Ally O’Shea was born in London to Irish parents in 1965. In 2002, at the height of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, her high-flying advertising career took her to Ireland, where her parents had already retired. Following redundancy, she returned to full-time study at University College Dublin and is now well on her way to getting a first-class joint-honours degree in French and Art History. One of the many victims of the collapsed Irish property market, she moved back in with her octogenarian parents in October 2012. Despite being broke, and so close to the candles on her fiftieth birthday cake that she can almost feel their heat beginning to singe her eyebrows, she retains an unshakeable optimism for her future.