A few months ago myself and my brother Gerry went to a pretty brilliant Manic Street Preachers gig in the Olympia. Afterwards we headed up the road to The Turks Head for a few more pints but the soulless grating drone of an abysmal reggae covers band forced us out early and so, after a kebab, we hopped in a taxi to go home.

Before I’d even got my seat belt on the taxi driver piped up with, “Here lads, I had that Rosanna Davison one in the car there on Monday.”

“Oh yeah?” we said.

“Yeah! Ah Jesus, you should see her lads! She’s beautiful . . . the long blonde hair, gorgeous eyes, lovely smile! Ah she’s lovely, totally lovely. But I’ll tell you, she has the arse of an eleven year old boy.”

It was hard to know how to respond to such a statement. I chose the awkward silence option.

Sometimes it is strange, the things that you hear in taxis.

I was having a couple of pints in a pub not far from Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin one Wednesday evening not too long ago. A small and sweetly squalid pub – little more than a wide room with a U shaped bar in the middle of it. I was the only customer. Just me and the barman, who I had never met before. A small television was fixed to the back wall, high above the bar. He turned the volume up when the six o’clock news came on and Sharon Ní Bheoláin began to inform us of the important issues of the day.

The barman was standing beneath the tv with his back to me when he said, “I think Sharon must have been drinking a lot of milk lately.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” I asked.

“Because her tits are definitely looking bigger these days,” he replied.

He didn’t follow this comment up with anything. And did not speak again until my Guinness was almost gone and he asked me if I wanted another. Sometimes it is strange, the things that you hear in pubs.