When Emily Cullen picked up her son after his English exam, she assumed the smile on his face meant things had gone well.

Instead, the Galway poet was about to discover that a poem she had written seven years earlier, and which was inspired by him, had appeared on the paper.

"He had a big, broad smile on his face and I thought, 'Oh that's good. He must have remembered some Shakespeare quotes'," Cullen said.

But he said "you won't believe it mum - the poem you wrote about me came up in the paper".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4gd2eyvp1o

His mother said he initially wondered whether to answer the question in the first person, given he had inspired the poem, but eventually decided the examiner might not believe him.

"So he responded in the third person, which was probably quite a wise decision," Cullen said.