Smirkin O’Rourke

Insiders at St Patrick’s in Navan confirmed this afternoon that Colm O’Rourke had to be warned three times by the Board of Governors for ‘giggling away to himself’ at a first staff meeting for the 2015/6 academic year. Mr O’Rourke, Principal of the school, was finally asked to stand in the corner after smirking and rubbing his hands during a conversation on discipline procedures for the coming year.

Cleaner Mary Dowds, who has worked in the school since 1933, explained how O’Rourke was in unusually pleasant form for the first day back:

“The master would be a grumpy sort of man but this morning he was grinning from ear to ear and saying things like ‘I’ve got them now‘ and ‘Pat and Joe will be so pleased with me‘, and pointing at his nose and winking. We hadn’t a clue what he was on about.”

O’Rourke’s mobile phone was also confiscated by the Chair of the Board after he was caught texting several times during the meeting. Dowds added:

“He was infuriating everyone. The chairperson took the phone off him and read out one of his texts. It was addressed to a ‘Ciaran’ and it said ‘LOL, can’t believe RTE fell for it.’ It didn’t seem to faze him though and he just kept on smirking.”

Meanwhile, The Ulster Samaritans revealed they’re still perplexed at the astronomical rise in calls to their centres over the weekend, mostly from Derry and Armagh callers. Samaritans spokesperson Mary Applebum explained:

“From 6pm on Saturday evening til last night our phones were red hot with people from Ballinderry and Maghery wailing and sobbing. We couldn’t really work out what was wrong but they seemed to be worried about their heart or something like that.”