Present Tense »

  • Late Late Toy Show spotter’s guide

    November 30, 2007 @ 3:55 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    - Pat Kenny’s jumper first causes your eyes to hurt. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Camera picks out middle-aged male audience member who looks unhappy wearing elf ears and hat. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Pat gets competitive with precocious child. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Robotic toy won’t shut up. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Child in drab dress plays the flute. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Billie Barry kids begin to look cheerfully evil. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Kids give 10 out of 10 to every toy they’ve tested (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Jerry Seinfeld’s eyes betray the fact that he’s mentally composing stand-up routine based on this experience. (Spotted __.__pm)

    - Show overruns so much that prayer at bedtime has to be just a quick, half-baked sign of the cross. (Spotted __.__am)

  • Seinfeld on Late Late

    @ 12:52 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    As spotted by The Chancer and by Brock Landers: Jerry Seinfeld will be on The Late Late Toy Show tonight.

    Clearly, RTÉ has listened to our complaints about previous guests.

  • Everyone has a right to complain about the Health Service. Except…

    @ 10:53 am | by Shane Hegarty

    … those smokers (patients and visitors) who stand at the front door of Beaumont Hospital. While surrounded by No Smoking signs. While an automated voice reminds them that it is a No Smoking zone. And forcing everyone else to walk through their tar cloud to get into the hospital.

  • Shrooms: “harmless”…”unsympathetic”…”ill-prepared”…

    November 29, 2007 @ 12:10 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    On the train this morning a poster for Shrooms, included quotes from The Irish Times: “atmospheric”…”gory”…”amusingly ripe”, we said.

    For the hell of it, here’s the piece those quotes come from, a report from the Edinburgh Festival which gives a brief summary of the plot as part of a large piece that features several movies: (more…)

  • A guest editor for this blog: is Chris de Burgh available?

    November 28, 2007 @ 4:08 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    The BBC’s current affairs radio programme, Today, has unveiled the guest editors who will run the show during Christmas week. A show each will be edited by:

    Dame Stella Rimington – former Director-General of MI5;
    Damon Albarn – from the bands The Good, The Bad And The Queen, Gorillaz and Blur;
    Professor Peter Hennessy – historian and author of The Secret State;
    Sir Martin Evans – winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work in stem cell research.

    (more…)

  • Will The Golden Compass be wobbly?

    @ 11:17 am | by Shane Hegarty

    The Golden Compass premiered last night, in advance of its release on December 5th, so we’ll finally discover if the film version of the His Dark Materials trilogy is likely to be more Lord of the Rings than Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

    [UPDATE: There are reviews here (a "spectacular shambles"), here ("can't be faulted for excitement") and here ("looks wonderful, with epic dash").]

    While we wait for the full thing, you can find a daemon-themed featurette here, a short scene here and the trailer here. (more…)

  • Just get me some book tokens…

    November 27, 2007 @ 2:15 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    It’s that time of the year when the papers do their end-of-year books round-ups, so that people can get their ideas for the Christmas presents. (Fact fans: book sales will double week on week between now and Christmas Eve.)

    Every so often I tell you what I’ve been reading (it’s another Alastair Reynolds this week. And Alan MacWeeney’s Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More is one of the best photographic books I’ve seen this year). But enough about me.

    What have you been reading this year? (It doesn’t have to have been something from 2007.) And have you any good gift suggestions for the music fans, the daddies, the art lovers, etc?

  • Two singles of chips and a urinal cake please

    November 26, 2007 @ 11:46 am | by Shane Hegarty

    The Village: Friday night.

    Firstly, The Wedding Present were spectacularly good.

    Secondly, like so many places the venue continues to provide toilet attendants. Thank god that there is little about this service that could in any way be considered to have unsavoury overtones.

    Although, Village, like other places, engages in the odd business of providing munchies for those who – having done their business – feel a little peckish. You know, there are a lot of places where I might feel inclined to grab a bite to eat, but a toilet just isn’t one of them.

    But if it is committed to feeding us in the bog, then why stop only with a selection of chocolate snacks and assorted sweets. Why not stick a bakery by the urinal? Or, how about some rotisserie chicken by the hand dryers?

  • Saturday column: Data protection

    @ 11:01 am | by Shane Hegarty

    ‘Idiots,” wrote a columnist in the London Times this week. “Utter, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, unpardonable idiots.”

    She was referring to the news that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs had lost the personal data of 25 million people (including the British prime minister) because they had put all the details on two CDs and popped them in the internal post, at which point they disappeared to who knows where.

    Learning careful lessons from this, another couple of discs were sent by registered post. They made it through.

    It was, of course, the big news of the week in the UK. Misplacing the addresses, dates of birth, national insurance, bank and building society details of half the country’s population is bound to be.

    And while, from this side of the Irish Sea, it would be tempting to shout over at them to look down the back of the couch, or ask where did they last remember having them, the fact is that we are having our own problems – they just happen to be on a smaller scale.

    But some day we too may get a whopper. Because what is clear is that, while we can create sophisticated software that can protect any digitised data, there will never be any software available that will wipe idiocy from the human race. (more…)

  • Reading

    November 23, 2007 @ 3:49 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    I interviewed Oliver Sacks during the week, and the piece is in today’s paper. So, it meant an early chance to read his fascinating Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

    You can see Sacks’s influence on a lot of recent books. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point – and the slew of similar books (Freakonomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, etc) – seem to have picked up on the way in which he has always presented cases by humanising the subject before expounding on the science. (more…)

  • Read, eat, be merry

    @ 10:59 am | by Shane Hegarty

    Una Mullally* has a new idea: Book-N-Supp, a book club that takes place over dinner. She’s taking names and thoughts on what might be worth reading.

    Might I suggest some theme nights. Discuss, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over a dessert of snozzberries. Silence of the Lambs could be a bit tricky, of course.

    In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik last year wrote of cooking real recipes from fictional works. He started with Gunter Grass’s The Flounder – even if the book contains a talking fish, so making it a little difficult to be exact with the ingredients.

    *Una was responsible for Monster Munch changing its name to Might Munch (see comment #9 here). Do not doubt her influence.

  • The Wedding Present plays ‘George Best’

    November 22, 2007 @ 6:41 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    george-best.jpgIf anybody is looking for me on Friday night, they’ll find me in 1987.

  • Uaneen Fitzsimons

    @ 3:46 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Today is the seventh anniversary of Uaneen’s death. Here she is introducing Whipping Boy on No Disco, sometime around 1996. YouTube Preview Image

  • What percentage of people have been asked questions in a survey?

    @ 10:58 am | by Shane Hegarty

    When I was 18, two related things happened.

    One day myself and a friend were stopped on Grafton St by a woman with a clipboard and asked if we would mind stepping into a bar and tasting beers for a survey. We did. And there was no catch: we did not, for instance, end up being drugged and stripped of our internal organs.

    Then, shortly after that, I was asked to eat an experimental type of Moro and tell a researcher whether it I liked new Tuna-Flavoured Moro (my memory is hazy on the detail) or preferred original Moro. (more…)

  • London, yesterday

    November 21, 2007 @ 1:02 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    damienhirst.jpgI was in London yesterday. (Spotted David Bellamy on the street. What a town!) Had a spare hour, so scuttled through the rain to Tate Britain to see the Turner Prize Retrospective, which features works from winners stretching back to 1984.

    Because it’s the Turner Prize, it sometimes simmers your blood, or leaves you baffled. Or just cold. I found myself unmoved by Antony Gormley’s Testing a World View and uncertain if Martin Creed’s on-off light in an empty room is worthwhile for no other reason than because it made me think. And Gilbert and George’s work looks so horribly rooted in the 80s.

    But there are some beautiful works on show. Highlights included Anish Kapoor’s mesmerising hanging blue “voids”. It was also a chance to see Damien Hirst’s iconic Mother and Child, Divided (above, in an earlier installation) – the split cow and calf that can’t fail to elicit some kind of response, be it disgust, sympathy, wonder or just plain old admiration at the beauty of the piece.

    Perhaps the most thrilling of all the works was Steve McQueen’s Deadpan, in which he recreates Buster Keaton’s famous “house falling around man” stunt, but with a straight face and several camera angles – plus it was the only work of art there that could have killed the artist.

  • McSavage is online: judge for yourself

    @ 11:11 am | by Shane Hegarty

    It wasn’t up yesterday. But it’s up now. Watch it here.

    UPDATE: It’s been put on YouTube, and you can watch it via Damien Mulley’s blog (although the sound is off sync).

  • Desserts: cloned

    November 20, 2007 @ 12:25 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    There’s a really interesting piece in today’s Irish Times on the industry in providing pre-prepared desserts for restaurants – one that extends far beyond that to starters, peeled spuds, chopped veg and pre-cracked eggs.

    Fiona McCann visits a factory which makes 13,000 desserts a day for distribution around the country. It’s a strange phenomenon; in this supposed age of choice, just how often you go into a cafe or restaurant and find that what’s on offer is identical to those on many other menus. When ordering dessert, it’s always worth asking if they are made in-house. It’s surprising how rarely they are. It would be a bit unfair, though, to ask if they crack their own eggs, but it would be fun.

  • David McSavage: never again

    November 19, 2007 @ 1:07 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    When Pat Kenny anounced that David McSavage was his next guest on Friday night’s Late Late Show, it needed superhuman effort not to either:

    a) throw a glass at the screen
    b) turn over and watch Northern Irish celebrities do Children In Need

    I’m glad I didn’t turn over. I’m glad I saw it. And I hope McSavage is never on television again. (more…)

  • An antidote to homeopathy

    @ 11:45 am | by Shane Hegarty

    Ciaran gets in touch:

    In case people haven’t seen it, ben goldacre (he of bad science fame/infamy) had an article on homeopathy in Friday’s g2…

    The article can be found at Goldacre’s blog, (more…)

  • Saturday column: Tuck your face behind your ears

    November 17, 2007 @ 1:50 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Kylie Minogue had a television special on ITV last weekend. It was notable for several reasons.

    Firstly, the backing dancers wore only a few atoms each. Secondly, it featured comedy sketches whose canned laughter was strongest when the punchlines were weakest. And lastly, but most importantly, was the realisation that Kylie appears to have been replaced by a mechanically sophisticated waxwork. (more…)

  • The secret of Today FM’s success? Sacking me

    November 16, 2007 @ 12:35 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Way back, when I was just starting out in the dog-builds-up-dog, dog-knocks-down-dog world of journalism, my first regular paid gig outside of college was as a researcher in what was then known as Radio Ireland. I worked on the breakfast show (as presented by Mark Byrne) in the days before anyone listened to it. Even though I was working behind the scenes, I helped pioneer that current fashion for including researchers and producers in on-air banter. Although, when I say “helped pioneer” I really mean “set back by a decade”.

    Mario Rosenstock was drafted in all that time ago, before Ian Dempsey eventually take over. I did sketches with him, including a passable Ian Paisley. This happens to be the only impression I can do, so we wrote him into a lot of sketches. (more…)

  • Reading

    @ 11:16 am | by Shane Hegarty

    Having been promising to read more contemporary sci-fi, I picked up Alastair Reynolds latest selection of short stories, Galactic North, and it is cracking. Writing of a future in which humanity is spread across space, he wields grand ideas (refugees fleeing into the future, decades-long journeys) and knows his science thanks to a career with the European Space Agency, but neither is allowed to get in the way of the humanity at the centre of each story. The stories are both gripping and affecting. Very much recommended.

    And, as a soundtrack for any sci-fi, I’d recommend Reverse Engineering’s absurdly sinister Total Terror Mix – it is the Mars Attacks of rap tunes (hat tip to Nialler9 who got me hooked on this a while back).

  • Moon to Earth: “You’re blocking my view”

    November 15, 2007 @ 2:33 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    lunar.jpgBeautiful video as sent back by an orbiting Japanese probe. It’s in cutting edge HDTV, of course, because it’s Japanese – although my mate’s dad was in Hong Kong last week and bought a couple of knock-offs of this probe at a market stall.

    Just think that on this blue and white sphere you can find all our hopes and dreams; all our successes and failures; dozens of people excited by Boyzone’s reunion; all of Twink’s angry phonecalls; acres of newsprint that feature the words “Lisa Murphy”; countless drones asking for an Americano because it sounds better than plain “black coffee”; a thousand types of fizzy drink each claiming to make your brain brainier; a million hours of television presented by Gerry Ryan; tens of millions of office workers wondering what chinos they should wear on “casual Friday”; one Jimmy Carr; and many many pointless babbling griping blogs.

    Oh, and a few wars.

    Did they fix a giant laser on that thing too?

    By the way, Australia is upside down in this video, which clearly reveals it to be a fake.

  • Lonely? Prove it

    @ 9:22 am | by Shane Hegarty

    The latest Irish social networking site is Lonely.ie. Lonely? It’s picked its name based on Google’s revelation of our most searched-for word, but it’s hardly a grabber. You’d have to be pretty confident to allow you face pop up as a new member with the word Lonely in giant letters above your head.

    However, maybe it will turn out to be an inspirational bit of branding. Maybe people will want to hang out at a place which literally screams “lonely”. And maybe other social networking sites will spring up out of it: so let’s look forward to Desperate.ie or TickingBiologicalClock.ie.

  • Marvel comics goes online…

    November 14, 2007 @ 4:54 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    250 comics free for a limited time. Somebody come get me in about a week.

    marvel.jpg

  • Make a sentence using the word “Locavore” (and other random links)

    @ 2:19 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    1. Steve Coogan plays Larry David’s therapist in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

    2. If 24 had been made in 1994 (via Gavin’s Blog)

    3. The Onion’s new morning show Today Now is incredibly realistic, if not quite as entertaining as TV3’s recent excitement.

    4. Some background on Hillary Clinton’s answering of a planted question. As Slate.com puts it: “Good question. Glad I asked it.”

    5. How Freakonomics spawned a publishing genre (although, I’d be more inclined to point the finger at The Tipping Point as being the, er, tipping point).

    6. The Oxford University Press (USA) Word of the Year: “Locavore.” Yes, locavore. And the definition is almost as boring as the word.

  • €2 on licence fee: passing on the rising cost of Pat Kenny’s haircut

    November 13, 2007 @ 6:50 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    It’s rumoured that, for an extra €30 on the licence fee, RTÉ offered to “make the Prof Crown problem disappear. Permanently.”

    As it is, it’s got an extra €2 per licence fee bringing it to €160. It’s not a popular tax, but it’s not the worst , given that you get some decent documentaries, current affairs, some alright drama, the occasional okay comedy and some great chat shows (hold on, scratch the last one…). There is some terrible stuff on it, but there’s bad stuff on every television channel and the alternative offered by the commercial stations here is pretty paltry, showing that this is a tough market to make both money and good programmes. Although, it’s notable that RTÉ’s stopped telling people what a good deal it gets and instead is running ads telling us to cut the crap excuses and pay up.

    Of course, it’s not such a sweet deal for the many out there who pay for an extra platform (NTL, Sky, etc) as well and wonder about the fairness of having to stump up twice.

  • TV stat of the week

    @ 12:48 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    19 hours of TV3’s evening schedule this week (Sunday-Saturday) will be identical to ITV’s evening schedule. On Saturday night, the nearly four hours between 6.40pm-10.30pm will be ITV programmes.

    Thank you TV3 for giving so many of us choice. At least, the choice of whether to watch ITV’s programmes on ITV or TV3.

  • The (not so big) mystery of the missing Crown

    @ 11:05 am | by Shane Hegarty

    I turned on Friday night’s Late Late Show towards the end of its panel debate on the state of the health service. One of my first thoughts upon recognising Mary Raftery, Eamon Dunphy and Gerry Robinson on the panel of four, and hearing audience members tell their personal stories, was that it wasn’t the most balanced discussion you’re likely to hear.

    The story, though, is about who wasn’t there, and the allegation that the Government persuaded RTÉ to “gag” Prof John Crown. Yet, the facts haven’t born out the allegation. There was discussion and complaint from Mary Harney’s spokeman as RTÉ tried to get a representative to balance the debate, but such complaining isn’t unusual. Government advisors agitate, nitpick, attempt to influence. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be doing their job properly. (And former RTÉ director of radio Helen Shaw talks about this in today’s Irish Times.) (more…)

  • The answer to our drink problem? A gambling problem

    November 12, 2007 @ 12:59 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    To stem the closure of pubs, the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland has made a suggestion: One-arm bandits.

    The group’s president Paul Stevenson tells The Irish Times today:

    I can’t see why slot machines are tolerated in England but not here. I can lift my phone in the pub and back a horse running in Australia yet I can’t pull the bar of a slot machine while there.

    Hey, you can bring in your DVD and watch a porn flick but it doesn’t mean every pub should turn itself into topless bar. Oh, hold on…

    While not agreeing with the Co Limerick publican who recently employed a topless barmaid to attract customers, Mr Stevenson said he could understand the “frustration” behind the decision.

    (more…)

  • The death of Norman Mailer

    @ 11:40 am | by Shane Hegarty

    There is plenty of coverage in today’s papers, and most of it will cover the same ground, so here are some recent pre-death perspectives on (and from) the writer:

    Mailer on God (New York Magazine):

    “I see God, rather, as a Creator, as the greatest artist. I see human beings as His most developed artworks. I also see animals as His artworks. When I think of evolution, what stands out most is the drama that went on in God as an artist. Successes were also marred by failures. I think of all the errors He made in evolution as well as of the successes. In marine life, for example, some fish have hideous eyes—they protrude from the head in tubes many inches long. Think of all those animals of the past with their peculiar ugliness, their misshapen bodies, worm life, frog life, vermin life, that myriad of insects—so many unsuccessful experiments. These were also modes the Artist was trying—this great artist, this divine artist—to express something incredible, and it was not, for certain, an easy process.”

    (more…)

  • Saturday column: Coked-up again

    November 10, 2007 @ 11:36 am | by Shane Hegarty

    If someone was to write a book about the media’s addiction to cocaine stories in Celtic Tiger Ireland, it might feature a story from an unnamed addict within RTÉ, talking about how the broadcaster first became hooked on the idea of making the two-part series High Society .

    “I always knew that lots of people in my profession were into cocaine,” he might say. “Every week it was ‘cocaine-this’ and ‘cocaine-that’. Especially the print hacks. Always good for a readership high, they said. So, once we got involved, we chopped out fat, one-hour lines, and went at them for two whole weeks. Other journalists couldn’t get enough, all of them queuing up to join in the frenzy – even though they’d already overdosed on it when the book came out only a few weeks earlier.

    “So we went for it big time, even though it wasn’t grade-A stuff. It was cut with all sorts of mixing agents, such as reconstructions, voiceovers, flashy lights, hyperbole and shots of the narrator looking all pensive. And in the end, people questioned our integrity. But it’s hard not to get addicted to that ratings hit.”

    The Irish media loves cocaine – or at least the stories of it. But the epidemic of coverage reflects something more than the drug’s apparent popularity. It reflects both the public and media obsession with excess and glamour; with money and crime; and with hyperbole and moral panic. It shows up the belief that a problem is only really a problem when it affects the middle-classes. It continues a long tradition in which the press relays lurid tales of bright young things tearing up the town. And it hardens the belief that our new-found wealth is destroying this country.

    But more importantly, it too often reflects a refusal by society as a whole to talk about the drugs issue in any meaningful way. (more…)

  • Possible sculptures: Bertie Ahern on a high horse; a visual representation of Michael Flatley’s ego…

    November 9, 2007 @ 5:01 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    4th_plinth_2.jpg

    Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth has a new sculpture. Model for a Hotel 2007 by German artist Thomas Schutte. What’s it all about Thomas? “I don’t know” he says. At least he has a nice explanation for its creation:

    It came about while I was drawing. It has hips, a waist, a torso. It was like a big man. So I thought, why not add a lobby?

    Why not, indeed.

    The fourth plinth was left empty because a cash row meant a planned statue never got put there. It turned out to be a wonderful accident, and since 1999 has housed temporary sculptures, including one of Alison Lapper, Rachel Whiteread’s Monument and (briefly) Jonny Wilkinson during the Rugby World Cup.

    It is such a simple, refreshing idea: a bare plinth on which sculptures by major artists can come and go. Why not one for Dublin (or Cork, Limerick, wherever), where artists can have a go at doing it justice, the public can decide whether they like it or not, and regardless of the outcome it’ll be gone after a while anyway to be replaced by another talking point. O’Connell St would be as good a place as any for it.

    It would be a perfect way for the public to engage with art: it would everyone something to talk about; cause some arguments; give us a chance to praise/complain about art; and (of course) give us all a chance to come up with new funny nicknames on a more regular basis.

    There have been duds on the Fourth Plinth, but it has become a welcome and malleable part of the London landscape. Why not a “fourth plinth” here?

  • RTÉ’s cocaine problem

    @ 11:01 am | by Shane Hegarty

    ‘Dermot’ works for RTÉ series High Society. This is his story:

    “I always knew that lots of people in my profession were into cocaine. Every week it was ‘cocaine-this’ and ‘cocaine-that’. Especially the print hacks. Always good for a readership high, they said. It would always peak every Sunday especially.

    “We’d resisted for a while, but in the end the pressure became too much. Sure, we could have gone for heroin, but that’s for poor, ugly junkies. Ecstasy’s a bit too complicated to tackle in any superficial way. And cannabis? That’s not exactly sexy.

    “No, it had to be cocaine and once we started, it was hard to back out. I remember when we heard that we could commission something which featured a nun and a cabinet minister. The commissioning editor said it was like having a full-body orgasm. In the end, we backed out of racking up the cabinet minsiter. We had to stop somewhere, or else we were in danger of going completely out of control.

    “But it was mad. We chopped out fat, one-hour lines, and went at them for two whole weeks. Other journalists couldn’t get enough, all of them queueing up to join in the frenzy – even though they’d already over-dosed on it only a few weeks earlier.

    “So we went for it big time, even though it wasn’t Grade A stuff. It was cut with all sorts of mixing agents, such as reconstructions, voice-overs, flashy lights, hyperbole and shots of the narrator looking all pensive. And in the end, it cost us our dignity. But it’s hard not to get addicted to that ratings hit.”

  • A never-ending story

    November 8, 2007 @ 4:12 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    You win the Booker Prize. You get a big interview in the New York Times. And the first thing they bring up? The McCanns. (more…)

  • Reading

    @ 9:51 am | by Shane Hegarty

    Following a mention of it by this paper’s in-house runner Ian O’Riordan, I picked up John Krakauer’s Into The Wild – the story of Chris McCandless, who in the early 90s gave us his money to charity, cut off communication with his family and hit the road until he walked into the Alaskan wild where he was eventually found dead. It is, I suspect, something of a man’s book – misadventure, youthful impulse, hubris, father-son clashes – but it is a great read propelled along by Krakauer’s deep curiousity and personal experience of crazy, arrogant expeditions. Sean Penn’s movie adaptation is out this week, so it’s well worth reading now.

    I’ve also enjoyed Daniel H Wilson’s slacker science gem Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived . If you wake up every morning wondering why you don’t live underwater, wear unisex jumpsuits, have a robot butler and a ray gun – and curse scientists for letting you down on all of this – Wilson’s book is a reminder of what they promised and a run-down of where they’re at in developing all these and more. Top class toilet reading. Especially if you’re sitting on one of those Japanese cyber-loos.

  • Question of the Day

    November 7, 2007 @ 3:20 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Everyone knows that The Chancer is a spin-off of Blogorrah. Its arrival has been noted by several blogs already, so it must be getting some decent traffic. It is faithful to several of the elements that made Blogorrah an online phenomenon, and whose disappearance caused a lot of pining. And many, many people used to post comments on Blogorrah, almost as habit, and some of these must have been glancing at The Chancer this week.

    So where are they? Why are the comment boxes still largely empty? Do people not rate it? Are they waiting for others to chip in first? Did they not miss Blogorrah as much now as they did then? Does The Chancer need a Twinkgate to get people interested? Or am I asking this question too soon – build it and they will come, and all that…

  • Picture of the day

    @ 12:12 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Would whoever is holding the real Ian Paisley – and who has obviously replaced him with some sort of Paisley/Tickle Me Elmo robot – please release him.

    paisley2.jpg

  • Stat of the day

    @ 9:16 am | by Shane Hegarty

    83% of all radio ads this week will feature Steve Davis singing about his unpredictability.

  • Last night’s TV

    November 6, 2007 @ 3:14 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Two observations:

    1. The Panorama film following British troops in Helmand Province, Afghanistan had some extraordinary battle footage (although no bodies, so somewhat sanitising the affair). The sound of a family – off-camera – screaming in terror as British and Afghan troops became pnned down in their house, which had already been hit by a missile. The massive air bombardment of enemy positions shaking the ground , while British troops whooped. The bleak humour of a soldier filming while under attack (“Day 68 in the Big Brother house…”). (more…)

  • Stephen Ireland: dignified

    @ 11:27 am | by Shane Hegarty

    steven-ireland.jpgWhat would his late grandmothers think?

  • Now THAT’S a longlist

    November 5, 2007 @ 7:11 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    The organisers of various literary awards realise that the press and literary industry love a shortlist so much that it is now worth bunging a longlist their way too. It’s a nice PR trick. Publishers get to slap a “Big Book Prize Longlist” sticker on the covers. Meanwhile, the sponsors get a bit of extra coverage months before the shortlist, which itself is months before the winner announced, which is usually a day or two before everyone turns around and declares the whole awards industry a sham anyway. (more…)

  • Katy French: philosopher

    @ 2:31 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Because Blogorrah is back (well, Derek is) let’s mention Katy French for the first and (hopefully) last occassion. Her counterattack against Claire Byrne’s criticism of her in last week’s Sunday Tribune included many choice quotes. Too tiresome to go through them all (some are particularly nasty), but here is the pick of the bunch:

    “Claire Byrne seems to espouse what Joan Didion called ‘wounded bird feminism’ — but I suppose I’m more an exponent of ’sassy bird feminism’.”

    With President McAleese only four years from stepping down, we have an early contender for the Park…

  • The Irish: surf-loving, foul-mouthed, drunken tweenies

    @ 1:25 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    In my column this week, I mentioned how we remain fixated on how others judge us. With that in mind, here’s how we’re being viewed this week.

    As a land where eight year olds get smashed without so much as a second glance from pub regulars. (Canada.com via the Times Colonist):

    I was once in a pub in Ireland (actually, I was in a pub in Ireland plenty of times; they’re hard to avoid) where an 80-year-old woman turned to her eight-year-old granddaughter and said, “Get me my effing fags.” To which the eight-year-old replied, “Get them your effing self.” No one seemed put off by this exchange (or, for that matter, by the sight of an eight-year-old drinking Guinness).

    (more…)

  • RTÉ right to ask “Cecelia Who?”

    November 3, 2007 @ 11:33 am | by Shane Hegarty

    During the week, it was reported that RTÉ has taken a look at Cecelia Ahern’s US TV comedy drama and decided to pass on it. Samantha Who?, it decided, is not “outstanding”.

    At this point, one could take RTÉ by the elbow and ask it discreetly: has it seen itself lately? There is plenty on RTÉ that is not outstanding. Celebrities Go Wild, People in Need, The Late Late Show: not outstanding. The English Class: whatever the opposite of outstanding is. (more…)

  • Five highlights from today’s papers

    November 2, 2007 @ 12:16 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    1. Fianna Fail support is down. With only four years to the next election, can it possibly recover in time?

    2. Communion wine must be alcoholic, and even alcoholic priests have to drink it. (more…)

  • Chasing the ratings

    @ 9:41 am | by Shane Hegarty

    A couple of years ago, Hector O’Heochagain and Risteard Cooper made Chasing The Lions, a poor programme which had no match footage because it was made for TV3. Last night, they gave us Chasing The Blues, a passable show which they made for RTE, but had no match footage because it belonged to TV3.

    What we learned last night was that there is something more painful than watching Ireland tank in a rugby match – watching Hector’s reaction to Ireland tanking in a rugby match.

    Presumably, they made it in the obvious hope that a glorious tournament would give them a great programme and massive DVD sales. But the ad for the DVD which followed the programme didn’t have a voiceover, possibly because the continuity announcer was a little embarrassed by the idea that he might be responsible for people getting that in their sock this Christmas. “Wow, look what Santy brought me! A DVD following a losing team! Packed with no footage! Great!”

  • This blog wouldn’t be “as bad” in Cyrillic text

    November 1, 2007 @ 3:28 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    Judge Denis McLoughlin has made the international news through his announcement that driving at 180 km/h was not “as bad” when converted to 112 mph. Looking at today’s paper, what other figures don’t look “as bad” when converted to another measurement?

    - The Irish drink 13.47 litres of pure alcohol per per person: That’s only 3.5 gallons, which doesn’t make us “as drunk”
    - On Wednesday alone, 10,000 people applied for the driving test: That’s less than 1/40th of unqualified drivers, so not “as panicky”
    - The Green Party’s two senators failed to turn up for a vote on the controversial Pensions bill: Only 25 per cent of the extra votes that would have been needed to defeat the Bill. Not “as meek”

  • A masterclass in how not to tackle the media…

    @ 12:43 pm | by Shane Hegarty

    …as delivered by Heather Mills on GMTV (its website carries the interview):

    - When you’ve been protrayed as a screaming narcissist, go on television and act like a screaming narcissist
    - Bring with you all the clippings from the tabloids, just to show how obsessed you are with your own press
    - Mention that there are 4,400 articles. Not that you’re counting (more…)


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