The only disappointing part of the cheeky Paddy Power skit with Ruby Walsh is that the online “troll” they “kidnap” is just an actor. If you haven’t seen it, Ruby Walsh and Paddy Power track down a guy who has been abusing Ruby on twitter, a so-called “troll”. They take him to the gallops and dare him to jump from the back of a trailer travelling at 40 miles an hour, roughly the speed Ruby is riding at when he “jumps off” horses as his online tormenter had tweeted.

But as I say, it’s a pity it’s not for real. Because these online trolls, smart asses and know-alls who litter the likes of Twitter are a menace. The late Albert Reynolds took a defamation case for being called a “gombeen man” in a British newspaper over 20 years ago. You want to see what politicians are called on Twitter nowadays. In particular, the personal online comments aimed at Taoiseach Enda Kenny border on the deranged, let alone abusive.

He is well able to defend himself but no right-minded person could condone the filthy abuse that is aimed at him online and it is unrelenting, almost like an orchestrated campaign such is the scurrilous and libellous comments which accompany the comments section of any online story relating to him or his government at this stage.

It is one thing being spat at on the street, as Minister Simon Coveney revealed at the weekend happened to him, but there is something more unsettling about being abused online.

Twitter is a fine vehicle on which many measured, funny, serious, informative and fair comments regarding the world are made. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and all that. But like everything in life, online chatrooms, most notably Twitter and Facebook are infested by a greasy well of not so nice men and women rattling around the bottom, spewing out hate-filled hashtags against anyone with a perceived different view to theirs.

Do they not have a life, especially the geniuses with tens of thousands of tweets to their name? As Joe Duffy once commented on air in rebuffing the abuse aimed his way one particular day: “Would you put your trousers on and go out for a walk!” Brilliant Joe!

Even last week, the Irish rugby team wasn’t spared the online schadenfreude which seems to follow it around more than most for some reason. So like Ruby Walsh did, wouldn’t it be great to send out Tadhg Furlong, Cian Healy and Sean O’Brien to find the gormless weeds who called them all sorts of names after the defeat to Wales and put them at the bottom of a ruck.

A punter in the know

As it is Cheltenham week, here is a great yarn I was told recently. There was a three-horse race at some meeting one cold wet winter’s day. One bookie has the favourite priced at 2/5 on. The next horse is 2/1 with the outsider at 10/1. A little old punter walks up to the bookie and sticks €100 on the outsider. The bookie then amazingly puts the outsider out to 16/1. The same punter arrives back and lumps on another €100. Then the bookie puts it out to 33/1. As the generous punter rocks up again with another €100 note, the bookie stops him in his tracks and says politely, “Sorry sir, you are wasting your money. That horse is not going to win”. “How do you know?”, asks the punter. “Because I own that horse sir”, says the bookie. The punter smiles and whispers to the bookie, “Well that’s a good one because I own the other two!”.