On the town: Sundays wouldn't be Sundays without RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany. That's what many devoted listeners, such as Esme Lewis, from Donnybrook, Dublin 4, declared this week.
"It has been part of my life, all my life," she said at the launch of a book based on the programme. Sunday Miscellany: a Selection from 2003 and 2004, which is edited by Marie Heaney, features a total of 134 writers (including this writer). We all wanted to meet each other and salute the programme's compiler and producer, Clíodhna Ní Anluain.
What makes the programme so appealing is "its eclectic nature, the age group, the background, the sincerity, the freshness of people willing to speak to each other across the airwaves on a Sunday morning when we are all a little bit off duty", said Ní Anluain, while her husband artist Brian Fay, a director on the board of the Sculptors' Society of Ireland, took care of their daughter, Nora (3).
Sam McAughtry, the Belfast writer who has been contributing to the radio programme "for 27 years man and boy", was there clutching a copy of his family memoir, The Sinking of the Kenbane Head, which has just been re-issued by Blackstaff Press after 27 years.
Treasa Coady of TownHouse, which published the book, came along, having just returned from her 18th Frankfurt Book Fair.
Historian and Joycean scholar Vivien Igoe, whose piece about the Charge of the Light Brigade will be broadcast on tomorrow's programme, chatted to fellow contributor Tony Quinn, chair of the Irish Writers' Union.
Ciarán Mac Mathúna, whose own programme, Mo Cheol Thú, goes out on Sunday morning on RTÉ Radio 1, came to congratulate the writers.
Contributors who read on the night were poet Enda Wyley, Cyril Kelly from Kerry, Mae Leonard of Limerick, film-maker James Cotter and singer Iarla Ó Lionaird, who was there with his wife, Eimear, and their son, Liam (3).