What's with you people? Slack-brained, impressionable, bandwagon-hopping bunch of no-marks that you all are. Be warned, I'm curmudgeonly and I'm dangerous.

If I am approached by one more person shaking his or her head and smiling beatifically as if they had just been faxed the third secret of Fatima, cornered by one more fat Cheshire cat who purrs and says "United, you couldn't begrudge it to them all the same", just one more of these shuffling zombies intruding in my no-fly zone and I shall come over all Bob de Niro in Taxi Driver.

For crying out loud, I thought there was an immutable principle here. I thought all things were begrudgable. I have been brought up to believe that, as a race, begrudgery is what we do best, begrudgery is the Riverdance of Irish conversation, the bitter thread running through our history. ain Bo Cuaile to Peig Sayers, to, well to me it seems. Here in Ireland begrudgery is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. At least it used to.

The good grace lobby will have to prise begrudgery from my cold, dead fingers I'm afraid, because begrudgery is an inalienable right and I begrudge Manchester United. I begrudge them the notion that they are Britain's team and I begrudge them the right to be Ireland's team, too. I begrudge them the current bias against begrudgery. If that is the price of freedom, it a price I am not willing to pay.

I begrudge Manchester United their success, but I am not inconsistent here. I am no mindless, begrudging gobshite. I begrudged them in their mediocrity and failure, too, begrudged them not having enough of either, begrudged them that time didn't stop when they were in the second division.

Of course I did. I begrudged them their last success with that talking plank Bobby Charlton and gummy old Nobby Styles and the bleedin' Busby Babes. Even when they were second division failure fodder, I begrudged them not being in the third division. I begrudged them when they were improving and now I am begrudging in Europe.

I am not a mindless begrudger. I begrudge them everything except maybe Roy Keane, who I consider to be a victim of English begrudgery in that they fail to recognise him as the best player in the Premiership. My begrudgery is not a crude thing, see. It is nuanced and calibrated and layered. I can begrudge a team, but not their leading light. If Keane played for Leeds, I would feel very passionate about the manner in which he is usually overlooked by people who are fawningly grateful to that breed of player who appears on TV advising one not to bring two bottles into the shower. To be intellectually consistent, I must bear the same begrudgery on his behalf, even though he has made the wrong choices in life.

I begrudge them everything else, though. I begrudge them Cantona, who they got for a song as part of some conspiracy, and I begrudge them bloody Denis Irwin, who when he was at Leeds might have tipped somebody the wink that he was going to be a top-class defender.

I most solemnly begrudge them the Manchester United Superstore which they are opening 50 yards from the desk at which I sit. If I'd known when I moved back from England at the end of the 1980s that England was just going to follow me around I might have stayed put.

I passionately begrudge the damage that they are doing to my two daughters, poor mites, who although they play camogie week-in, week-out have never seen the game on television. "Why is Manchester United always on telly Daddy," asks my five-year-old curiously, "are they like Coronation Street?'

Yes, they are, but I am forced to sit her down and speak softly to her about what begrudgery means in our family, in our nation.

I sincerely begrudge them their ability to make converts out of the feeble-brained. All those people you knew in school who were in that glamourless limbo whereby they were neither academically gifted nor sportingly inclined, they're the ones hollering the loudest, giving RTE the impression that they are some sort of national movement. I fiscally begrudge them the power to buy Stam, Yorke and Blomqvist with their loose change and still masquerade as a home-grown side.

I enthusiastically begrudge them all the TV coverage, too. I am always curious as to how our national broadcaster can afford the European Cup and the Formula One season (two events which I associate with a particular type of middle-aged, middle class, fair-weather sports person) and seemingly can afford quality coverage of little else.

I begrudge them their Sky coverage also because the loot they get from it merely perpetuates their advantages over other clubs.

I begrudge them the manner in which they are annexing imaginations quicker than the worst dictators in history annexed neighbouring states. Sports hacks get it bad you know.

Questions come in ominous pairs.

"What do you do?" Here goes. "I'm a sports reporter." "Oh." Pause. "So what do you think of United then?" And then it's all a blur your honour.

I respectfully begrudge them every penny they got for Lee Sharpe and, historically, I begrudge them their X Files seduction of Kevin Moran in 1978. They turned him into a Stepford wife.

I spitefully begrudge them the bleached blonde bimbo Beckham, who has insinuated himself into the vacated slingbacks of Princess Di as Britain's most poignant victim. He'll never have her elegance.

I humbly begrudge them their good fortune in letting Blackburn discover that Brian Kidd has the brains of a rocking horse rather than finding it out themselves when Fergie goes. I inevitably begrudge them Fergie as well.

I reflexively begrudged them the Murdoch takeover when it was a runner and, inventively, I now begrudge them their failure to be taken over by Murdoch. I have lost five maybe six easy columns a year as a result.

I begrudge them everything. Never having been implicated in the Kennedy assassination, their role in the death of punk, their links to the mafia, appeasing Hitler in the 1930s, their promotion of decadent western lifestyles and the support of all those god damn celebrities. I begrudge them my time in having to write all this down.

I begrudge them all those things, but I would like to finish on a more gracious and constructive note. I don't begrudge them the long odds - 7 to 4 - their foolish supporters are creating on Bayern Munich to win the European Cup. The drinks are on me when the glorious Krauts win the penalty shoot-out.