"You mean at the rugby?" said my therapist, who had decided to induce me into the phenomenological method of psychological recovery by applying something weirdly known as the "rule of horizontalisation" - psycho-codswallop for "get a grip".
"Yes," I whispered. "The rugby."
"But you don't even follow rugby, so why should you feel distressed because somebody lost?" responded my therapist.
"I'm not just distressed," I muttered, reproaching her with a baleful stare. "Gutted is the term you're looking for ... gutted." I repeated, folding myself into the foetal position on her fake leather couch.
"I'm gutted because I placed a considerable sum of money at the TAB backing Ireland to win the Rugby World Cup."
At this point, my therapist decided I needed an injection to calm me down.
Once I stopped twitching, we continued the session.
"I was unaware that you had allegiance to Ireland - is there an ancestral connection?" she asked.
I shook my head.
"No ancestors," I assured her. "And I heartily dislike Guinness and I wasn't brainwashed by Irish nuns as a child and I'm still wary about the IRA and I've never coped intellectually with James Joyce's Ulysses."
"So why back Ireland?"
"Well, it was simply a mark of respect towards two gentlemen of Irish ancestry, the late Patrick Campbell, who for years was a very amusing columnist with the London Sunday Times. He once gave me sound advice about working on newspapers. 'Keep a low profile in newsrooms and, hopefully, if the editor never realises you're on the payroll, you'll survive redundancy.'
"And the other Irish gentleman?" my shrink inquired.
"Spike Milligan," I responded. "I structured my entire business and personal life around one of his wise homilies."
"Which was?" my therapist asked, hoping to arrive at the nub of my psychological problems.
"If you don't have a plan, nothing can go wrong," I replied, staring vacantly out of the window.
