Let’s talk about golf. It has many names: The Small Sphere Situation, Golph, I Am Retired and There is No Death, The Bore’s Mistress, Where Oh Where Is My Little White Ball? and, who can forget, I Miss Daddy.
Golf is a blight of this nation. Many of us have lost family members to golf and yet the national broadcaster celebrates it with all sorts of ads and promotions. Rory McIlroy is an Irish golphist and his pronouncements are celebrated in this country as though they were from Enya Herself.
Rory McIlroy’s Masters Dinner menu
Well now, thanks to McIlroy hosting the Masters Dinner (a fancy golf-related shindig filled with the world’s most golfy people) he’s a food expert, and in the process of devising his menu he has poured scorn on the cuisine of the nation.
On being asked why he didn’t go more Irish, the perambulating sticksman said: “I want to enjoy the dinner as well.” Well la-di-da, Mr Fancy. Too good for us now, are you? Well, here’s our alternative Masters’ Dinner leaning into who we are as a nation.
Appetisers
There will be no appetisers. What are we? French? We will instead sit in silence and contemplate the bad things we’ve done or, possibly, the new kitchens we want to buy. McIlroy could have created this immersive experience instead of doling out Peach and Ricotta Flatbread and Elk Sliders and the rest of his foreign nonsense.
First course
Soup Surprise. What’s in the soup? We’re as mystified as you. You certainly can’t tell by taste. We’ve a vat of it out back that we got from Siobhán’s brother’s girlfriend’s teacher. Is it vegetarian? There was a dog swimming in it earlier. Does that count?
Or
Orange juice.
McIlroy’s first course was Yellowfin Tuna Carpaccio. He hates Ireland.
Main course
Rancheros while weeping in a Nissan Micra, preferably in the forecourt of a Circle K. The meal of the high kings of Éireann. Eating Rancheros while weeping in a Nissan Micra, preferably in the forecourt of a Circle K, is as Irish as James Joyce or pretending to be nice to tourists (the Rancheros can be substituted with Monster Munch for vegetarians).
Or
Spuds! Spuds! Spuds! Mash, chips, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, a side order of Taytos. Is it vegetarian? No. It’s all been rubbed with rashers. Doesn’t it feel more patriotic than Wagyu Fillet Mignon or Seared Salmon or whatever other basic sh*te McIlroy was serving?
Dessert
You can go away with your “sticky toffee pudding” dessert Rory McIlroy (I don’t even know if I’m saying that right. “Sticky toffee pudding”: what language even is that?). For The Irish Times Masters Dinner we’ll be having drugs: statins, Botox, Viagra, Panadol – all as Irish as passive aggression or Planxty and made by the rough horny hands of the plain people of this land.
Yes, we are a simple peasant folk labouring in the laboratories and open-plan offices of international conglomerates and McIlroy, with his sophisticated golfing ways, thinks he’s too good for us now.