Welcome to Ballywood chapter 5: "I can't be her momager and pursue my own career"
Kris Jenner who?
“Majella, why are you wearing sunglasses indoors?”
We came to Knock Garden Centre to look through the dregs of their sale. Now that she has a big house to fill, Maj is mad to buy up as many cut-price Christmas decorations as she can for next year. She already has six gnomes and an inflatable Santy for the front garden in her trolley.
“I’m in the movie business now, Ais,” she sighs. “I have to keep a low profile.”
I was afraid this would happen. “So I guess this means Baby Aisling’s big audition went well?” I’m tempted to remind her that as the unit publicist for Three Men and a Baby (2025) I’m also in the movie business, but I bite my tongue. She’s loving it too much.
Her face splits into a grin and she pushes the sunglasses up onto her head. I haven’t seen her look this excited since Saturday when Don Shields came downstairs for breakfast wearing nothing but his pyjama bottoms. She FaceTimed me immediately to say putting in the extra insulation to get their BER rating up to an A had all been worth it.
“Ais, she was amazing. You should have seen her work the room.” She fires a box of 2000 icicle lights into the trolley. “I swear to god, she had the casting director eating out of her pudgy little hand.”
I’m not surprised, to be honest. Simon Shinckle wanted a baby with personality and Baby Aisling has it in spades. The other day she charmed a whole rotisserie chicken off Eamon Filan by demonstrating how she can say “gobshite”. He was crying laughing. You just wouldn’t get that with an American baby.
Maj continues. “I wasn’t afraid to use my connections. I told him straight out that I had Don Shields and Sadhbh sleeping in my spare room. He couldn’t tell me there and then that she had it, obviously, but he asked me to take out her earrings and let the holes close up. I can read between the lines.”
“Are they seeing anyone else, did he say?” I know Simon had a shortlist of other babies but Peyton Moore from Knock got chickenpox and had to miss the audition and another one, one of Dee Ruane’s cousin’s from Rathborris, didn’t make the cut because the mam lied about how many teeth she had. People are so brazen.
“One other baby, he told me. But I’m not worried. I haven’t seen the script yet but she’ll have so many scenes with Eoin Mac Piaras. Me and Pab are going to be best friends with him and Stefanie Spielberg, I can just feel it. Ooh have you seen this?”
She pulls out her mobile and opens up People.com. The lead story is an interview with