By Dominic Hyde
Yes, Denis O’Brien is a wealthy man and has a majority shareholding in the newspaper I write for.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not a stand-up guy.
The Big D, as almost no one calls him, would have been filthy rich even if he hadn’t bunged Lowry all that money (which didn’t happen because Moriarty is a crazy vengeful judge).
‘D’ was already rolling in the folding stuff long before Esat came along.
At school, he would sell crushed beetles to the younger boys for extortionate sums. He also ran a numbers and protection racket which made him a millionaire by the time he sat his Inter Cert.
This is where I met him. He paid for me to sit his exams, but rather than give me money he offered me something more valuable, advice.
The advice being: don’t sit someone else’s exam unless you get the money upfront.
He would savagely bully me sometimes within inches of me actually dying, but as we grew up, we became closer. Rather than burn my flesh with a lighted cigarette, he would often throw – oh, the irony – mobile phones at my head.
These were the days when a mobile phone sometimes weighed as much as a bag of sugar or a small child. Imagine being hit on the head with a bag of sugar or a small child three or four times a day. it’s no fun. But it did teach me a thing or two about life.
If it looks like a duck, you should duck.
(Cont. p64)