THE CURRAGH, IRELAND

THE IRA BET all the ransom money paid for the 1981 kidnap release of recently deceased Dublin businessman Ben Dunne, against the champion racehorse Shergar, and lost the lot, according to an IRA informer now living in Home Counties England.

“That’s why Shergar was kidnapped, it was to try and get our money back,” says Teddy Watford (not his real name), who has spent the last forty years living as a female Tory Councillor in Surrey. “I was in on the Shergar job. The less said about it the better. What a shocking waste of the finest thoroughbred of his day. The stud fees alone could have kept the armed struggle going for decades. I told them that. Give up up your ol’ ransom, I said, sell the semen. But there was no interest in that. I think the Army Council, which had directed the betting, was embarrassed that it had thrown all that money away betting against Shergar when it was clear the fucking animal couldn’t lose. Someone close to the leadership thinks they were victims of a scam. Someone told them he could fix Shergar. If it’s true, I wish him well and hope he is far far away.”