Denis gets a nasty shock

I feel sorry for rich people. If you’ve more money than you need (not the same thing as more money than you want), that means you don’t need to go out to work. Yet there must be a nagging feeling that chasing your next million (or billion) is really just putting in the time. Whether you’re a millionaire or a billionaire or a zillionaire, you can still eat no more than three meals a day, your body has only so much room for drink or drugs. Then you start wondering what the hell is the point in it all? You’re like the dog that chased the car – what do you do with it, now you’ve caught it?

But it’s nice to see one of our own up there. 

Take Denis O’Brien, who used to own all sorts of stuff like the licence rights on Esat Telecom, which he eventually ended up selling  to British Telecom for around €2 billion.   He also owns a luxury resort in Portugal (Quinta do Lago, since you ask) and – wait for it – a private hospital (Beacon Hospital) in Dublin. 

So when Sinn Féin commissioned an independent investigation into media ownership in Ireland ( did I mention Denis  owned the Indo?) and it found that people like Denis owned far too much media in Ireland, Denis was proper pissed off, and had a spokesman declare something to the effect that “Sinn Féin/IRA had got the kind of report they paid for.”

There was a time when a  remark of that nature would have been commonplace, nothing to see here. But times had changed, and the judge said the two solicitors behind the report had been defamed and presented as supporters of the IRA. Consequently O’Brien had to pay Daragh Mackin and Gavin Booth  €411,750 each,  and foot the bill for the court case – which Denis attended in person, looking not wildly pleased.

So it just goes to show – you could have a couple of billion, you could own a luxury resort, you could for God’s sake own a  hospital,  but when some little pipsqueaks take you to court for saying ‘Sinn Féin/IRA’, you’ll feel aggrieved that you had to fork out to two bloody lawyers, and in future  you’d better watch out when you’re talking about Sinn Féin.

I’m telling you – having loadsamoney can be a heavy weight at times. It really is hard to think what you might give a man as wealthy as Denis, apart from a nasty shock in court.