NO ONE likes seeing anyone go to prison. There are few things we fear more than the loss of our liberty, and it is sufficient deterrent to most of us to keep us on the straight and narrow. There’s a lot talked about conditions, and while many endure the overcrowded cells of jails that date from Victorian times, others indeed do enjoy the more relaxed regime of the likes of Shelton Abbey, just outside Arklow in Co. Wicklow, which I happily pass on the M11 every time I go to Dublin.

Forget the television and the gardening there, the French and woodwork courses, the raising livestock for Bóthar, and all that; all prisons have one thing in common – that loss of liberty.

The Chawkes found that out this week, and a spectacular comedown it must be.

Alison, who is 41, and her younger brother, 31-year-old Bill, were sentenced to a year and to 18 months, respectively, for assault. With drink taken, they viciously attacked two men in the Dunraven Arms Hotel, in Adare, Co. Limerick, for ‘staring and smirking’ at them.

In all fairness, if I had a cent for every time I was stared at, I would indeed be a wealthy man – only to find to my cost I was standing under the clock.

The Chawkes’ wealth comes from another source – their father, Charlie, whose pub empire the now disgraced siblings work for, Bill in Searson’s of Baggot Street, and Alison in The Old Orchard Inn in Rathfarnham.

Perhaps the most famous pub in the family is the Goat Grill in Goatstown, south Dublin, but for me, it was all about the Oval, on Middle Abbey Street. It was more or less next door to the Evening Herald office, before they dropped the ‘Evening’ and moved to Talbot Street, and it was our drop-in every Friday when I worked there.

When I think of it now, I probably paid for Alison’s education, and Bill’s nappies.

What this sobering tale tells, though, is that it doesn’t take long, not even a single generation, for privilege to set up camp. Charlie was a self-made man who started out as a teenager picking up empty glasses in Davy Byrne’s, the Duke Street pub in Dublin that features in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

In later life, he returned in triumph to his native Adare and bought his father’s pub, and then his aunt’s pub.

Think of the pride he must have felt, returning to the place of his birth, not just as a pub owner but as an employer, only to see all of that tainted at the very least, and probably much worse, by the actions of two of his children.

Alison and Bill each got longer terms, but saw both of their sentences in part suspended because they’d previously been of good character, and pleaded guilty. It would be a stretch to project myself into their minds, but it seems reasonable to think they did so anticipating a heavy fine.

That, you see, is what privilege is all about – the notion that jail is for the drug dealers and the other criminals, not for nice, middle-class heirs who live in €2.4million Merrion Street apartments and get married in Spain.

The judge, Fiona O’Sullivan, will have seen the CCTV footage.

She will have seen the pint-throwing, the eye-gouging, the cheek-biting, and no doubt decided a custodial sentence, part suspended or not, was the only way to proceed.

‘Am I going to jail?’ Alison mouthed to a supporter, and both siblings appeared stunned that they would be doing time.

That is understandable, insofar as the entire episode has to be taken as being out of character.

It was a moment of madness fuelled by drink, and in response to the simplest of acts, a stare and a smirk, if such things occurred at all and were not the result of intoxicated paranoia. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone thought they were being stared at, before they eventually realised, like me, they were standing under the clock.

Where the Chawkes go from here is guesswork, but I would expect them to appeal, and to maybe seek lighter sentences, to have the entire term suspended, to express great remorse and to say they’ve learned their lesson and it will never happen again.

One way or the other, they have learned a timely and maybe harsh lesson. Privilege will only get you so far, and there is one thing that money can’t buy, no matter how much of it you have: Liberty.