Caller Meadhbh shared a conundrum she was facing with fellow book-lover Ryan Tubridy on this morning's show. With a wedding pending, beautiful 2-year-old Alice to look after and her fiancé working hard to get a start-up off the ground, a potential €500 windfall would be just what the doctor ordered for this part-time nurse in the run-up to Christmas, however, it would mean making a painful choice.
"I took my Matilda book down and looked in the inside cover and it had 'first edition, 1988' so I was like, oh, this is a first edition, and then I decided to do a bit of Googling… and realised it's worth a little bit of money… My initial reaction was great, cha-ching, because things are a little bit tight at the moment so that would be great, a lot of Christmas presents sorted, I'm going to sell this, great, but then I started thinking about it and I told my mum and she said, I remember when you got that at Christmas and I remember you opening it and I remember you loving it. I did love it, I still do love it."
Doubt started to creep in as Meadhbh contemplated just what she would be parting with.
"Then I was thinking for Alice, I loved that book, I loved Roald Dahl… I was thinking when she's older and say she loves the book as much as I did and then she goes, Mum, did you read this book? and then when she's a bit older, she realises, her mother had a first edition that she sold for a bit of plastic at Christmas."
To find out more about Meadhbh's Sophie's choice on The Ryan Tubridy Show, click here.