlocutors disparage O'Carroll as an irksome goblin. He promises it will be his unfunniest, most prosaic piece yet. O'Carroll is working a new character into his sitcom, Mrs Brown's Boys. Provisionally named "posh prick", Mrs Brown is due to break the fourth wall every time he speaks, gesturing 'wanker' to the studio audience. 

The project has now fallen to what might best be described as a committee of safe mediocrity. Perhaps this is for the best, as their lack of an all-molesting ego will sure ensure the project's completion. Pierce Brosnan will direct and star, leading to sleepless nights for pigs, who dread the amount of ham that will be produced. Jimmy Nugent will be played by Dave Duffy, better known as Leo Dowling in Fair City. Co-starring will be Amy Huberman, Amanda Brunkner, Rosanna Davison, and Callum Best. With rumours that Andrew Scott may well be joining the cast, we might be looking at a pig Holocaust. Ronan Keating will produce the title song 'Go on, You Good Thing'. The film is expected to be released early 2018, just in time for Nugent's Day.