It was that moment when he was having his breakfast and there was a poodle sitting in the chair at the head of the table eyeing his rasher rinds that you knew Living with Lucy was delivering on its promise to show us a side of Davy Fitzgerald that we had never seen before.
Those who thought they knew him couldn’t have envisaged anyone but Davy sitting at the head of his own table, so him surrendering the position of authority to a poodle, and not even, say, a Bernese Mountain Dog, made them realise they didn’t know the real Davy at all.
Lucy Kennedy had admitted to being extremely nervous about moving in with the Clare man for the first episode of season two of TV3’s Living with Lucy. “I believe he’s quite an angry individual,” she said. But in no time at all she was declaring that “this is Johnny Chilled Pants!”
Her concern had been heightened by the timing of her visit to his Sixmilebridge home, which he shares with his two poodles, Holly and Sophie, his partner Sharon and his son Colm. Davy had been given an eight week touchline ban after his pants had shown no chill at all during a pitch incursion that led to a brush with Tipperary’s Jason Forde. So, for Wexford’s upcoming championship game against Laois, he was going to be banished to the stands.
Lucy worried, then, that she'd find Davy in a volcanic mood, but far from it - his spirits were high, even serenading her with a bit of his favourite tune, That's Amore, which was playing on the jukebox in his man-cave. The whirring we could hear was Dean Martin spinning in his grave, Davy's rendition bordering on first degree murder. Mario Rosentock, meanwhile, was sitting at home watching, wondering how he could ever out-Davy Davy.
Graceland
The first thing we learnt from the programme is that Davy lives in a home so large that if he made his spare rooms available to the state, our housing crisis would be over. “Jeeeeesus,” said Lucy as they drove through gates and up a driveway that hinted Graceland would be waiting for them. It nearly was.
“Don’t mind the mess,” said Davy with the confidence of a man who knew there’d be no mess at all, and there wasn’t. The only thing that was dishevelled was Davy’s face after he’d said to Holly or Sophie (sorry, they’re indistinguishable), “come over here to Daddy, give me kissie”, resulting in him having the face slurped off him.
Davy then gave Lucy a tour of his house which took longer than your average hurling match, his landing so big it even had room for a couch and coffee table.
Dinner time and they headed to Davy’s favourite restaurant, the Texas Steak Out, where he sits in the same seat and has the same meal every single week: Chicken Maryland and a glass of milk. They once took the dish off the menu and Davy’s world nearly crumbled, so they put it back on.
“Do you know Davy has never tasted pizza in his life,” said Sharon. “Nor a Chinese. And never in his life has he had spaghetti or lasagne. In his life!”
Lucy: “Why?!”
Sharon: “Because he thinks in his head it’s disgusting.”
Davy conceded that he was “a weird ****er”. Nobody disagreed.
Pelvic floor
Match day and Lucy tried to calm Davy’s nerves by getting him to do a bit of Yoga. She showed him how to do a ‘Downward Dog’, which involves thrusting your bum heavenwards while your hands and feet are planted on the floor. “Oh Jesus,” he said.
Lucy: “How is your pelvic floor?”
Davy: “My what?”
Lucy: “Your pelvic floor, it’s pretty much what stops you weeing.”
By now Davy just wanted to get to the game, seeing no value in risking dislocating your midriff, so off they headed for Portlaoise, half the country squeezing in to his back seat. One of them was a young fella called ‘Bomber’ who was checking his Tinder, this being half 10 in the morning. “No better time than the present,” he said, hoping to find love before arriving at O’Moore Park. Davy just shook his head, you sensed this goes on in the Wexford dressing room too.
They arrived at the ground and Davy took his place at the back of the stand, the game starting shakily enough before Wexford began pulling away handsomely in the second half.
“I hope Davy’s happy,” Lucy smiled, at which point a cry went up from the back of the stand: “AH FOR **** SAKE!”
It ended well, though.
They bid farewell on the pitch after. “He’s just so sweet, he’s really emotional . . . he’s very gentle, he’s lovely,” Lucy concluded, Davy’s reputation in tatters.
He set off for home, maybe treating himself to a Chicken Maryland and glass of milk on the way, before reuniting with Holly and Sophie for another snog-fest. And to think we thought we knew him.
