McWilliams - The Popes children Irelands new elite

Where are we now and how did we get here?

Ireland has arrived.

We are richer than any of us imagined possible ten years ago. No Irish person has to emigrate, none of us need pay for education and even our universities are free. Unemployment is the lowest in our history. We have more choice than ever, the place is more tolerant and no-one can be legally discriminated against. We have more cash in our back pockets than almost anyone in Europe. We are better off than 99% of humanity. We are top of foreigners lists as places to live. Unlike many of our rich neighbours, in survey after survey we claim to be very happy. We no longer need to beg from others in the EU ; in fact, we are giving them cash. We are a success. We have money and time. We can now afford to kick back and take stock, reflect and relax a bit. Why not go for a walk, be frivolous or just stop the clock and slow down? The hard part is over. Or at least thats what you might think. If economists ruled the world they would say that Irish people will react to their new-found elevation by behaving rationally. We would take more days off, spend time with our families and chill out.

But instead of winding down and luxuriating in our new-found wealth, we are accelerating as never before. We have to be there first, have the best, the brightest, the newest and the biggest. We must also be the ones who are most fun, loudest, best craic and most off our head. We are borrowing, spending, shopping, shagging, eating, drinking and taking more drugs than any other nation. We are Europes hedonists and the most decadent Irish generation ever. Interestingly, this carry-on is ubiquitous. At one end of the scale, Irish teenagers are losing their virginity and taking drugs earlier, while at the other end of the scale, our forty and fifty-somethings are binge drinking, swinging and hoovering cocaine to allow them to stick the pace and have one last drink. We are the full-on nation.

We are eating more than ever, obsessing about food, writing about it, talking about it and savouring it. We are in ingestion heaven. We are getting fatter, quicker. Not so long ago, we were skinny and all our hard men were wiry little fellas who wouldnt have been out of place on the set of Trainspotting. Of all the characters in Irving Welshs novel about four young Edinburgh skangers, Begbie was the most realistic and the scariest, the quintessential psychopath, the hardest hard chaw on the estate, a man who would glass you as soon as hed shake your hand. In the follow-up film, Robert Carlyle expertly played Begbie. And Carlyles Begbie hadnt a pick on him. When I read Trainspotting, my Begbie was scrawny, wiry, contorted, unstable and extremely violent. Most of all, he was skinny.

Growing up in Dn Laoghaire in the 1980s, I remember all the hard men were sinewy, scrawny lads, hence the local description more meat on a seagull. The reason was simple: they were undernourished. Perched on the church wall in the town were skinny, arseless lads, spitting and smoking Majors. The young wans, despite a couple of babies, were more or less the same, pinched, flat-chested and drawn. Today, Dn Laoghaires hard men are fat. Rolls of flab strain the Liverpool away strip. Double chins are de rigueur and little piggy eyes are squeezed into sockets among the flab. Gravity has also got the better of the young wans, as their corpulent bums, like two puppies in a bag, make unsightly bids for freedom over their entirely ill-advised ultra low-rise jeans.

According to the national task force on obesity, 30% of Irish women are overweight and a further 12% are obese, while nearly half of Irish adult males are overweight and 14% are obese. our spending on chip shops and takeaways went up by over 70% in the past seven years. We also increased spending on sweets by just over 50%, while we spent 42% more on sugary soft drinks. We spent 721 million on teeth-rotting fizzy drinks last year, almost twice as much as we do on calcium-rich milk. Is it any wonder that diabetes is the fastest growing disease in the country when our Kit Kat and Snickers bill alone per year dwarfs our total spending on organic food? And it is the poor who are becoming fatter quickest. Only 8% of university graduates are obese, whereas close to one in five of those who left school before the Junior Cert are waddling around in sports wear, getting sores between the thighs as their blubber legs rub up against each other. In the past, fatness was a sign of wealth, education and privilege. In contrast, the poor were skinny. These days, the rich and smart are thin.

But just in case you believed the spin of Loaded and Cosmo and thought that only thin people have vigorous, varied and interesting sex lives, think again. The blubbery Paddies are going at it like rabbits. We are having sex on average 105 times a year that puts us way above the abstemious Japanese who only cop-off 47 times a year, but far below the amorous French and Greeks who get it 137 and 133 times respectively. just over half of us claimed, responsibly, that we were worried about contracting HIV , yet 52% of Irish people have had unprotected sex. We are also having lots of sex younger; typically we start at seventeen and have on average eleven sexual partners. Irish teen mags are getting much more explicit. One I just picked up in Easons which was stuffed with sex tips, adult chat lines and phone sex numbers came with a free wait for it packet of childrens sweets! I wonder what age group is its target market.

Meanwhile back in bed, in a break with our full-on hectic lifestyle, Irish men take their time. We are the third most generous, thoughtful and slow lovers in the world, spending on average 21.8 minutes on foreplay, but this seems to be wasted time because only an underwhelming 17% of Irish women orgasm during sex. Clearly lots of spade-work but not much technique from the Paddies. But not to worry, youd never know it because four in ten Irish women have faked orgasms in the past twelve months. So the lads can avoid the wet patch and roll over happy. This may also go some way to explaining why 36% of Irish women claim to own a vibrator.

We are also becoming more adventurous. Nearly half of us use blindfolds or handcuffs, while close to one in three like to dress up. 48% of Irish lovers watch porn together, while the camcorder is quite busy, with 23% liking to video each other. This voyeurism is exceptional and much more evident here than in other countries. And a kinky 31% of Irish lovers are into spanking way above the global average of 19%. So the suburbs are considerably more interesting places than the pebble dash would suggest, and behind our lace curtains, anything goes. We are considerably more expressive in the scratcher than wed like to admit openly. We suggest innocently that the two sexiest attributes in our partners are eyes and a sense of humour God bless the patent leather obsessed nuns, you did a good job. This innocent response contrasts with the up-front Brazilians who put boobs and ass as the two sexiest features. But spare a thought for all those new millionaires knocking around thinking they are big swingers: we rank wealth as being entirely immaterial when it comes to sexiness. So put your Kompressor away, it doesnt do it for her. Just to prove that democracy is alive and well, in the full-on nation you can be poor and very sexy.

MAD-FOR-IT NATION

If there is one thing that the full-on nation is not demure about it is our boozing which is now off the scales. We are heroic drinkers and Ireland is the only place on earth where mature family men boast like students about necking ten pints the night before. Drinking is an Irish badge of honour. It knows no class barriers. Rich and poor we are all guzzlers. In fact it is fair to say that many of us are suspicious of non-drinkers, particularly if they are