It's Irish culture for an audience with a short attention span.
A reference book of easily digestible snippets that lists everything from Irish curses ("may the seven terriers of hell sit on the spool of your breast") to the cloudiest town (Omagh) was launched in Dublin last night.
Written by a history graduate turned funds manager, the Irish Book of Listswas launched by PDs founder Desmond O'Malley.
"It'll whet the appetite of people to find out more," said Mr O'Malley at the launch at O'Donoghue's in Dublin last night.
Readers could learn "Eleven Interesting Facts About Irish Dancing" (Six: Each dancing shoe has eight surfaces), "Nine Irish Recipes" (Seven: Remember to add the prunes to Guinness beef stew just before serving) and "Twelve Quotes by Oscar Wilde" (11. "Work is the curse of the drinking class").
Author Julian Ashe said he tried to plug a gap in the market and, during his research, learned things never mentioned in his UCD classes.
"I didn't know Ireland had crown jewels," he said. The jewels - the Insignia of the Knights of St Patrick - were worn by English royalty at special events. Stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907 (they were never properly locked away, as the safe wouldn't fit into the strong room), the jewels have never been found, according to Ashe's book.
He also didn't know that Irishmen invented both the submarine and the ejector seat, and that eight dozen tennis balls were among the items listed as lost after the Titanic sank. Nor that a regular diet of wild parsley can tame an ill-tempered horse or that local politicians could be a great source of humorous quotes.
"The idea is well and good in theory, but tell me this - who is going to feed them?" the book quotes a Wicklow councillor as saying when he objected to a proposal to boost tourism by putting gondolas on Blessington lake.