Aisling Hussey, Irish Country Living

“I once ordered takeaway and I didn’t want to go and collect it because it was raining, so I told the delivery man that I had a broken ankle. He refused to deliver it and I had to hobble to meet him, dragging my leg and pretending my ankle was broken.”

Mary Phelan, Irish Country Living

“I lived with a girl who was doing a Master’s in performance drama and she created this 15-minute ‘performance’ which was just her jumping around a cardboard box. It was so hilarious and ridiculous, I used to make her do it for visitors.”

Maria Moynihan, Irish Country Living

“I once lived with an exchange student from Kazakstan who – in an effort to prove his brawn and win the heart of a fellow female flatmate – flung a hedgehog at us.”

Mairead Lavery,

Irish Country Living:

“I was convinced my house was going to go on fire so I used to do test runs on the fire escape.”

Ciara O’Kelly,

Irish Country living:

“My friend’s apartment in UL overlooked the Munster rugby training ground. Every Wednesday, popcorn and wine in hand, all the girls would move the couch to the window and enjoy the great view.”

Maura Fay, online editor: “In my third year of college, I did a semester abroad in Chicago. One of the classes I took was radio production and we had to record a mock radio ad. Everybody else had a lovely Midwest US accent. However, as the only foreigner in the class, I sounded like an extra from a film about leprechauns.”

Carol Dunne, photographer:

“There were hardly any guys in my building in DIT so my friend and I used to go to DCU to scout their talent and pretend we went to college there.”

Padraig Foley,

Irish Farmers Journal: “I once pretended to be American for a whole night to impress this girl from Cavan.”

Joe Lenehan,

chief sub-editor: “We built a hut in our house in first year. It involved moving all the furniture into the sitting room and turning chairs upside down and using coat hangers to support the blankets and curtains we draped over the top. Our Irish-German friend’s mother came in when we had it and said: ‘Oh, I see you’ve built a hut,’ as if it was the most normal thing in the world.”