The old man gives me a big smile. He’s like, “Thank you for coming, Kicker! It’s wonderful to know that I can count on your support!”
I’m there, “I’m not here to support you. I’m here to watch Denis O’Brien wipe the floor with you.”
You may or may not have heard that Denis is suing him, claiming that the wig my old man has been wearing for the past 18 months represents an infringement of his intellectual property rights. You don't need me to tell you whose side I'm on?
The old man turns around to Hennessy and he goes, “You can see what he’s doing, can’t you, old scout? He’s playing the role of devil’s advocate, just to make sure his old dad’s wits remain sharp for the legal swordplay to come.”
I’m like, “No, I’m genuinely on Denis O’Brien’s side. He gave us Johnny Sexton back. What have you ever given the country?”
The answer to that question, of course, is the square root of fock-all. Suddenly, a hush descends on the court and in he walks – Denis himself – flanked by his legal team.
He takes one brief look at my old man, then he sits down. The old man carries on staring him, at the same time primping up his hair-slash-wig with his hand, pretty much goading the dude?
"Allez Les Bleus!" I shout across the courtroom. Denis just blanks me. Bigger things on his mind, I suppose.
The whole thing eventually kicks off. One of the dudes representing Denis outlines the case against my old man.
“My client,” he goes, “had a hairstyle that – in respect of colour, length and arrangement – was unique to him. It was his signature style. You could see him cast in silhouette and still recognise him.
"In March 2001, he applied to the Irish Patents Office to register this design – including specific features, such as the lines, contours, colour, shape, texture, volume and bounciness – as his industrial property. He was successful in this application.
“In the autumn of 2015, Mr Charles O’Carroll-Kelly, a disgraced property developer and the proprietor of a document disposal service–”
The old man is suddenly on his feet. “I’m a bloody well entrepreneur!” he shouts, staring straight at Denis. “And let the court record reflect it!”
The judge tells him – in polite legal terms – to sit the fock down and the dude representing Denis carries on.
“Mr Charles O’Carroll-Kelly,” he goes, “for the purposes of career advancement, took to wearing a wig that is, in every respect, identical to the style over which my client has design protection, including such characteristics as the shade of autumn-ochre; the volume, defined by the patents office as ‘generous-bodied’; the overall shape, defined as rotunda-like; the position of the side-parting and its geometrical relation to the main body of the hair; and the orientation and general aspect of the side-comb feature.
“It is our contention that this wig represents a breach of my client’s intellectual property rights and has caused him considerable embarrassment in both his personal and professional life, for which he is seeking substantial punitive damages.”
“Fair focks!” I shout. “You definitely have me convinced!”
The judge stares at me and says something about, I don't know, possibly jailing me for contempt of court in the event of, like, further outbursts?
Various expert witnesses are called by both sides then. Appearing for my old man, Naseem Khan, a professor of geometry and applied mathematics with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that he studied 50 photographs of Charles O’Carroll-Kelly and Denis O’Brien, focusing specifically on the structural similarities between their hairstyles.
Firstly, he says, he compared the steepness and curvature of the main hemispherical surface area of both men’s hair using tradition formulae for measuring quadric surfaces. In the case of Denis O’Brien’s hair, he says, it satisfied all the mathematical criteria of a spherical cap dome – in contrast to Charles O’Carroll-Kelly’s hair, which was more paraboloid in character.
There’s suddenly a lot of muttering in court. I presume everyone else is like me – struggling to follow what’s being said. A lot of legal types go to rugby schools.
With regord to the angle at which the two men’s respective hairs are combed, Professor Khan discovered a mean differential of 14 degrees in the angle of the side-porting in relation to the main body of the hair. “What this means,” he goes, “is that the hairstyles of these two men are not the same.”
Under cross-examination, he is asked whether, in his view, they might satisfy the provision under patent law as being aesthetically similar. Professor Khan says he is not an expert in patent law. He is asked whether a layman might consider the two men’s hair to be aesthetically similar. He says he has not been called to testify as a layman – he has been asked to testify as an expert in geometry and that answering as a layman would require him to give a wilfully ignorant answer.
The judge tells him – again, using legal niceties – to stop acting the dick. So the dude agrees that, yes, to the untutored eyed, the two men could be said to have similar hairstyles.
Appearing as a witness for Denis O’Brien, Pamela Fry, a master colourist with Peter Mork on Grafton Street, says that my old man’s hair and Denis’s hair are identical in colour. But, under cross-examination, she bursts into tears and admits that, in a certain light, the old man’s hair is possibly more cinnamon-honeywheat than autumn-ochre and the judge suggests a short recess to allow Pamela to gather herself, while the old man shouts, “Strike out with costs to the plaintiff! Strike out with costs to the plaintiff!”
During the break in proceedings, I turn around to the old man and I go, “Why don’t you just give this up? Just admit that you haven’t had one good day since you put that thing on your head.”
“What,” he goes, “and deny myself the sweet taste of victory against my old nemesis? Never!”
And suddenly there’s another hush in the court, as Pamela is dismissed, and Denis O’Brien himself is called to the witness box. I clap my two hands together and I’m like, “Here we go! Hammer time!”