New Year, new list of ill-conceived, unachievable goals – or not

Every Sunday, I sit on my favourite armchair for approximately seven minutes (an unscientific average) and feel truly excited and inspired by the possibilities within my grasp. There’s a reason why this happens. I have flicked through my favourite sections of the Sunday papers for those seven minutes, made a mental reminder to return to […]

Old rope on a soap

Oh dear. Slippers: check. Cardie: check. Pipe: definitely on its way. Today I wrote an email to the editor of venerable Irish weekly Woman’s Way to correct, in as nerdy a manner as one could possibly achieve, one of their little trivia boxes on their soap pages. Titled ‘The Rules of Soapland’, it stated that, […]

Time to call in pest control

I’m sure Irish News Of The World readers are a discerning bunch but surely even the most apathetic of them have their limits. The new ad for the paper is little short of astonishing, even in a country which has experienced its fair share of shocks lately. ‘Typical’ rheumy-eyed NOTW readers open their fridge and […]

Ham roll with the changes?

How did I miss this? Have Ham Sandwich have done a ‘Sugababes’ and changed their entire line-up? This photo beside the review of their new album White Fox in this morning’s Metro Herald is the first I’ve heard of it. Either that, or it’s the first published result of a wacky new Hot Press photoshoot, where Podge and […]

Hot stuff..?

This is how they sell fires and stoves to Corkonians. Clearly, they believe that sex sells, and there’s no expiry date. I bet you when Giovanni Trapattoni took over coaching the Irish football squad, he never thought his Italian charms would be exploited in quite this way. What a role model – Berlusconi, take note.

A life in magazines: TV Comic

TV Comic was the first proper weekly magazine I collected. I could barely contain my juvenile excitement between issues. It would pop through my letter box on a Thursday, even though, somewhat frustratingly, it had “Every Monday” printed under the banner – such were the trials of Scottish village life in the mid-1970s. TV Comic […]

Local investment

Lots of arms were brought to bare at the Cahirmee Horse Fair in Buttevant, Co. Cork (the oldest horse fair in Europe) last week, as stallions and mares of all shapes and sizes travelled from far and wide to attend.

Fk right off France? Fk “right-on” Hot Press

It’s hard to fathom who Hot Press thought they’d impress with their “F**K RIGHT OFF FRANCE WORLD CUP PREVIEW”. They try so hard to be seen as the elder, liberal mouthpiece of the nation’s overaged youth, with their regular, preachy articles and editorials on drugs, head shops, sexual liberation, mediocre Irish rock bands and men keeping their hair long until […]

All the fun of Dunderry Agricultural Fair…

Ah, this quaint photo of village dignitaries and rural maidens from the Meath Post makes me fair nostalgic for the countryside.

So, this is what’s “Cúl4Kidz”, nowadays..?

OK, so what do we have here? A nice colour-it-in picture from The Irish Times’s Cúl4Kidz supplement – it depicts two burly hurlers in action, a nice bedroom wall or fridge adornement for little culchie children to colour in, while protecting themselves from the elements of rural Ireland, while they sit with their tumbler of Mi Wadi […]