'What have you done? I can't go to the wedding looking like this'

Gotta look the port for Drico's do – but why does that spray tan look so dork? writes ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY

I WONDERED would I get the call? Then I finally did – pretty late in the day as well. Might have known he'd make me sweat it. But Monday morning the invitation finally dropped through the letter box and I was stood in the hallway giving it the old left to right, thinking how you'd haveto say fair focks – bygones be bygones and blah blah blah.

See, me and Drico havehad our differences down through the years, most of them rugby-related. I happen to know it drives him mad that, whenever we meet each other, I always make a point of wearing my Leinster Schools Senior Cup medal outsidemy shirt? But then, in my defence, when Tana Umaga did what he did a few years back, who was the one who stood up in the Merrion Inn and told RTÉ's Colm Murray how bang out of order he was and how a trueMaori warrior would never pull a stunt like that?

So it's fair to say there's, like, a respect there. He's on the record somewhere as saying that I couldhave played at number 10 for Ireland had I not pissed my talent up against the wall – which was an amazing thing for me to hear, because I don't alwaysget the recognition?

Straight away, I rang JP with the news. “Guess where I’m going to be on Friday,” I went. “A certain county called . . . er, Leitrim? That’s not a misprint, is it?” He was like, “No, it exists, Ross. I sold a fair few houses there back in the day. ‘The commuter belt just went out a couple more notches’ – front page headline in the Irish Times property section. God, will we ever see days like that again?”

I was there, “Sorry, can we just bring the conversation back to me for a minute? This is, like, a major deal, Dude. You know what this invitation says?”

“That you’ve been forgiven for getting mullered and telling Amy that you were in love with her in Krystle on Paddy’s Night?”

“No – well, yeah. But also that the Dricster has drawn a line in the sand. He’s saying, you know, ‘We’re both in our 30s now. School was a long time ago. I’ve achieved all I’ve achieved and you’ve – in all fairness to you – achieved all you’ve achieved.’ ”

JP sniggered, but I was big enough to let it go.

“I like to think he’s also saying, in his own way, thanks. A lot of the things he does on the rugby field he pretty much copied from me.”

JP went, “So, who are you going to bring?” and I looked down at the invite again. I got a plus-one. So then I storted running through, like, a mental checklist of all my exes, trying to come up with one who hadn’t, at some point in the recent past, threatened to kill me.

“What about my cousin?” it was JP who went. “Erin Ferris?”

I was there, "Erin Go Braless?" which is what we call her for reasons I couldexplain except I know that a lot of children read this column.

He was like, “Yeah, you went out with her before. Did you know she once knocked back Gordon D’Arcy in Club 92?”

Which I didn't know. Of course, for me, that was immediately it. I was thinking, can you imagine Dorce's boat when I walk through the doors of the church with heron my orm? I was like, "What's she up to these days?" because the last I heard she was in, like, recruitment.

“She’s doing, like, spray-on tans. Well, you know how things are on the job front. But that’s the honest beauty of it, Ross – she could give you, like, a colour for the day? Meaning you’ll really stand out. The rest of the goys, remember, have just spent a month in the New Zealand and Australian winter.”

Literally 10 seconds later, I was on the Wolfe to Erin, going, “Hey, Babes, it’s Ross, don’t hang up!” which is my usual opening line. “You’ll never guess what I’ve got here in my hand.”

“Ten o’clock in the morning is a bit early for a booty call,” she went, “even by your standards.”

I explained to her that it wasn't that at all – not this time – it was actually an invitation to theevent of the year and I wanted her to be my basically plus-one.

Judging from the “oh my God” count, she was seriously impressed. I was there, “We’ll drive up to this so-called Leitrim on Thursday afternoon. But you get over here a couple of hours beforehand and sort me out with a serious Jackie Chan.”

So Thursday morning – good as her word – Erin arrives at Rosa Parks with all her gear. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the – let’s just call it – process, but basically Erin pitched this pretty much tent in my bathroom. I lashed on a hairnet and some paper Jockeys, then stepped into it, while she stood outside with this thing that looked like the gun from a petrol pump, and literally spray-painted me, like poor people do to their cors.

Of course, while this was all happening, I was still babbling away, going, "Yeah, no, with me and Drico, it's a real Sliding Doorsthing? As in, back in the late '90s, we were both stors of our school teams, me in Castlerock, him in – and I'm going to have to say the word – Blackrock. Then obviouslyour careers took off in different directions . . . Hey, does that tan not look a bit dork to you?"

She was there, “No, it’ll lighten up when it dries. Continue – what you’re saying is really, really interesting.”

"Oh . . . Well, it's just that, you know, he obviously went on to captain Ireland and the Lions. Grand Slam. Heineken Cup. Record try scorer. Marrying . . . well, sheknows how I feel about her. Whereas, I . . . Well, I went the scenic route and I . . . Well, I . . . Do you know what, I wish I'dfocking speartackled him now when I had the actual chance!"

“Finished,” she suddenly went. I was like, “Great. Can’t wait to see this.”

I stepped out of the tent and checked myself out in the full-length mirror. There was no preparing me for the shock. Erin was smiling like a monkey eating shit out of a hairbrush. I was literally blacker than a bailiff’s hort. “What the fock have you done?” I went. “I can’t go to the wedding looking like this!”

And that's when I heard the sniggering from beyond the bathroom door. It was JP. And it was suddenly obvious. Theyprinted up the invitation. Their idea of a joke. I'm so slow sometimes they could put deckchairs on me and sail me round the Caribbean.

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