Onwards we go

This blog is upping sticks - kind of like myself actually - and can now be followed at declancashin.com

25

Feature from today's Independent to mark this wekeend's 25th anniversary celebrations in The George

As the country's longest-running and most famous gay establishment, The George occupies a special place in gay Irish life, and this weekend the Dublin bar and club is celebrating its 25th year in business.

And so it should. That The George opened at all -- and, what's more, survived -- is an achievement in itself, seeing as it was set up in the midst of a devastating recession, and when homosexuality was still a crime in Ireland (and remained so until decriminalisation in 1993).

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David Cameron is Prime Minister

The Cam and Sam show moves into No 10

Buh-bye Gordon

Hung

Pictures of the day from the aftermath of the inconclusive UK general election

Wheat from the chat

Nightwatch column from Day and Night in today's Independent

Gather round dear Nightwatch readers, and let me spin you a tale of smoking hot passion and unbridled desire fresh from the coalface of 21st-century dating life. Set your faces to 'Envy' and/or 'Swoon' ... now!

Continue here

Camergeddon is looming...

*cough airbrush cough*

Sir Hugsalot

My feature on Random Hugs Day in today's Examiner

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. Or at the very least, what we all need is a great, big hug. The news is so grim at the moment that word processing systems are automatically inserting sad faces at the end of headlines, we’re all NAMA’d out of it, and our climate – for want of a better word - is blowing so hot and cold that the time has surely come to sensitively suggest to Mother Nature to up her HRT prescription.

Seeing as the touring ‘Hugging Saint’ Amma isn’t due around these parts any time soon, I decided to step up to the plate to spread some comfort and joy to the harried citizens of Dublin.

This coincides with Random Huggers Day, which takes place this Sunday (May 2) in London, Spain, Germany, Hong Kong, South Africa and New Zealand. It’s the brainchild of UK-based life coach Mayella Johnstone, who was inspired to start the annual event in 2004 after hearing a radio DJ remark that, ‘It seems you can find random terrorists on the streets; why don't we find random huggers?’

Together with a group of friends, Mayella decided to start offering hugs to people on the street. By all accounts, the response from the public every year has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

But how would unsuspecting Irish people react? I admit that I was sceptical from the start. When my editor first suggested the idea, I felt I had to ask, only half-jokingly, whether the Examiner would foot my bail and/or pay my medical expenses.

I ploughed ahead regardless, choosing last Monday afternoon for my hugging mission. It seemed like a good choice: it was a Monday, which is bleurgh enough to begin with, but what’s more the previous weekend’s good weather had vanished, plus many people’s travel plans had fallen on their ash, I mean, ass, thanks to Eyjafjallajokull.

On the way down town, I stop in for a cup of coffee, and offer a hug to the barista to express my thanks. She looks wary. “Erm, I’ll have to ask my manager,” she replies. I’m not feeling the love.

Rather than risk arrest and/or a beating by ambushing people out of nowhere, I opt to make a sign to wear simply reading, ‘Free hugs’, and see if people are forthcoming.

The first location I decide to hit is Dail Eireann on Kildare Street, because the Lord Herself knows that our glorious political elite could do with some TLC right around now. Alas, I forgot that the Dail is still on Easter break (seriously guys, Easter break? I can’t even remember Easter; that’s how long ago it is).

That said, one car does emerge from the tumbleweeds carrying a figure I can just about make out as a well-known Fianna Fail senator. Momentarily catching his eye, I gesture to my sign, holding out my arms in a hugging motion. He was out of there faster than a politician on the last day before Easter break.

After that initial let down, I decide to target real people, and so I position myself in the midst of the busy pedestrian traffic on Grafton Street. I immediately start to get the uniquely Irish Non-Staring Stare™ that we traditionally give Bono or Fair City actors when we pass them in town. You know the drill: keep the gaze straight ahead, eyes darting sideways to take it all in; keep walking; immediately take out mobile phone to notify others about who/what you’ve just seen.

However, after a few minutes, the staring-outright has begun. I’m a little mortified, quite honestly. The looks on people’s faces veer from little smiles, to chuckles, to outright fear. “Are you that desperate?” a woman asks in passing, before bursting out laughing. Soon after, another lady inquires: “Not getting many, huh? Must be you.” Hmm, I say to myself, probably not going to be a fantastic self-esteem day.

A guy walks past with his arm around a girl. “Would you like a free hug?” I ask them. The guy replies: “No thanks buddy, I got much better off her earlier on.” Steady on now girls, this one lucky lady saw him first.

Luckily, the public reaction becomes more positive and I soon settle into the role. I get a few ‘weirdo’ comments (nothing I’m not used to already), but there are surprisingly few, if any, ‘eff offs’.

“Good for you son,” a woman calls out as she makes her way over for a hug. I’m suddenly mindful of Stranger Hugging Etiquette. Mainly, I make sure that the arms don’t go any lower than the back, otherwise this task and this article enters a whole new family newspaper-unfriendly territory.

A young man in a shirt and tie walks straight over to me. “I’m hungover and I need a hug,” he says. I oblige, like a walking, talking Solpedeine, only more effervescent.

“Are you the one giving out the hugs?” a man asks. “I thought you might have a bunch of girls with you”. He grudgingly takes what must be a hugely disappointing substitute embrace from me.

I can see a group of young girls standing close-by, looking rightly apprehensive and giving me the once-over with their in-built Stranger Danger scanners.

They all ambush me for hugs at the one time. They’re German students, stranded here by the volcano. One says something to another auf Deutsch, before looking at me in a panic. ‘You couldn’t understand me, yes?” she asks. I shake my head. “Oh thank God!” she exclaims.

Doing by bit for the Tourist Board, I also dispense some hug love to a Canadian tourist. “I can’t leave Ireland without one,” she says with a laugh.

Any self-consciousness on my part is now gone, and I find myself getting more into it. If nothing else, I’m giving people something to laugh about on a dreary Monday. Even better, the camera phones are now out. One guy actually recorded me, so who knows, I could be the next SuBo (DecCash?). A little later I find out that I was mentioned on Twitter (“can’t attest to the quality, but there’s a guy giving out free hugs”).

I’m feeling much braver, so I approach the people who are idling nearby, perhaps too afraid to approach. In nearly every instance, they take the hug and we have a laugh. “I’m going to text my friend and tell her to come down to you for a hug,” and elderly lady informs me. High praise indeed.

In total, I spend over an hour on Grafton Street. People are surprisingly responsive, much more so than I would have imagined. What’s wonderful is that while people seem bemused, nobody questions why I’m doing it. The general attitude seems to be, ‘Well, why the hell not?’

One of the last people I meet is another elderly woman, who asks me afterwards if I’ll be back every Monday offering hugs. There was something about that question that I found really sweet but kind of sad at the same time. I might not be back next Monday, but perhaps some more of you out there will embrace the task instead.

Gerry Ryan, 1956-2010

From the Irish Times.

Picture of the day

The Lost boys, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, in their office, planning the final eps of the show. From Wired...

Picture of the day

President Obama at the funeral of civil rights leader Dr Dorothy Height

Eek

Yes I'm excited. Read about it here.

Bubba and Blair

Pictures from The Special Relationship, which is set to air here on May 7. It stars Dennis Quaid and Hope Davis as Bill n Hill, and Michael Sheen and Helen McCrory reprising their roles as Tony and Cherie from The Queen.

The very Model of a modern arts centre

From Review in today's Independent

As opening night pitches go, ‘come and sleep with us’ is certainly one to grab the attention. That’s exactly the proposition that the Model arts centre in Sligo is giving to the public during its official re-opening bash next weekend (May 1).

Having being closed for two years as part of an extensive renovation and extension, the newly re-opened Model kicks off its programme next Saturday with the start of the Dorm exhibit, which aims to be a sort-of parody of a commercial arts fair.

Essentially, 22 artist collectives will take residence in separate booths in the gallery. At the same time, the public are invited to take part in a sleepover in the Model on opening night, with design students from the local IT providing cheap, easily disposable beds for hardy culture vultures. One bed prototype is made entirely of balloons and cardboard.

“We're opening on May Day and we expect it to be mayhem,” laughs Aoife Flynn, Music and Events Programmer. “We chose to start with Dorm because our programme is very contemporary and sometimes hard-hitting, and we want to keep it at that level, but help people to interpret and access it too.

“It really is about educating people a bit, but I think, more than ever before, people want the arts to be interactive. It's a
conversation. We're not putting on something for people to look at and then just walk away. We want to start a debate.

“This is a way to do that, and also through the website where people can leave comments and get into a discussion.”

The Model’s re-launch provides a rare glimmer of light in an arts world that has been cast more and more into the shade by a State deep in the (empty) pockets of a recession. Be that as it may, the centre’s ambitious and quirky programme aims to bring the arts directly into the lives of not just those in the region, but to extend its reach on a national and international scale too.

It's an ambitious agenda at a difficult time for the Irish arts.Funding to the Arts Council was cut by 6pc for this year (dropping
from €73.35m in 2009 to €69.15m for 2010). As a result, all arts organisations are feeling the squeeze. Be that as it may, the
operators of the Model seem undeterred.

Now comprising a purpose-built performance space, a cinema, a gallery circuit and a suite of nine residential artist studios, the Model's building – which dates originally from the 1860s – has almost become an exhibit object in itself.

It may be a regional arts centre, but that hasn't put a limit on its head honchos' ambitions. “A very big part of how we approach our programme is to make it both nationally and internationally relevant,” says Aoife. “It's good not to have everything happening in Dublin, and to have that diversity.

‘The artists, especially, respond so much better if you say to them, ‘We have this fantastic gallery in a rural context, with a beach down the road, and the mountains behind you in a really unspoiled area with a huge amount of history'. For instance, in 2006 we had Patti Smith come to do a week-long exhibition, and performance, that she'd also brought to London, New York and Tokyo.

“She came to Sligo because of her love of Jack Yeats (the subject of his own Model exhibit from July onwards). She actually said she probably wouldn't have responded to the same invitation to a show in Dublin because there's a certain sameness to that city circuit. So I think Sligo's location can be an advantage.”

Seamus Kealy, director of the Model, was born in Sligo but spent most of his life in Canada, so perhaps understandably has a vision for the centre that goes beyond the local and the national. “We'll be bringing in international guests and a residency programme for international artists, and we're also engaged in a global scholarship scheme,” he says.

“We're already part of international exhibition tours. For example, last year we had a tour from Germany that was very critical of how religion represents itself today in new forms of media. It proved to be very topical around the time the Blasphemy Bill was being drawn up. It's possible to use an arts programme to provide a commentary on the socio-economic and political situation in the country right now.”

The Model's renovation was made possible by funding from Sligo County Council and from the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport, but, like every other arts organisation, cobbling together operational and programme funding is a constant struggle.

“We just fundraise like hell,” reveals Seamus. “It's ongoing, and we also have self-generating forms of income, like the cinema, restaurant and the nine artists’ studios that we rent out.”

Aoife Flynn adds: “The programme funding has obviously had reductions, and that makes it difficult, but I find the very nature of working in the arts is to respond creatively to that challenge. If your ambition is high, you will find a way.

“We spend a lot of our time applying for funding. You really have to work with all sorts of organisations and sponsors, and it's hard work, but very rewarding. We have a lot of funding that would come from local authority, the PEACE III programme (a cross-border initiative), and the International Fund for Ireland scheme.

“At the same time, for smaller amounts we can work with good cultural institutes like Alliance Francaise or Goethe Institut. We start with the ambition and then try match the funding to it.”

See www.themodel.ie. The public sleepover on May 1 requires advance registration.

Little white lies

Interview with Tim Brannigan in Weekend magazine in today's Independent

Tim Brannigan likes to say that he was born on May 10, 1966, and that he died the same day too. Minutes after his birth, Tim was ferried away from his mother Peggy, who subsequently told her own parents, siblings and her three other children that her baby had died in childbirth.

For the next five days in Templemore Hospital in Belfast, Peggy Brannigan had one ashen-faced visitor after another express their deepest condolences for her loss while, just a few doors down, her baby gurgled and cooed away like any healthy newborn.

Continue here.

So this is the Situation regarding Jersey Shore

Feature from today's Irish Examiner

When it comes to reality TV these days, it takes something special to leave viewers open-mouthed and at a loss for words, but MTV’s latest fly-on-the-wall docuseries Jersey Shore has more than accomplished that feat. Arriving on this side of the world at a time when the only signs of life coming from the reality format can be attributed to the final spasms of rigor mortis, Jersey Shore has managed to strike a chord to become the most talked-about reality breakthrough hit since The Hills – albeit for mostly the wrong reasons.

For the uninitiated (episode three just aired on MTV last weekend), Jersey Shore focuses on the jaw-dropping, yet morbidly compelling car-crash summer shenanigans of a group of eight young Italian-American guys and dolls with egos as big as their pecs and intellects as miniscule as their thongs living, working and sleeping together in the popular New Jersey resort of Seaside Heights.

This octet all proudly proclaim themselves to be ‘guidos’ and ‘guidettes’, which are class-based slang-terms to describe certain Italian-Americans that are embraced by the witless Jersey Shore gang to mean tanned, muscled, heavily-hair-gelled, fashion-savvy, lady-killing, high-fiving studs, and the orange-skinned, fake nail-sporting, hair-extension-sprouting gals who so willingly throw themselves at them.

However, the ‘guido’ term has long been fiercely denounced as a lazy ethnic slur by the majority of Americans of Italian descent. Indeed MTV kicked off a sandstorm of controversy when the show started lasted summer: several Italian-American organisations condemned the show, while Dominos Pizza pulled its advertising in protest.

The real-life residents of Jersey Shore have also slammed the show, and the region’s representatives have been at pains to point out that the people depicted in the programme represent the seasonal workers who come to the area, and not the ones who live there full-time. Elsewhere, Christian groups are speaking out against the debauched lifestyle portrayed in the show, and cancer groups are calling for the show to be cancelled for what it deems as its reckless encouragement of tanning booths.

So who’s who on Jersey Shore, and what is it about them that has so captured – and repulsed - the popular imagination? The hulking lunks of guys are made up of Pauly D, “a born and raised guido”, a self-styled womanizing DJ with a shelf-load of hair gel products and a tanning booth in his apartment.

Then there’s mama’s boy Vinny, who considers himself a genuine guido and a class above the others because he has a college degree. Fret not, however, as he assures viewers that he can fist-pump with the best of them. Next up is Ronnie who has come to the shore determined not to fall in love, saying that, ‘Jersey Shore is all about getting laid: just take your shirt off and they come to you like a fly to sh*t’ (incidentally, Ronnie is now working on a tell-all book entitled Never Fall in Love at the Jersey Shore).

The last male charmer is Mike, who goes by the nickname ‘The Situation’, referring to his insanely defined six-pack stomach abs that he says makes him look like Rambo when he removes his shirt.

Meanwhile, the “ladies” consist of Sammi, the ‘Sweetheart’ who lives life by a store of empowering statements that would make The Simpsons’ talking Malibu Stacy doll proud. For instance: “The smaller the shorts the better because all the guidos like them”.

Jenni, known affectionately as ‘JWoww’, describes herself as a “preying mantis that will rip the head off a guy once I have sex with him”. Elsewhere, Angelina tells us in the first episode that she has a boyfriend but that if he doesn’t trust her to behave herself at the Shore, then she’ll dump him. Last, and certainly not least, there’s pint-sized Nicole, aka ‘Snooki’, a self-proclaimed loudmouth so obnoxious that even her charmless housemates have trouble accepting her.

What’s the appeal of such a monstrous motley crew one might ask? The answer, it seems, is that they have no appeal. There’s nobody to root for. Each participant is more vile, and vain, and foul-mouthed than the next.

Jersey Shore channels the nastiest, most unpleasant elements of cruelty-and-humiliation-driven formats like I’m A Celebrity and The X Factor, and amps it up several notches. There isn’t even any fake heart or attempts to win our sympathy. We as viewers get to feel better (and not a little dirty) by watching these eight clowns at their worst (which is also, apparently, their best).

Scoff if you must – and most TV critics have - but Jersey Shore is doing serious business for MTV. Some 5m viewers tuned in for its season finale in the US. Last week The New York Times reported that the music channel has sold the show to 30 countries, and is the subject of a massive global advertising campaign trading on the show’s ability to entertain and appall in equal measure. A second season has been ordered, this time to be set in South Beach, Miami, with all the cast returning except Angelina.

As a measure of how the show is gaining traction despite or perhaps because of its controversies, the cast members were recently greeted with huge affection in an LA nightclub by non other than half-Italian actor Leonardo diCaprio. Love it and/or hate it, it looks like Jersey Shore is going to be holidaying around here for some time yet.

*Jersey Shore, MTV, Sunday 9pm

The Final Frontier

The universe, as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope

Life is a cabaret...

Feature from today's Day and Night in the Irish Independent

A man lies on a bed of nails with two cement blocks resting on his stomach, which are subsequently cracked with mallets. Another is watching over proceedings while dressed as a delicate mermaid. Minutes later a woman is singing the blues. A comedy skit comes after, followed by maybe by a little rap.

No, these are not scenes from the night-bus rink at College Green at 3am on a Sunday, but rather an iPod shuffle-like look at what makes up the entertainment on the recently resurgent cabaret and burlesque scene in Dublin.

Continue here.

Top of the flops

From today's Indo about Hollywood's latest trend of re-making one-time box office bombs.

There's only one thing that Hollywood movie studios are more terrified of than failure, and that's originality. It makes sense, therefore, that the hottest trend in creatively-challenged Tinseltown is to delve into its catalogue of big-budget film flops and remake -- or, to, use the term du jour, reboot -- box office duds of yore for modern audiences.

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Comedy Giants in aid of Dublin Youth Theatre

Next Thursday evening. It's a good cause. Do your bit.

The gay tour

To mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of The George next month, I went on a tour of Dublin's historical gay social spots with the pretty fabulous Tonie Walsh. The piece ran into today's Weekend supplement in the Irish Examiner.

History doesn’t always have to be about fusty manuscripts, ancient buildings, and dusty door-stopping books. It can also be traced and documented through the evolution of its social outlets like pubs and clubs. Such is the case with the Irish gay community, and in particular its fledgling attempts at gay social visibility over the past four decades.

Next month, the city’s most famous gay bar and club, The George, will celebrate its quarter-life anniversary, having first opened its doors to an under-served and largely disenfranchised gay clientele in Easter 1985.
To mark the occasion, gay activist and archivist Tonie Walsh brought the Irish Examiner on a walking tour of gay Dublin to show how the struggles and successes of its social scene corresponded with, and indeed often directly supported, the wider emergence of the Irish gay rights movement.

Indeed, the mere act of socialising in itself was often seen as a public stance of defiance against Victorian legislation, censorship, and taboos around any discussion of homosexuality. “You need to time travel a bit and imagine the kind of environment that existed in the 1960s and 70s,” says Tonie.

“Up until the late 1960s there was very little mention of homosexuality in the Irish media. Normally any use of the word was the result of legal scandals, such as people being arrested for cruising. Gay social outlets were scarce on the ground, and bar culture, as we’d understand it today, was practically non-existent.”

We begin the tour – quite appropriately, as it turns out – at the gates of Dublin Castle. “The Crown Jewels disappeared from Bedford Tower in the castle just before the visit of King Edward in 1905,” explains Tonie. “It was a huge scandal at the time because Sir Arthur Vickers, the Chief Herald charged with looking after them, was the subject of intense rumours about his sexuality.

“It seems he was quite a bon viveur, and had contact with a lot of gay people, including Richard Shackleton [brother of Arctic explorer Ernest], who was described at the time as “extremely good looking and extremely depraved”. This cast Vickers in a very suspicious light, and he was scape-goated for the theft.”

From there, we move on towards Temple Bar, which was the location for two of the pivotal developments in modern Irish gay history. Stopping on Crow Street, Tonie points out the former site of the Women’s Centre, which, Tonie believes, doesn’t get enough credit for its role in gay liberation. “The establishment of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement in 1971 helped create a space for gay women and men to imagine new sexual identities and give expression to their desires and concerns,” he says.

Skipping over a few streets, we arrive at No 10 Fownes Street (now a footwear store), the one-time site of the Hirschfeld Centre, a community resource centre that opened on St Patrick’s Day 1979 and operated until 1987 when it burned down in suspicious circumstances (even murkier was the fact that a week later, the avowedly gay Sides dance club across the road on what is today the site of the Adams Trinity Hotel on Dame Lane, was also burned down).

“The newly-established National Gay and Lesbian Federation bought a warehouse building to house the centre for 60,000 punts which was a massive amount of money in 1978,” Tonie says. “Hirschfeld is fondly remembered today. You have to remember at the time that the social facilities for gay people were very thin on the ground.

“Homosexuality was still illegal: the same laws that had sent Oscar Wilde to penal servitude in the 1890s were still on the Irish statute books. Lesbians were, to all intents and purposes, invisible. You could get kicked out of a bar for simply being identified as gay.

“The Hirschfeld Centre provided a safe place for gay people simply to be themselves. What was unique was that it had a café and dance club called Flickers (the Dutch word for ‘faggots’), which proved to be a training ground for lots of future club DJs (amongst them the late Vincent Hanley, who was to become a popular RTE presenter).”

Tonie continues: “Hirschfeld also had a youth group, a women’s group, a cinema club called The Biograph, counseling facilities, the Gay Switchboard operated from here (and still exists now), and of course, offices for political and campaigning groups, particularly those set up to combat HIV and Aids in the 80s”

Strolling around the ‘Pink Triangle’ linking Temple Bar, South Great George’s Street and South William Street, Tonie identifies the one-time sites of Hooray Henry’s (now the site of the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre), Pgymalion (now The Hairy Lemon), and Bartley Dunnes (today it’s Bia Bar), all of which operated with varying degrees of success throughout the 1980s.

Looping back around to South George’s Street, our tour terminates back at The George, which was originally opened by Kerry businessman Cyril O’Brien. The building itself had been an ‘old man’s’ bar called The George, but it had no gay association.

Personally speaking, The George was the first gay bar I ever went to in Dublin, and apparently I’m not alone in that experience. “For most gay and lesbian people, it’s the first gay bar we ever walk into, which is a major moment in our journey towards self-acceptance,” says Brian Finnegan, editor of Gay Community News. “That’s a moment we remember for the rest of our lives because it showed us there was a big, exciting gay world that we could be part of.”

Tonie believes that The George’s commercial success served as a metaphor for how gay visibility increased, and the gay social scene expanded following decriminalisation in 1993. He says: “Once the aura of criminality was removed from homosexuality, it allowed mainstream society – the popular media, government, business, advertising – to engage with the gay community in a really powerful and meaningful way, probably for the first time in our history.”


COMING (OUT) OF AGE:

It’s now 17 years since homosexual decriminalisation in Ireland, meaning there’s a whole generation of young gay people coming of age today who were only babies – or not even born – at the time of the law reform. A new two-part documentary series, Growing Up Gay, which starts on RTE1 on Monday night, follows six such gay teenagers through the ups and downs of life at home and in school, as well as through more universal experiences like friendships and falling in love.

The key objective of the series, however, is to look at just how much Irish society has changed for gay people. Is it easier to be gay today than it was 17 years ago?

“It is vastly different for young people growing up now than it was even for the generation before them,” says Michael Barron, director of the gay youth service BelongTo. “The landscape has changed hugely.”

A clear sign of progress is how young people are coming out at a younger age than ever before, and at a time when there is a substantial gay presence in the media and everyday life.

That said, young gay people still face significant problems, namely bullying and homophobic violence. Last week, BelongTo launched Stand-Up, a campaign aimed at supporting friendships between gay and straight people, and to encourage all young people to stand up to homophobic bullying.

At the launch, Irish actor Colin Farrell wrote an eloquent personal testimony about his memories of the abuse suffered by his gay brother Eamon. “The thing I remember, quite literally, is blood on his school shirt when [Eamon] came home in the afternoon,” Farrell recalls. “The beatings and taunting were very frequent for him and a constant part of his school years.”

It would seem that, in this regard, not a lot has changed. “I think bullying is the biggest LGBT issue of all, even bigger than marriage,” says Michael Barron. “Bullying and harassment, and educational drop-out, are big issues for gay teens today.

“It seems like a huge contradiction: young people are coming out younger, in greater numbers, and there is greater acceptance among large numbers of the youth population, yet at the same time homophobic bullying seems to be more physical and violent than ever before. I don’t have the answer as to why that’s the case, but that broader acceptance certainly is not across the spectrum.”

The other issue that comes up in the RTE documentary is that of family relationships. “The young people in the series have received a lot of support from their families, and the relationship with their parents is key,” says Barron.

“Some young people were really nervous about coming out to their parents, and sometimes the parents were shocked and initially didn’t have a brilliant reaction. But once the mother and father come to terms with the news, it’s clear to see the positive effect it has on the confidence and the mental health of the gay person.”

*Growing Up Gay, Monday April 19, RTE 1, 9.35pm.

Making a Twit of myself

Nightwatch column from Day and Night in today's Independent

I've never been particularly good with names. It seems the old grey matter simply can't master all those vowels and consonants, not to mention the intensive memory work required. I always believed that technology was invented for defective humanoid models like myself; a brave new innovative frontier to which I could outsource all those pesky operations like thinking and comprehending, and a handy way to assist my attempts at functioning socially in the real world.

Instead, technological progress is making matters worse. Owing to my (f)addictions to Facebook and Twitter, I now have a greatly expanded list of people that I speak to -- or, more accurately, speak @ -- online everyday.

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(House) Dr Phil

Interview with Phil Spencer in today's Property supplement in the Irish Independent

It's afternoon tea rush hour on a busy Friday afternoon in Dublin's Shelbourne Hotel, and an elderly lady interrupts Phil Spencer as he stirs his cup. "Sorry to bother you," she says shyly. "But I just wanted to say your show is fabulous."

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True star

Good NYT interview-profile with Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, that have inspired the massive hit HBO show True Blood.

Unplugged

James Sturm at Slate is quitting the internet.
Read here.

How to influence friends...

Interesting piece from last week's Sunday Times on stealth advertising on the back of the release of the new Demi Moore/David Duchovny movie The Joneses.

I'm walkin' here!

Cool piece on the making of Midnight Cowboy over at Vanity Fair

Betty left me in bits

The second last episode of the show, and it's certainly going out on a high. Last night's episode featured one of the most exquisitely beautiful treatments of a gay character that I've ever seen. Watch and weep here.

Worst Photoshopping. EVER.

Give us Shelly O back!

Bye-bye Bebo

My piece on the rumoured closure of Bebo in today's Independent

OMG! Just two years after it was sold for close to $1bn, social networking site Bebo looks set to log off for good following a catastrophic collapse in its membership in the face of competition from its more zeitgeisty rivals Facebook and Twitter.

Continue here.

Mr Saturday Night

My interview with Craig Doyle in today's Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent

It’s 11am on a Thursday, and Craig Doyle is feeling dizzy and a tad unsteady on his feet. Knowing these showbiz types, Weekend greets this news with a cynical arched eyebrow, but, alas, it turns out that his condition this morning isn’t due to some heady rock and roll lifestyle. “I have vertigo,” the 39-year-old explains pouring out cups of coffee in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. “I woke up last weekend, got up out of bed, and fell straight down to the ground. I’m on medication for it, but just standing up is a weird sensation at the moment.”

That aside, as the dad-of-three points out, he’s the least likely person to be indulging in wild socialising anymore. “I was up at 6.30 this morning with the kids,” he laughs, referring to Quinn (7), Muireann (5) and Milo (2). What’s more, he seems more than content with this; he’s very much aware that being a father and husband (to Doon, since 2002) now informs every aspect of his life. He even half-jokingly asks if he can still pull off the look he’s working today – jeans, and a cardigan over a neat shirt and tie. “I’m doing this for thirty-something dads everywhere,” he quips as our photographer puts him through his paces.

The Dublin-born presenter is talking to Weekend in advance of the start of his eight-week run hosting The Saturday Night Show on RTE1, taking over from Brendan O’Connor who solidly anchored the slot for the last two months. Having spent the best part of the last decade working mainly in sport for BBC and later ITV, this new gig gives Irish viewers the chance to get reacquainted with Craig in a very different setting, though, as the man says himself, he won’t be attempting to reinvent the wheel during his tenure.

“I’ve never seen a very experimental chat show being commissioned,” he says. “I find that particularly in Ireland we’re an interested and astute nation, and we just like to hear people talk. That’s what a chat show is. You can dress it up, and ice the cake, but at the end of the day, you have to give people cake.”

The game plan for Craig’s show is to put the emphasis on entertainment, mainly music and comedy. “I’ve always felt like the Saturday night slot should complement the Friday night,” he says. “The Late Late Show is very much a forum for the country, and it should reflect what’s happened in the country and the world over the course of a week, but I think Saturday night should be pure, feel-good escapism.”

Of course, the age-old criticism of Irish television is that this is simply too small an island with too-limited access to major guests and stars to sustain two chat shows on consecutive nights. “It’s a fair shout isn’t it? But I think the success of The Late Late Show during Pat’s reign, and of Tubridy Tonight during Ryan’s shows that there is room for both.

“I do think you have to approach it from a slightly different angle though. If I were offered three movie stars as guests, I’d take one of them. There has to be Irish interest. It’s not solely because of availability that talk shows do that. And if it happens to be someone who is very familiar to people, maybe you want someone who isn’t as familiar. It’s a fine balance.”

Prepping for this chat show has meant that Craig has had an office desk in Dublin for the first time in his life. Born in Stillorgan in 1970, Craig was schooled in Blackrock College, which fuelled the crazed passion for sport on which he has built a broadcasting career.

After studying in Maynooth, Craig followed his journalist brother Keith to London to study broadcasting at the London College of Printing. Before he’d even graduated, Craig had secured a contract job with the BBC (after being refused a free work placement in RTE along the way).

Starting on BBC Radio Suffolk, Craig segued to TV as presenter on UTV’s Disney Club, and then on BBC’s Tomorrow’s World. Following Jill Dando’s murder in 1999, Craig was drafted in to take over her slot on the BBC’s long-running travel show Holiday, on which he became a popular fixture with his amiable manner, good looks, and, of course, his Irish accent.
Craig stayed in that job for almost six years, traveling 200 days a year, and visiting some 120 countries in total. In 2004 he moved full-time to the BBC sport department, working on its legendary jewel-in-the-sports-scheduling crown Grandstand.

That same year, Craig made his first venture into Irish TV presenting with The Craig Doyle Show, a part travelogue/part celeb talk show made by his own Boxer production company.

“That was shite,” he admits frankly. “I didn’t enjoy that experience. It came at a very bad time for me. I was really busy, and just wasn’t really in a good place. The show wasn’t what I wanted it to be, which is ridiculous because I made it, but it was very early days for us. It just wasn’t right, and I kind of knew at the time. I don’t think I watched any of it go out.”

On top of – if not at the root of - that unhappy period was the critical pummeling Craig received in his first few months at BBC sport co-hosting the 2004 Athens Olympics. One British paper blasted him for being ‘out of his depth’, while Labour MP Chris Bryant even felt moved to comment, ‘You get the experts who know everything about sport but can't put it into English, and then you get Craig Doyle’. That’s gotta hurt.

“That was awful,” he recalls. “I was learning how to do the job at that stage. That’s a really tough thing about this business. Most of this business isn’t tough: it’s a pretty sweet job and that’s why you have to take all that shit. I remember Gary Lineker telling me, ‘You’re going to get a hard time because it’s your rites of passage’. And it was.

“I was very down after that. It was a real low because I didn’t understand it. Now I understand it, and it doesn’t mean anything. I thought at the time it was largely unfair. But I’m a lot stronger from it. I copped on. I just grew up a bit, and parked the ego. I’m more comfortable in my own skin. I’m a hugely different bloke now.”

In early 2008, Craig left BBC television after 13 years to join ITV Sport. “It was a massive decision to make, but it wasn’t a quick one,” he says. “They made three approaches to me over the course of two years, and at the end of the day it came down to the money. The money is so much better, I can’t lie about it.

“I had been thinking for a while that I was in the wrong place, and it was just a better deal. I’m the rugby guy in ITV now. It’s pretty full on at the moment, as we’re in the middle of the domestic rugby season. But it’s not a chore, I love it.”

The nature of the work means Craig spends 2-3 days a week – mainly weekends - in London (alternating between staying in hotels and with his brother), and the rest of the time at home with Doon and the kids in Wicklow. Does he feel the guilt of being a working parent spending time away from home?

“I don’t ever want to ever leave them, but it’s not out of guilt: I just love being with them,” he replies. “I get homesick after a day now. I hate that I’m not there on weekends to take my son to rugby, which he loves.

“Doon and I share the parenting role. I’m around during the week so I do the collecting and dropping off. People are used to seeing me going around in my wellies in Enniskerry. My hands are torn to bits because I’m working in the garden a lot. I’m re-doing the vegetable patch at the moment. I love cleaning out the chicken coop. That’s a holiday for me now.”

It probably won’t come as surprise that Craig and Doon get little time to themselves. “We had a night out a Fridays ago – we went to Ikea,” he laughs. “We needed a new cheap sofa that the kids could destroy. It wasn’t even about us! But you give up that right when you have kids.”

For now, Craig has just about enough time to devote to work and his family, but he still finds that life has a way of reminding
him of his top priorities lest he ever forget. “I was determined to start training to do a triathalon this year,” he says. “So about three weeks ago I was on the way out to do a 2-3k swimming training night, and Quinn said to me, ‘Daddy do you want to play Star Wars?’

“He had all the stuff laid out. And I was like, ‘No, I have to go swimming’, and I got out to the car and thought, ‘What the f*ck am I doing?’ I chucked the bag in the boot and went back inside and said to myself, ‘That’s it; that’s the end of it. I’ll wait for another few years to do that stuff’. It really hit me that day: this life aint about me anymore.”

*The Saturday Night Show starts next Saturday, April 10, on RTE 1.

Psycho Good Friday

Today in the Irish Film Institute

On festivals and growing up...sorta

Two pieces in Day and Night in the Indo today:

Nightwatch column

Set visit and interview with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant for Cemetery Junction.

Nama-geddon

Black Tuesday. The scale of this scam is staggering to behold. Amidst all this "horror" (as it was repeatedly called on Prime Time tonight), this picture started doing the rounds. Some (rare) light relief on a dark day in the history of this state.

Tara is back - with 75% more gay

United States of Tara is back for its second season - and it's funnier, sharper and, more importantly, gayer than ever before. Toni Collette is as good as ever, while young actor Keir Gilchrist's Marshall (criminally robbed of an Emmy nomination last year) remains the best gay character on American television.

Salon has a good intro to and analysis of the show here.

Let the Right One Win

Aw. Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson pose with the Empire Award for Best Horror movie for Let The Right One In. Kinda weird to see them as healthy, normal kids in contrast to their characters in the movie

Ricky Martin: I'm gay

Read here

The Pope Delusion

Richard Dawkins lets rip at Pope Benedictator

Oreagan

Obama's newfound confidence on the back of HCR is marking him out as the "liberal Reagan", according to the Daily Beast

Sassy Gay Friend

I love this series of skits.

If Othello's Desdemona had a sassy gay friend...

And Ophelia...

And Juliet...

Sinead, CNN and church abuse

Sinead O'Connor talks about Catholic Church sex abuse with CNN's Andersoon Cooper.

The Daily Mail song

Class.

Picture of the day

Well, it's kinda picture of the day last week but it's a good'un. Hillary congrats the O.Bam over healthcare reform.

'Werner' Brothers presents...

Werner Herzog narrates...a plastic bag. Seriously.

Must-C television

Coming this summer...The Big C starring Laura Linney, Oliver Platt and Gabby Sidibe

Kicking Back

My interview with Aaron Johnson, star of Kick-Ass, in Day and Night in today's Independent...

It has been hard to miss British actor Aaron Johnson in the massive ad campaigns for Kick-Ass, a darkly funny, ultra-violent, deliriously entertaining anti-hero superhero flick. There he is on the sides of buses and plastered on billboards, pictured in a deliberately underwhelming green and yellow costume, alongside sorta-Batman 'Big Daddy' (Nicholas Cage), Christopher 'McLovin' Mintz-Plasse's emo-haired Red Mist, and breakout teen star Chloe Moretz's pintsized, foul-mouthed, purple-coiffed assassin Hit Girl.

The only thing is, Johnson's face is hidden by a mask, with the effect of rendering him largely unrecognisable. "I'm actuallyvery happy about that," the 19-year-old tells Day & Night as he settles on a sofa in Dublin's Merrion Hotel. "I like doing those kinds of roles. That's the point of acting: it gives you the freedom to be everything but you."


Continue here.

Making his mark on history