Róisín Ingle visits former F1 racing driver's house which screams Let Me Entertain You
A racing helmet by the bed and a pair of Italian underpants in the changing room. Who lives in a house like this?
Strictly speaking racing driver Eddie Irvine has only lived in this newly built bachelor pad on Dalkey's Sorrento Road for the sum total of a week. Which means your reporter may have been among the first female visitors to survey the breath-taking views of Dublin Bay available from the top level of the house while perched - oh, the thrill of it - on Eddie Irvine's bed.
Unprofessional? Possibly. But such opportunities do not come along every day. While on the bed - a big cream number with black duvet and pillows if you're asking - the prospective buyer will notice a picture of a half dressed model on a bedside table beside a lovingly framed black and white picture of a woman who may or may not be Irvine's Mum. Ah, the simple accoutrements a single boy requires in order to feel at home.
I might have spent more time than was strictly necessary in the bedroom but there was lots to see. The wood panelling on one wall gives the deliberate impression of being in a luxury yacht while the four glass panels in the floor allow the occupier to peep down at the antics of guests in the swimming pool below.
The bathroom is a granite wonderland where the bath/Jacuzzi fits at least four people, or six at an intimate squeeze.
Then it's down a spiral staircase to the plunge pool and the sauna - the sleeping quarters to the sittingroom. The views here are stunning too, the afternoon sun dripping across the mountains onto the sea. Nevermind the walnut floors and the steel bar area, the views from this house are an essential part of the expected €6.5m guide price.
Up a gently winding staircase off the sittingroom is a small viewing turret, where Irvine likes to play his acoustic guitar. I could have sat there all day strumming his Takamine but there were yet more rooms to see. Four other bedrooms in fact, three of them en suite with gorgeous coloured glass bowl sinks. And the all-white kitchen, with its imported Italian fittings. No food in the fridge of course, just champagne and a bottle of red wine.
The "playroom" in the basement is where the house really starts to feel like a Playboy Mansion proper. It features expansive suede furnishings with a space to rest a cocktail on each armchair.
Just off the sitting area is a changing room which has access to a kind of indoor lagoon. From here you can swim out to the main pool. Again the prospective buyer can't help but notice Irvine's grey Giordano pants hanging here on a peg beside his togs.
This is a fantasy, not a family, home. From the wide expanse of outside decking, piped for a gas barbeque, to the track lighting that floods down the curtains in the sittingroom when night falls to the waterfall that flows into a rockpool, it's a home that screams Let Me Entertain You.
To that end there is a state-of-the-art sound system in the playroom and intense research - oh, ok so I flicked through his CD collection - reveals Irvine likes to listen to everything from The Pogues to US rapper 50 Cent. It just seems a shame that Irv the Swerve, who was away in the States when we called and is selling because he does not spend enough time in Ireland, won't be the one who gets to party in this, the ultimate party house. And as you leave, walking past the home of Irvine's neighbour Van Morrison, you can't help wondering who will.
The house, called Kilross, is available through Sherry FitzGerald - Simon Ensor is handling the sale.
