Axe Polls Now!

We’ve done our best to escape the unrelenting misery heaped on us by Damien Rice, David Gray, but, come the recession, back come the woe-is-me brigade. According to a survey in this morning’s Herald AM, 100% of respondents claimed they had experienced bullying in the workplace. Yes, 100%. That’s everyone. Now, I don’t know what the […]

Ham Acting Is The Least Of It…

Just how much humiliation can one band inflict upon itself?

My Lovely Horsey Weekend

JOHNNIE CRAIG GOES WITHOUT MODERN TECHNOLOGY (From Evening Herald HQ article “Cheap Tricks”, 16th April 2009) Day one: I wake up to my youngest daughter singing Barbie’s annoyingly catchy dirge (I Feel) Connected. Barbie is, of course, the ultimate consumer chick, but we’re having none of that this weekend. Our challenge is to have three […]

The Radio Contributor Cliché Drinking Game

Here’s a fun drinking game for any housebound people (e.g. the elderly, the unemployed, freelance hacks or waiters actors) sitting listening to the wireless of a morning/afternoon. Your drink of choice could be anything at all – Vodka, Mi Wadi, tea, Jeyes Fluid, the floor’s the limit, really. The rules are simple enough.

See Me! For Vandalising The Language

If anyone had any concerns over the state of education in Ireland before yesterday, they were duly confirmed at the Teachers Union of Ireland meeting in Cork. This placard, brandished here by an Enya lookalike, erroneously and humiliatingly introduces the word “vandaling” into the English language.

You’re Only Massive & Babybeef, Hideaway House

As Seen on State.ie You’re Only Massive, and yet the venue’s only tiny. Not only that, no one seems to know where it is. It depends where you read about it, it seems (and you can read about a previous article in State here.). Hideaway House is an ordinary suburban semi, sitting on Deansgrange Road, […]

The National Affront

No doubt, people will be organising little office stakes for the Grand National today; you may drop some cash into the hat, believing that this just a bit of harmless fun, pass it off as a little flutter. Well, it’s not. It’s complicity in a barbaric, heartless and cruel “sport” which yesterday, the first day of the Aintree […]

C.S.I. Carrick-On-Suir

*SPOILER ALERT FOR PROBABLE FORTHCOMING TV DRAMA* Just when I thought that Dublin life was getting far too dangerous and violent, I read with horror in the Nationalist And Munster Advertiser that rural life is even more precarious. It seems that residents of a Carrick-On-Suir house were wakened in the small hours by a “hoody wearing youth climbing on […]

The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson

How to bring up children without lifting a finger Sunday Business Post, 29 March 2009 In your darkest moments, raising children can feel like a thankless task. You work your fingers to the bone to feed, clothe and shelter them. You spend the remainder of your waking hours ‘interacting’ with them. Then, by the time […]

Please “Give It Up”, For God’s Sake

I dreamt about Fame Academy the other night. There are reasons for this that I won’t get into but it’s fair to say I woke up terrorised, breathing like a hyper-ventilating Phil Mitchell. Mercifully, Patrick Kielty isn’t on the telly so much these days – but it’s not nice that he came crawling into my head […]