Eggciting times: Who won our Easter Egg World Cup?

This week on The Women's Podcast comedian Alison Spittle hosts an Easter Egg world cup in a bid to determine, once and for all, which egg reigns supreme.

“I planned a one day tournament, browsed the supermarket and tried to put together a wide variety of eggs in the group stages,” she reveals in her podcast column. “I made sure there were posh eggs, new fangled american peanut butter eggs and the old favourites that came with mugs. I felt like Sepp Blatter, I knew if the result was controversial the public would have my head on a spike.”

Tweeters only had an hour to vote for their favourite egg and some big hitters fell at the group stage including the Ferrero Rocher of children’s treats the Kinder Egg and Spittle’s own favourite “the humble kit kat chunky with the dual purpose of not only being a tasty chocolate bar but also a fun straw for your tea when bit at opposite corners.”

You’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out which egg won out. (Hint: the result was divisive and it rhymes with ’whirl’)

Also on the podcast this week, a lively chat about the joy of chocolate featuring Dr Ciara Kelly of Operation Transformation, chocaholic Sonia Harris and from UCC food and culinary historian Regina Sexton. The panel discuss the origins of chocolate, whether it’s good for you and why some women can’t get enough of it at certain times of the month.

There is a good reason why women can often crave chocolate before and during their period as Dr Ciara Kelly told presenter Kathy Sheridan: "When you arehormonal, the mood goes a bit wonky and of course chocolate releases seratonin which is a happy hormone ... we feel good with all that seratonin going boom, boom, boom in our systems and it helps ease out the negative vibes we get a day or two before our periods"

With hundreds of Rising related events happening around the country, we also invited Mary Moynihan from Smashing Times theatre company in to the studio to bring us an account of 1916, written by Margaret Skinnider of Cummann na mBan, who was injured during a skirmish near The Shelbourne Hotel.

“Knowing our mission has been compromised we decide to fall back to the College of Surgeons. Once back in the college the men lay me out on a large table and cut away the coat of my fine new uniform. I cry over that,” she writes. “I have been shot in three places. Had I not turned as I went through the shop door to call to the others, I would have got all 3 bullets in my back and lungs and surely would have died.”

The account will be performed in City Hall in Dublin on Easter Monday and the monologue will also be performed at Echoes of 1916 in Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin on April 21 as part of The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of 1916 .

The day consists of An Artist’s Vision for Ireland National Symposium from 2 to 6pm with guest speakers including Deirdre Kinahan, playwright and Dr Eric Weitz, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Trinity College Dublin.

There is also an evening performance at 7.30pm of The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of 1916 featuring original testimony and new Irish writing by Pom Boyd, Mary Moynihan and Peter Sheridan.

For more information or to book tickets go to smockalley.com

Next week’s podcast is our spring cleaning special featuring decluttering guru Marie Kondo, who has sold more than 6m copies of her book ’The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’.

[ irishtimes.com ]