The emperor's new children

Are you so sick of hearing about The Pope's Children by David McWilliams that you can't bring yourself to read it? To save you the bother, here's a condensed (and satirised) version of the book

I'm fascinated by the changes going on in the country, particularly by consumerism and fornication, a theme from which I never shirk in my tell-it-as-it-really-is bible, The Pope's Children. For my Zeitgeist-defining book, I have cleverly met and written about real people in real places, all of whose lives I have now defined forever with my well-loved sweepingness and sophisticated sense of the absurd. Still, mostly the book's really about me: my values, my experience. Interestingly, the Pope's children were born after the Pope's visit in 1979, but I write about people who are mostly ten years or more older than that – like me. The elitist's elitest elite.

The other real heroes of this book include Will the Bouncy Castle, Terry the Star driver, and Bongo and Billyer at Ratoath Celtic, where we played five-a-side just like equals. "Good Man, Maccer!", "Great skills, lads!" I love GAA too. Love it. That's why I mention it all the time. GAA, lads, country things, not just Blackrock College. As a child in 1970s Dún Laoghaire, I'd hang out with all types, not just rugger chaps. You can imagine me, throwing curl-lipped, head-jutting shapes over the church wall at a bunch of skangers smoking Major, a real social mixer. "Up the Noggin".

The book was written during a thousand chats with my wife when our gorgeous family finally laid their blonde heads to rest in our enviable über-house in lovely Killiney – before I would at last attend to the hedge funds I run in New York and update the website I've devoted to myself, davidmcwilliams.ie

I have arrived. So has Ireland. We are richer and happier than anyone else. We are a success. The elite. Ireland is top of foreigners' lists of places to live. Time then to kick back, take stock – the hard part is over. But instead we have to be the best and newest, the best craic and most off our head, the biggest shaggers and dope-takers. We cop off more than any other country in the world. We spend €6.5 billion on drink, more than anyone on earth. But hey it's all hilariously okay by me with my uproarious sense of the absurd. Going back to my childhood, howayas in Dún Laoghaire were thin, now they're fat with fat babies. I'm still thin. But they're fat. Brilliant! We're the full-on nation. I'm full-on, my friends are full on and so absurdly is everyone I know.

The liberating, democratic, soothing balm for all of this has been glorious, delicious, dripping credit. The Pope's Children are bankrolled by decrepit old Germans who save so much that they've effectively funded our boom. Our interest rates are low because, since we joined the Euro, the rates are determined partly to suit the clapped-out Germans. I call this giving us the PINs to their ATMs. This may seem simplistic, but then I'm not the guy who didn't coin the term Celtic Tiger for nothing.

Which reminds me of a story about me and Germans. When I worked for the Central Bank – humbly, mind, in my crumpled suit – one day I was single-handedly defending the Irish currency in German to a bunch of the richest people in the world, when one of them stopped me and said: "You're so clever you should come und work für me." He was the second cleverest man in the world and in charge of the wealthiest bank. Within days I had probably the biggest über-job in all of London economics.

> The Expectocracy: People who have limitless ambition. Interesting! And they're obsessed with property too. And Woodies DIY.

> Estate agents: With their porn-like exaggerations they're just a panic.

> Kell's Angels: People who travel three hours every day to and from work. I find in my researches that they love it. Full on commuting. Yeah.

> Hi-Cos: "Hibernian Cosmopolitans". My southside friends. I call them the new elite – think Michael McDowell. But then confusingly I call nearly everyone the new elite. They love Gaelscoileanna and the finest of everything foreign. I find that Gaelscoileanna are mostly elitist. Their principals keep showing how they're not, but... so what!

> Blackrockstars: Blackrock boy meets media star. Bumptious, fee-school hyper lads who want to have it both ways, burn it at both ends, play the field. Higher than a Hi-Co. The highest co. The I-Co. Humor-ist, analyst, economist, personality and author. Part of the elite Southside Me Now generation, they want the Central Bank on their CV and their own derivatives fund. They want the Fine Gael gig and the floppy hair; the money and the influence. When they look in the mirror, they just want to see something clever. This boyo really wants to be a social pundit rather than an economist, yet deep down knows only how to focus on the price of everything. No values, no politics outside economics, everything priced full on, really. Bob Geldof without the conscience! Ross O'Caroll-Kelly with a brain!

All these lovely Pope's children are pushed together socially by what I, surpassing even myself to be toe-crawlingly hip, have described as the Wonderbra effect. That's the big story that everyone except me has missed. Our pinko commentariat won't admit that we're the great middle-class nation.

All equal and happy

We live in a meritocracy. I've prospered in it. We're equal. The most important badge of class is now accent, man."The country has blurred into a classless nation." Since there's anti-discrimination legislation, if you don't succeed you've only yourself to blame, loser. In this system, "if you are poor there is something wrong with you, personally". Yes, I just want to underline that I say that on page 127 of the book, confirming not only that I don't understand poverty, equality, or even equality of opportunity, but also that there's something just a little sinister about me (I also believe "wealth and possessions have a moral quality"). Anyway, here's a note to myself: I'm a lucky Blacrockstar, a bloody aristocrat. For most others, the baggage of generations (and gender) gets in the way of equality of opportunity, let alone equality of outcome or equality of income. And by the way, inequality in Ireland is increasing – and the UN says we're in 19th position in the EU 25 for income equality.

I'm also happy. We're all happy. Survey after survey says we're the happiest folk in the world. Maybe that's a distortion based on our weird demography, our solid though now collapsing sense of community and the Economist magazine's obsession with, well, economics, but hey, I really want to believe them because I'm ecstatic myself. Ecstatic.

To be honest the only downside I can really see myself is the risk of a crash. But I've been predicting that since 1998. So hooray for hedonism, hooray for economics. What else? Oh yeah, smartness and fornication. Hooray for them. That leaves me neutral, doesn't it? Agenda-free (like Charlie McCreevy). Fairness, community, culture, rights, morality, the environment, the long-term: not on the agenda for this Emperor of the Pope's Children.