LONDON DESK/WIRE SERVICES

“I FOUGHT IT WERE an English Republic movement, till I was given an ‘and grenade and told I hahu learn Irish. You cudda knocked me down wiv a feafher.”

Nick, who did not wish to give his surname, is from Peckham in South London. He has been anti-monarchy all his life. Then came the coronation of King Charles III. It was more than he could bear. “All that bloody pomp and circumstances, it wuz more than anyone wiv a brain could take,” he says.

So he set out to join what he believed was an activist organization dedicated to making England a republic. “Well, you wud, wudn’t you?’ he insists.

Except he found himself in Ireland, in the hills of Donegal, he thinks, at an Irish Republican Army (IRA) training camp. With so many others from England that the organizers began to believe it was an attempt by MI5 to infiltrate their organization.

A spokesman for the New IRA, the organization’s current active incarnation, has confirmed that they were suddenly overwhelmed with applications to join post coronation. “It was only when people began to appear at our training camps that we realized how many of our new volunteers were English. That set alarm bells ringing. I mean, we’re willing to entertain anyone who wants to join, always have been, but this seemed a little sus. We’re not stupid, you know.”

At first the IRA were just going to shoot them all, but the sheer numbers put paid to that idea. “No, they actually trained us, then told us to piss off back to London,” says Nick. “And wait for orders.”

Nick is waiting. “Wiv my ‘and grenade. Tiocfaidh Ar La.”