Happy New Yearcade

New year, new decade dawns. Whatever your plans for New Year's Eve, have a good one y'all.

Lastly...

Last night I interviewed author ELizabeth Gilbert - of Eat Pray Love fame - about her new book Committed, due for publication in January. Elizabeth was witty, charming and honest, and you can read the interview in Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent on January 9.

With that, I'm signing off for Christmas. Have a good one y'all, no matter where you are and what you're doing.

Here's a little something Irish to put you in the mood...

"What are you – you, the people of Ireland – what are you waiting for..?"

Possibly the most important newspaper article (technically a letter)published in Ireland this year, if not this decade. Incredibly salient, powerful stuff.

Icons of the decade..

...according to The Guardian

Critics' scores

The best reviewed movies of the year, led by Up and The Hurt Locker.

West Christmas scenes ever...

When it came to emotional Christmas episodes, few TV series ever came close to matching The West Wing - at least for its first three series.

Here are three all-time classics:

Series One: In Excelsis Deo


Series Two: Noel

Series Three: Bartlet for America

Brittany Murphy, 1977-2009

Just heard the very sad news that actress and singer Brittany Murphy died earlier today aged just 32. I had the pleasure of interviewing her in London back in December 2006 to publicise her movie Happy Feet, and that interview is re-posted below. She was a very polite, sweet, eccentric lady and a real talent that never became the star she deserved to be.

-------------------

'Not so Clueless after all'

Declan Cashin

18 December 2006

In 1989, a seductive, slinky screen siren materialised on our screens, oozing sex appeal with every huskily delivered word and lyric that came out of her perfect, proto-Jolie lips. Male filmgoers the world over were entranced.

Yes, Jessica Rabbit was a true cinematic phenomenon. The appearance of this femme fatale in Robert Zemeckis’ then groundbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit was probably the first time ever that so many men found themselves irresistibly attracted to an animated character.

The character of Gloria in George Miller’s Happy Feet might very well challenge Jessica to the ‘wrong to fancy but do anyway’ crown. Gloria is a busty Emperor Penguin who positively waddles with charisma and sensuality.

Just as Jessica had Kathleen Turner’s throaty tones, a similarly raspy star voices Gloria.That star is Brittany Murphy, an actress and singer who is perhaps best known to a generation of people as the gauche newcomer Tai opposite Alicia Silverstone in seminal 90s teen comedy Clueless.

Since then, Murphy has plied her trade specialising in goofiness (Drop Dead Gorgeous, Uptown Girls and Just Married opposite ex-fiancé Ashton Kutcher) or vulnerability and instability in the likes of Girl, Interrupted and Don’t Say A Word. She’s also spent 10 years providing vocal duties as Luanne Platter on the redneck animated show King of the Hill.

In recent years, Murphy’s image has changed completely, reinventing herself as a sex symbol in movies such as 8 Mile and last year’s graphic novel adaptation Sin City.

Indeed, ever since Murphy showed off her new look as a svelte blonde on the cover of Cosmopolitan in 2003, she has constantly had to deny rumours that she either had an eating disorder or undergone cosmetic surgery or both.

Murphy certainly looks fantastic when we meet. She’s slim, but not worryingly so. Wearing a dark pink dress and short black jacket, and with huge, dramatic eyes and long blond hair, Murphy looks every inch the movie star.

At a press conference earlier in the day, Murphy was asked about her similarities to Gloria, and had responded: “I guess we’re both very strong willed and self-confident. I just adore that she’s so feisty and sassy, and I’d be quite like that too.”

Once she sits down to talk one on one, however, it’s evident that Murphy is actually quite shy, unassuming and extremely polite, going as far as apologising for the delay getting to the interview, even though said delay was beyond her control.

“Hi, thanks for waiting. Sorry about the scheduling,” she says, shaking my hand. I tell her she’s not to blame, to which she replies, “I’m just one of those people who apologises for things that aren’t my fault.”

Happy Feet is an all-star computer animated musical comedy set amongst the (by now) almost over-exposed Emperor Penguins of Antarctica. In this community, it is imperative that penguins can sing, as it is through this ‘heartsong’ that the homogenous creatures mark their own identities, and distinguish one from the other within the flock.

Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) is born without a singing voice, however. He tap dances instead, much to the bemusement of his musical parents Norma Jean (a breathy Nicole Kidman) and Memphis (Hugh Jackman). His difference marks him out for bullying at school, where his only friend is Gloria (Murphy), who happens to be the best singer around.

Eventually, Mumble’s unique talent is deemed dangerous by the stern Elders of Emperor Land and he is cast out of society. Banished, Mumble befriends the party-mad Adelie Amigos, a posse of Latino penguins led by the ultra-cool Ramon (Robin Williams, in a return to his Aladdin voiceover glory days). As he and his new pals set off on some epic adventures, Mumble proves that staying true to yourself can affect huge change in the world.

It’s a hugely enjoyable movie that’s like a cross between March of the Penguins, Billy Elliot and Footloose. Although carrying an overt environmental message, Happy Feet, like most animated movies targeted at kids, has a deeper subtext about tolerance and individuality – themes that resonated with Murphy straight away.

“When I was growing up, my whole extended family were all raised to embrace our own individuality,” she explains. “For instance, my cousins were all good at football, so I tried that and was terrible at it, so I took dancing classes and I loved it.

“I love to entertain people and that’s a sport to me. My relatives are all incredible athletes but I ended up entertaining people instead and I always knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Unlike Mumble, however, Murphy has always been encouraged to develop her talents, and was lucky to have the support of those closest to her at every turn.

“It wouldn’t have mattered to my family what I choose to do for a living,” she states. “I’m very fortunate and I know that’s a unique situation. My mother was especially supportive. One of my favourite things about this film’s message is that it really emphasises that it’s great to be yourself. That’s a wonderful affirmation for those who were taught to embrace their own individuality and their quirks, and for those who weren’t raised that way, I think it introduces an entire new way of looking at life and yourself. There’s a lesson there for children of every age.”

Murphy’s family is patently important to her, particularly her mother Sharon. The 29-year-old was born Brittany Bertolotti in New Jersey to an Italian-American father and a half-Irish mother, whose surname she adopted as a child when her parents divorced. She and her mother moved to California where they still reside today (despite her strong Gaelic roots, Brittany’s never been to Ireland, although “it’s a dream” of hers to visit).

Murphy took almost three years off from work in the early 2000s when Sharon developed breast cancer. “That’s been the longest period I’ve had at home since I started working,” she reveals. “I spent every day in the hospital with my mom and she’s doing great now. But I can never get enough time at home.

“I love it when we’re all together and it’s a big dream to one day hopefully have the financial resources to build a big compound where we all can live,” she chuckles (Murphy doesn’t laugh; she chuckles, sounding something like a car quietly trying to chug start).

Her mother has been the single biggest influence on her life. If Murphy marches to her own beat, it’s because conforming was never an option.

“School was never that easy for me,” she recalls. “I was different, I looked different, I dressed differently. I didn’t grow up with material things. But, luckily, money and taste don’t correlate. My mom taught me how to put clothes together beautifully, even the ones that wouldn’t obviously match.”

At this point I interject with the question, “She’s Irish isn’t she?” Murphy bursts out chuckle-laughing. “Oh she’s Irish, yeah,” she replies. “We did a lot of thrift shopping in these great, random stores, where you’d get beautiful European shoes for kids for really inexpensive prices.

“She always found stuff that would have made me fit in with European kids but I just looked different from other kids in school. But I liked it. I remember my mom used to always pack us healthy lunches – things like chicken legs and vegetables with dip – when all the other kids had huge sandwiches dripping in mayo and other junk. I went through a brief period where I demanded that type of stuff, but my mom just kind of looked at me in her way, and that was the end of my short phase where I felt I should try to fit in.”

Many people don’t realise that Murphy is an accomplished singer – and that included Happy Feet director George Miller when he hired her. She had landed a singing role in Les Miserables by the time she was just nine years old, and was the lead singer in a short-lived pop band called Blessed With Soul in her teens. Just this year, dance virtuoso Paul Oakenfeld asked Brittany to do the vocals on the single Faster Kill Pussycat, which turned into a worldwide club hit. Happy Feet has been her first chance to combine her two passions, and indeed her character Gloria gets to belt out a show-stopping rendition of Queen’s Somebody to Love, in addition to other duets and interludes.

“I had an incredible experience on this,” she says. “I’ve been singing my whole life. But I had only been offered the speaking role. George began looking for a singing whose voice would go along with my speaking one, so I gave him a CD, and sang some of the pieces at the initial read-through, and it just grew from there.”

Given the dominance of music in her youth, Murphy eventually had to make a choice about what path she wanted to pursue. Bravely, she opted to turn her back on a pop career until the time was right.

“The record people wanted to put me squarely in the teen pop phase of the 90s. My voice was very mature and developed for my age and the music didn’t feel right. So I made a very specific decision that I didn’t want to do that until I was able to be in control of the music and the material I was singing as much as possible. That’s very difficult at that age. So I definitely am taking the long tedious way of pursuing music. I will have an album come out…eventually!

“I’d like if there was a lot of jazz involved in any album I did. I’ve been writing since my teens and there are some great collaborators I’d love to work with. But it all has a lot to do with time which I don’t have at the moment.”

In the meantime, Murphy’s voice is set to become iconic for another reason. She’s just recorded the vocals for the character of Tinkerbell in a forthcoming Disney flick, marking the first time the Peter Pan pixie has ever spoken on screen. Can she exclusively reveal what those words are?

“I’m not sure which version they’re going with actually,” she says. “I’m sorry I don’t know.” She pauses, before exploding in chuckles and saying: “Besides, it’s Disney so I’m probably not allowed to say anyway, or else I’ll wake up with a big mouse’s head in my bed!”

Murphy has packed a lot into her young life, having started in the entertainment business when she was just a child. She will be thirty next year and it’s a birthday that she’s looking forward to.

“I’m excited about that. The way it’s been going thus far is that I’m learning more and more about life with every year that passes. I think the thirties will be a good time. I hear it is. From what I understand it solidifies a lot of what you go through in your twenties and a lot of what you learned.” She pauses again, before chuckling, “But I’ll let you know if that truly is the case.”

Film '09

My movies of the year:

1. Up in The Air
2. Milk
3. (500) Days of Summer
4. Up
5. Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire
6. The Hurt Locker
7. Star Trek
8.Drag Me to Hell
9. Inglourious Basterds
10. An Education

Honorary mentions: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist; Let the Right One In; I Love You, Man; The Hangover

Special Prizes for Hating-Yet-Kinda-Liking-It: Antichrist; Australia; The Proposal

Unintentional Comedies of the Year: Split between GI Joe and Orphan

Guilty pleasures of the Year: Orphan; 17 Again; The September Issue; Obsessed

Neither-Loved-Nor-Hated-It-'Meh'-Awards of the Year: District 9; Avatar


Worst Movies of the Year:

1. Synecdoche, New York
2. Bride Wars
3. The Ugly Truth
4. Seven Pounds
5. Bruno
6. He's Just Not That Into You
7. GI Joe
8. Wolverine
9. New Moon
10. The Reader

Performances of the Year:

1. Mo'Nique, Precious
2. Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
3. Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
4. Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
5. Anna Kendrick, Up in The Air
6. Carey Mulligan, An Education
7. Sean Penn, Milk
8. Stanley Tucci, Julie & Julia
9. Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
10. George Clooney, Up in The Air

Best On-Screen Couple:

1. George Clooney and Vera Farmiga, Up in The Air
2. Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, Julie & Julia
3. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, It's Complicated
4. Sean Penn and James Franco, Milk
5. Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law, Sherlock Holmes

Really Riley

My Q&A with actor Tom Riley in today's Day and Night in the Independent about his role in the new Irish movie Happy Ever Afters

SAG awards

Nominations for the Screen Actors Guild awards just announced...

No major shocks; Clooney, Bridges, Freeman and Firth look like locks for an Oscar nomination. Great to see Jeremy Renner get in for a fantastic performance in The Hurt Locker.

Similarly, the Actress/Supp Actress races seem to be lining up: I can't imagine the names being very different in the respective categories at the Oscars. Aghast though that Julianne Moore didn't make the cut. I think she'll bump out Kruger at the Oscars though.

Supp Actor brought Christopher Plummer into the frame, and I think he'll make the Oscar shortlist too. I'm delighted that Woody Harrelson is getting a lot of award love this year too. Overall, I think we're headed for a grindingly predictable awards race this year.

Flying high

Just out from a screening of Jason Reitman's Up in the Air. Very impressive - in fact, I loved it. It's timely, smart, funny and achingly, hauntingly sad, with a trio of fantastic performances from The Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, all of whom have been nominated for Golden Globes, and look set for deserved Oscar noms too. At 32 years of age, and only on his third major movie, is there a more interesting and exciting young director at work today than Jason Reitman?

Obama/Berlusconi hit

Tee hee hee, just got this by email

Simpsons @20

20th anniversary updated Simpsons characters poster

Meanwhile Salon has a piece about how the show has long since lost its edge and relevancy

Women in Hollywood

NY Times critic Manohla Dargis dissects the state of women in Hollywood - behind and in front of the camera, followed up a scathing discussion at Jezebel.

Amazing Grace

The glorious Grace Coddington, who comprehensively stole the show from Anna Wintour in The September Issue, is interviewed in today's London Times

Golden Globes

Nominations just released for the dubiously-credentialed-yet-bizarrely-influential 67th Golden Globe Awards.

Up in the Air leads with six nominations; Avatar with four; Inglourious Basterds with four;The Hurt Locker with three; Precious with three.

See full movie and TV nominations here.

AFI movies and TV shows of the year

The American Film Institute picks for 2009...

Movies:
Coraline

The Hangover

The Hurt Locker

The Messenger

Precious

A Serious Man

A Single Man

Sugar

Up

Up in the Air


TV Shows:
The Big Bang Theory

Big Love

Friday Night Lights

Glee

Mad Men

Modern Family

The No1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Nurse Jackie

Party Down

True Blood

Avatar reaction

1D script, totally meh plot (something about a "life-tree"), by-now-familiar Lord of the Rings-style battle sequences, and truly clunky attempts at political/environmental commentary. But it does look spectacular - dazzlingly so in places. It's a technical marvel, but the reviews in the US so far have been way, way too enthusiastic. It's not the game-changer we had been led to believe

Joe show

Aw, little Joe McElderry wins The X Factor with 'The Climb'

Avatar raves

The reactions to the first screenings are over-overwhelmingly good: five stars from Empire, and a selection of other rave notices here.

SATC 2

"Carrie On"? Groan. Read about it here

Collapse

This documentary is attracting a lot of buzz...released in the US this week, hopefully it'll open here some time soon

How huge is the internet on an average day?

Cool visual from Gizmodo

Brutal Precious

Just back from a screening of this movie. It's a shattering, gruelling, but ultimately hopeful and inspiring movie, powered by two astonishing central performances from Gabby Sidibe and particularly Mo'Nique - a complex, monstrous character that will haunt your dreams afterwards. And yes, Mariah Carey is deeply impressive in a small but crucial supporting role. This is a major movie that we will be hearing a lot about over the next few months as Oscar season kicks into gear. Watch the trailer here.

100 Essential Websites...

...from today's Guardian

Text of Obama's Nobel Prize speech

The text of Barack Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Time's top 10 movie performances...

...of the year have just been announced, headed by Mo'Nique in Precious.

Flipping through the Noughties

Great feature in last Saturday's Guardian in which high-profile writers give their opinions on the definitive books of the decade - tomes like White Teeth, The Corrections and the 9/11 Commission Report

'Net gain or loss?

Day 2 of the Indy's Noughties essays - today Johann Hari talks about the internet and information technology revolution of the past decade.

On the first day of the Noughties, I sent my first email. I sent it from a different world – one in which spam was something my nan ate from a can, blackberries were a fruit you picked from a tree, and where if you told somebody you wanted to poke them, they'd punch you in the face. On the day I joined the club, there were 200 million people with email accounts. Today, there are 3.2 billion. It seemed to me that day to be a fad. Today, it seems like a second skin, spreading out over all my friends, all my colleagues, and all the world. The internet has transformed the way we think about ourselves – the groups we belong to, the information we know, the people we date, and even our sexual fantasies. The story of this decade is the story – in all its strange sinews – of the World Wide Web.

Continue here

The age of uncertainty

Rupert Cornwell has a fantastic essay on the past decade in today's Indy.

How will the world remember this century's first decade, which is now drawing to an end? For once alliteration works well. The 'decade of disorder' perhaps, reflecting the fragmentation of power into what historians of the present call a multipolar world. Or how about the 'decade of drift', in which huge global problems went untackled?

Or one might describe it as a 'decade of destruction' – not in the sense of annihilation, but as a period of necessary creative destruction, in which many comforting props of the past disappeared in order to permit a new equilibrium. As for the country that not long ago informally ruled the world, another alliteration might apply. For the United States of America, briefly the hub of a unipolar world, this has been a decade of disaster.

Continue here.

Cinder-fella

My piece on the 2009 Cheerios panto Cinderella in today's Irish Examiner

It’s a freezing cold Friday morning, and I’ve just asked a former Big Brother winner and a model for a joint quickie at the back of the room. I’m referring to a ‘quickie’ dance lesson, by the way, but risqué humour and double entendres are common currency at the moment in the St Nicholas of Myra Hall on Dublin’s Francis Street where the cast and chorus of this year’s Cheerio’s Christmas panto Cinderella are in rehearsal.

Stars Brian Dowling and Pippa O’Connor have offered to take me through the routine for one of the shows principle dance numbers, which just happens to be Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)’. Rehearsals only started a few days ago, so my teachers are still a bit sketchy on the details, plus they have a student who would have to study for a decade at the Royal Ballet School just to be upgraded to the “two left feet” category.

The show’s actual choreographer is at the other end of the room working with the chorus dancers, and no doubt would want no association with the “moves” - if that’s the word - that the three of us conjure. As we continue to mock the Dance Gods, the chorus line move in behind us to show us how it’s really done. I skulk off the floor and leave the rest of them to it.

TV presenter Brian is returning to the stage for the second year running, having played a rather effete Captain Hook in last year’s show, Peter Pan. This time round, he has graduated to an even bigger role - in every respect - playing an ugly sister named Bridie who promises to be something of a cross between Jordan and a drag queen from Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

“After Peter Pan ended in February, I went back to London to work for a while,” he explains. “Alan [Hughes] called me during the summer and asked if I’d be interested in coming back this year. I had a feeling the role wouldn’t be Prince Charming.

“This is a bigger role, and requires more acting so to speak, as well as more singing and dancing. So I had to think about it. I was nervous about whether I could pull it off. I also have to work on my Dublin accent because I’m paired with Buffy (played by John Lovett). Still, it’s nice to be home for Christmas with my family. I have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, so that’s a good break.”

What’s more, Brian says he once again gets to avail of the patented - and by all accounts highly effective - ‘Panto Diet’. “It really works,” he laughs. “I was in my skinny jeans last year after the panto finished. Maybe we should bring out an exercise DVD?”

For model Pippa, who plays the Fairy Godmother, this is her first time to tread the boards, and admits that there’s one aspect of the role that makes her more nervous than anything else. “I don’t know whether I’ll sing,” she says with a laugh. “We’re still talking about it. But if Brian can sing, I can too.” Brian is walking past as she says this: “Yes, we could sing Cotton Eye Joe or something,” he pipes in.

Pippa adds that she doesn’t mind working over the Christmas period, and says she’s happy to have a quiet one with her family, and her boyfriend Brian Ormond. “It’s only two months out of my life,” she says. “Once I’d decided to do it that was it. This will keep me well-behaved.”

The cast of Cinderella also includes this year’s Eurovision star Sinead Mulvey as the glass-slippered heroine, and TV3 presenter, and the panto’s producer, Alan Hughes as audience favourite Sammy Sausages.

This is Alan’s 17^th consecutive year starring in the Christmas show. “This is what Christmas has become for me,” he admits. “I wouldn’t know anything else at this stage.

“It’s so much fun though. Brian is hysterical. He has us all in tears laughing during rehearsals. It’s a wonder we get anything done.”

Aside from big laughs and hectic musical numbers, pantos often make reference to topical matters, but Alan is adamant that the dreaded ‘R’ word is kept as far from the show as possible. “People come to the panto for escapism and spectacle. They don’t want to be reminded of any troubles in the world,” he says.

That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t noticed a definite shift, even since last year’s show. “Bookings for this year’s show are strong, but they are late,” he says. “There has been a definite shift since last year. More people are looking for discounts and specials. Everyone just doesn’t have as much money as they once did. I think what will happen is that people will decide over the holidays closer to the event. It’s pretty nerve wracking as a producer though.”

With that, Alan re-joins his cast-mates for more innuendo-laden rehearsals. “I’ve heard the prince’s balls are only massive,” Brian reads from his script. He looks at me and explains: “I’m talking about his balls - you know his dances, his parties”. He feigns an innocent look. “What else could I mean?”

*Cinderella opens at the Tivoli Theatre on December 16, and runs until January 17. Booking available by calling 01 45 444 72. See www.panto.ie

Noughtie people

My contribution to the Noughties special in yesterday's Irish Examiner...

My Decade:

*Anna Nolan

On the 18^th July 2000, I walked through a door into a prefabricated building. The walls were blue, the people strange and the cameras were buzzing. I had entered the first UK Big Brother, and it would change my life.

The day before, I had stood on the Underground tube. It was full, and we were all so crushed together that we were breathing in unison. I looked at the people around me, none of them would have heard of Big Brother. I wanted to shout, “You have no idea the type of programme that is about to start this week”. I just had the tiniest feeling, as I was being squashed in this Tube, that a new type of television was about to be burst out into the stratosphere.

I spent 64 days and 63 nights under lock and key, under 24 hour surveillance - all of my own volition. We were naïve, enthusiastic, egotistic guinea pigs. We couldn’t have oinked any louder, if they had wanted us to. We gave ourselves to reality television.

After I left the house, I had opportunities to embrace and mistakes to make. I was offered thousands and thousands for interviews, book deals, appearances. A lot of hot air, and a bit of genuine offerings. I decided to knuckle down and try to have a go at working in television.

From working with the BBC for 4 years, to working with RTE for 6, it has been an incredible decade. Broadcasting is now my bread and butter, along with my writing. It is the most exciting job in the world, and I am lucky.

10 years later, and they say reality television is dying. It is certainly ill, and needs a jab of something. And as much as we are tired, irked and loathsome of it, it created me, a Big Brother monster – hear me roarrrr!!!!!

*Sinead Sheppard

In 2000-2001, I was doing my Leaving Cert, and at the end of August that summer, the auditions for Popstars came up. In October they picked 32 of us, and brought us to a secret location. They picked the final six for the band at the end of October, and we were then hid away in a secret location until the middle of January, when the show started on TV.

We were revealed to the public at the end of January 2002. We were locked away during the process, and didn’t really get how big the show was. The day after we were unveiled, I arranged to meet my family in town for a coffee. I remember walking through the Jervis Centre and this throng of people started screaming and running towards me. I couldn’t grasp that it was for me. It was mayhem.

We had three years in Six. We travelled the world, did a European tour and two Irish tours. It was a great experience. It was a bit upsetting not to be released in the UK but we were kids, and we got to see so much, I wouldn’t take a second of it back.

Within three weeks of the band breaking up, myself and Liam McKenna booked flights to LA, and we moved there for a year. That was my year out. I did loads of dance classes there, but I began to feel lonely so I decided to move home. I went into panto, and then opened my own dance school in Cobh.

Last year, I was approached by Fine Gael about running in the local elections in Cobh. I was a bit apprehensive, but I was always moaning about everything so I decided to get off the fence and do something about it. Plus there definitely isn’t enough female representation in Irish politics in general.

I felt like a fish out of water at first, but in the last three months I feel I’ve really settled into the job. I love it, but it can be hard. I won’t run in the next general election, though. I don’t feel ready. I wouldn’t rule it out in 5 or 10 years time, but I want to work my way up.

*Sinead Sheppard is starring in Jack and the Beanstalk in the Cork Opera House from December 13-January 17

*Karen Koster, presenter Xpose

I had just done my Leaving Cert in 1999, and hadn’t a clue at all about what I wanted to do. I said I’d figure it out once I got to college. I went to Trinity to study English Literature and French. It was a four year degree, and during the summer of second year, I auditioned for a TV show called The Fame Game, which Caroline Morahan ended up winning.

After that I got the bug for TV production, but I wasn’t going to quit college to get into such a fickle business. I never had a back-up career plan. We have a family business [Hermans Hairstyle] so I used to work summers there on reception and in the salon, and I liked it, but I knew it wasn’t for me. It was good that I didn’t have a Plan B because it made me strive for what I wanted.

I finished college in 2003, and then spent 6 months as a runner in RTE. In February 2004, I started as a researcher in TV3, and as a part-time weather girl to cover Alan Hughes on Ireland AM. I was their first female weather presenter, and I was very young, so I felt like a complete novice. I found my first live broadcasts really challenging - it’s a lot harder than it looks!

Xpose started on TV3 in April 2007. I wanted to be involved from the start; it was something very new for Ireland. It’s a brand now, but we’ve had to adapt to the changes everyone is experiencing in the country. We still offer a bit of escapism though.

Sometimes in this job, I find myself asking, ‘How did I ever land this gig?’ When your boss asks, ‘Is anyone free to interview Leonardo di Caprio this week?’, you do have to pinch yourself.

My big ambition for 2010 and beyond is to get to the Oscars. That’s when I know I’ll have arrived!

*Paul Howard

In 1999-2000, I was working as a sports journalist for the Sunday Tribune. I’d just finally moved out of home. I was 28 - far too old to be living with the parents.

In 1998, I had created this character called Ross O’Carroll Kelly in a column in the paper. Only about 5 or 6 columns appeared that year, and it didn’t become a regular feature until 2000. That was the biggest professional development for me this decade.

It’s odd because I only started writing Ross as something to amuse myself on a Friday afternoon after I’d finished my deadlines - my real work. It was just me goofing off really. It was a satirical column about a lot of the changes I was seeing in Ireland that came hand in hand with the Celtic Tiger, things like the growth of materialism, and the importation of a lot of things from America, namely the accent, as well as the values.

I’d only ever wanted to be a sports journalist since I was 11 years old. I never thought I’d one day give it up to become this character full time, which is what happened at the end of 2005.

It’s still very strange. I read to some students in Terenure College last month, who just referred to me as Ross, not Paul. My life has become his in lots of ways.

I hear there are a lot of Ross books lying around hostels in Asia, because Irish people bring them on their travels. I had a German couple at a reading recently who had discovered Ross in a hostel in Bangkok, and loved it.

In a perverse way, I think the economic downturn has helped me sustain Ross. It allows me to look at how Ross, and the generation and culture he represents, adapts to the challenging times in Ireland.

Personally, 2010 is going to be a big year. I’m getting married on New Years Eve to Mary McCarthy. We met five years ago in Lillie’s Bordello, which is a very Ross thing to say. I’m really excited about it. It’s a nice way to start a new decade.

*Rhino What You Did Last Summer is published by Penguin

*John Boyne, author

In 1999, I was working in Waterstones in London. I had just sold my first novel [The Thief of Time] which was due to come out in 2000. That was a very exciting way to start a decade. I came back to Dublin and continued working in Waterstones until 2003.

I left the job to be a full time writer. I’d published a couple of books at that point but they hadn’t really done anything. I decided I had to take the plunge and take it seriously. I wasn’t sure if I had a future in writing at all. I was quite down at that point, and I couldn’t afford to do it, but I knew I had to go for it or else I’d regret it.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was the turning point. I wrote it during 2004. The idea came to me quite quickly. I didn’t plan it at all, I just started writing it. I wrote the first draft very quickly. I gave it to my agent the following week, and it was sold a week later. My life changed forever as a result.

The foreign and movie rights sold before publication so there was a lot of excitement about it. The book was published in January 2006, and, not to dwell on it too much, it helped to alleviate the financial concerns I had when I became a full time writer. It was a big success.

The great change, mainly, is that it helped so much with the books that came afterwards. They are published around the world. It has changed my existence totally. I travel a lot, I’m always on the road, going to festivals. The life I had at the start of the decade seems so distant now.

I was 34 when The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas came out so I was in a good place. When the first few books didn’t do anything, I was disappointed, but I don’t think I’d have been able to handle success that early. Now, I’m looking forward to turning 40. I’ve been very lucky so far.

*John Boyne’s The House of Special Purpose is out now

*Mark Sheehan, lead guitarist with The Script

Thinking back on 2000, my overwhelming memory is of being flat broke. I remember I arrived in America with $192 in my pocket. I tried to get into every studio and work with every producer I could to get experience. It was all hustle: sometimes I was making tea, other times I got a chance to do some work.

I spent the next seven years working at it in America, along with Danny [O’Donoghue, lead singer]. That included almost three years working for writers and producers all around the country in Nashville, Atlanta, Memphis, Virginia Beach, LA. We tried to make enough money in one place to get us to the next.

We tried so many ways to get into the business, and eventually we got pissed off writing songs for other people. We decided to record our songs ourselves, and the record label heard it and was like, ‘These are great, who is the band?’ We replied, ‘There isn’t a band, but we’ll make one!’ That’s how The Script was born. That was our break.

We don’t think too much about success; in this business, it can become so much bigger in your own head. We don’t want to get caught up in what we’ve done as a band, as opposed to what we can achieve. But there are some things that blew us away: playing with U2 in Croke Park this summer was momentous. Oxegen was another big moment for me.

Musicians always have to believe their big break is going to come. Our success has been a shock and a surprise.We’ve just finished an American tour, and we’re back in Dublin next week. We’re going to book a recording studio and write some new music. We’re overdue some new stuff here.