I scored Dolores O'Riordan's only feature interview for the release of her new album - this was two months ago before she moved to Canada with her hubby and kids. The woman has never lost the sharp edge of a county Limerick accent; I'm not sure if it's because she was pretty much forcibly cut off from the rest of the world (see article) during the heighth of her fame, or if it's just the most uncompromising accent in the world. And steady on, Limerick-ites, my folks are both from there!
Anyhoo, here she is:
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/features/taking-the-strain-1866619.html
By Susan Daly
Friday August 21 2009
The Cranberries lead singer Dolores O’Riordan is back from the brink and going solo—she tells Susan Daly why she’s taking on the pressures of fame once again...
Dolores O'Riordan will not be reading this article. She doesn't care to know what I, or anyone else, thinks of her. “One of the mistakes in my younger days was reading the press,” she says. “I should have said, ‘You've done it, move on, que sera sera, you know?' You're just going to be psychoanalysing yourself. I've got bigger fish to fry.”
It's not as aggressive as it sounds. It's a note to self. Must not get stressed. Must keep things in perspective. The bigger fish are not the usual self-aggrandising ambitions of a rock-star ego. They are her kids, her marriage and her mental health. Looking after all of these involves practising a degree of self-protection that it took a nervous breakdown and physical collapse to learn.
O'Riordan at 37 looks a lot like the tiny, sharp-faced teenager who fronted Limerick band The Cranberries to international stardom. Her hair has reverted to a severe peroxide crop similar to the one she sported on the cover of The Cranberries' second album, No Need To Argue (1994).
The rock chick 'do replaces the earth-mother, tumbling brunette locks from the time of her debut solo album, Are You Listening? two years ago. That was her first outing since The Cranberries went on hiatus in 2003. She, the brothers Noel and Mike Hogan, and drummer Fergal Lawler are still friends. They have 12 children between the four of them, a unifying factor that gets them together socially.
“We are all in that incubation period so it made sense to step away from each other and have a bit of time out,” she says.
For all that, she brands this period as one of R&R rather than rock 'n' roll, O'Riordan releases her second solo album this month. No Baggage has a raw acoustic feel to many of the songs, and the emotive O'Riordan keen is still in full throttle.
It's not about multi-platinum sales this time, she says. She already knows what it is to have 40 million album sales under her belt. “I'm not one of these people who is really serious about her career — I write because I have to write. It's what I was put on this earth for. I'm a writer. I'm an artist. I can't help it,” she says. A little trace of ego, then.
The album came to her easily, “an eclectic bunch of songs”inspired by the present and the past. She likes the“freshness” to it, a result, she thinks, of walking through the fields for weeks, listening to demos made at her home in Howth, Co Dublin on her iPod and then laying down finished vocals in three or four takes.
“For the four years I was at home, I was living in the full-time motherhood world. Then when I brought out Are You Listening? it was a huge change. Back in a bus, living with a load of lads, huge change, there was no lack of inspiration,” she says.
“There are songs, as well, about the thought process, about what goes on inside your mind when you're under pressure.”
The track Skeleton, for instance, reflects on the “shadows from the past” that haunted O'Riordan even while The Cranberries were selling 40 million albums worldwide. Fame was a terrible weight around the neck of the sensitive country girl who suffered so badly from stage fright at early gigs she would sing with her back to the audience. It was a vulnerable state in which to be catapulted into rock's premier league on the back of first album Everybody Else Is Doing It, Why Can't We?
O'Riordan references the other major Irish rock act to break America. “With U2, it was their third album when they broke through. They came from a city, they were used to crowds. I was a girl — I didn't even know the boys; they were strangers, I jumped on the bus with them.”
Unformed and naïve, she was isolated in a celebrity bubble. “It was hard because in those days there were no mobiles, no emails. So if you wanted to call your mum, you had to get your few coppers and go down to the phone box in the hotel.”
Her inexperience saw her “sign my soul away” and struggle under a heavy workload. “I remember there was a stage where I was doing two gigs a night — I was going on stage at six and coming off at eight. That's how we got there, how we got so big in America. Going back on at nine and coming off at 11. No wonder I got burnt out.”
She was already well down the road to depression when, halfway through the promotion of No Need To Argue, O'Riordan was in a skiing accident, aged 22. “I ended up in a hospital for a month. I was on morphine. I had major surgery, was on bedpans. No one spoke English. The band were so big, and suddenly I was in hospital and I got depressed. Then I got it again, six months down the road.”
By the time her naturally thin frame registered a frail six and a half stone on the weighing scales in 1996, O'Riordan was already a physical and mental wreck.
“I look back and see photographs of myself and I do recognise that I was 23 and, oh God, I was so bony.” She pulled out of a worldwide tour with the band and was sent from doctor to doctor to verify for insurance purposes that she was too unwell to be on stage.
She can talk about all this now because she feels she has dealt with it. While she makes some sweeping statements about fate and destiny, O'Riordan also speaks about accepting her “demons”. She says things like, “If aperson is judgmental on me, it's just because they don't love themselves.” The hallmarks, one thinks, of much soul-searching and therapy.
“And I find writing very therapeutic and very healing. It's really terrible when your life spirals out of control like that, but later on you can look back and you can talk about it honestly, without being ashamed of your weaknesses and what happened to you.”
It seems strange to me that someone with such a dysfunctional relationship with fame would want to put her head above the parapet again. Are You Listening? plunged her straight back into the quagmire of record-label difficulties when Sanctuary Records, who she signed to on going solo, were taken over by Universal. “So I only got the chance to release one single and my CDs were pulled out of the shops. It was a nightmare. I went from the frying pan into the bloody fire!”
This is where O'Riordan's newly acquired steeliness comes in. She slightly reworked a favourite track, Apple Of My Eye (about husband Don Burton), from that album and rereleased it on No Baggage to make it her property again. “I wrote it years ago, but it's a nice old love song. I think it would be a lovely single,” she says.
O'Riordan fixes me with an uncompromising eye. She's stronger now, she says. She has Don, the former Duran Duran tour manager whom she married in 1994, by her side. She is stepmother to his 17-year-old son; mother to their three children aged from 12 down to three years.
Family comes first, which is why they are moving to Canada for now so that 12-year-old Taylor can attend high school. I don't know it when I meet her, but O'Riordan will cancel the US tour she had planned for late summer, without stating a specific reason. Dolores comes first these days.
“My husband is with me now and I'm a lot older now. I'm like the mother now. It's not like I'm a little girl who's developing things and I don't know what the heck they are. Once you've hatched a few chickens yourself, there's nothing that can embarrass you. I'm a lot more relaxed and what-not.”
Relaxed Dolores is a funny concept. The woman opposite me is a fizzing ball of energy, “hyper” as she might be described in her native Limerick, almost too bright-eyed and “on”.
But she insists she is at peace. She paints abstract canvases, some of which she posts on her website for her devoted fanbase to view. “It's very, very hard to rise me now. I guess I have been through a lot for my age. I feel like I have survived some kind of thing, in a way.”
It's not correct to say that Dolores O'Riordan comes with no baggage. There's plenty of it. She just knows better how to pack it away.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
D'aul nostalgia...
We feature scribes in the Indo had to recall how we spent our childhood summers in various parts of the country. I was bigging it up for my homies in southwest Tipp/east Limerick, to be specific.
http://www.independent.ie/travel/inside-ireland/once-upon-a-time-in-tipperary-1863160.html
Once upon a time in Tipperary
By Susan Daly
Wednesday August 19 2009
I was eight or nine years old when I first saw the sea. But don't cry for me, Ballybunion. Growing up in landlocked south Tipperary, kids who knew how to swim were the glamorous exception rather than the rule.
Ironically, the village of Emly where I was raised had teetered on the edge of a small lake in historic times. A local farmer drained and reclaimed the marshy areas in the land- hungry 1800s. By the time I was mucking about in my size three red wellies, the neat patchwork of fields behind our house was intersected only by shallow streams.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, we were obsessed with water. The first job on day one of the summer holidays was to build a dam across an ankle-deep ditch we euphemistically referred to as The River.
(Every feature in the landscape of childhood summers was the definitive. The wall behind our tiny housing estate was The Bog Wall; the low-lying field prone to winter flooding was The Marsh; and a piece of wasteland where we played shop in a deserted tumbledown cottage was The Jungle. Tipperary town nine miles away was, well, Town).
The purpose of the dam was to create a shin-level pool where we would trap helpless brickeens (or tiddlers) in jam jars. Sometimes we set them free straight away.
Sometimes we brought them home to show our parents, before abandoning them to their fate on a sun-flooded windowsill with all the casual cruelty of childhood.
A week later we'd discover the forgotten jam jar, stinking with stagnant green river water and three brickeens floating belly-up on the surface. We would be briefly devastated before drifting away to watch some kid make a go-cart out of two planks of wood, four mismatched bockety wheels and a piece of twine for steerage.
Going to the seaside for your holidays was mind-boggling. When the girl two doors down from my house came back after a week in Lahinch or some such beachy paradise, the rest of us crowded around to inspect the criss-cross tanlines stencilled on her back by her swimsuit straps. We could not have been more impressed had Coco Chanel, pioneer of bronzing, landed in our midst.
Summertime was all about that touch of the exotic. School terms were dictated by routine -- school, homework, shopping in the L&N in Town on Saturdays, trip to the grandparents on Sundays.
In the holidays there were only a few appointments to be met. The triumphant return of local hurling hero Nicky English in early September.
The daily saunters to Byrne's shop for a cola-flavoured Mr Freeze. The dash to the post office every second Thursday to pick up my elder sister's copy of Smash Hits.
It was from this bible of pop music that we pored over the lyrics of songs that will forever be my soundtrack of summer. Madonna's 'La Isla Bonita', Wham's 'Club Tropicana', Eddie Grant's 'Electric Avenue'. Anglo-Bajan reggae fit perfectly to the relaxed rhythm of 1980s rural Ireland.
I finally got to see the sea through the intercession of that great bit of visiting glamorama, The English Cousins. The accents! The trendy outfits from English high-street stores we had never heard of! The general air of worldiness of people who had eaten in Pizza Hut!
My father's brother, his wife and two children arrived one summer, bundling us all into a rental car made to seat five. The car wound slowly over the border into Limerick, crossed the Shannon -- stopping at the Two-Mile Inn for pints of Harp and Dwan's red lemonade -- sped through Ennis and out to the cliff-edge of Clare. Never, ever will I forget the tang of seaweed in my nostrils as we approached Kilkee and that first glorious glimpse of the water as we crested the final hill into the town.
It lashed rain but I went into the water anyway and was nearly knocked unconscious by a wave. I was the happiest concussed kid in Munster.
It remains the case that Ireland's most amazing tourist attractions are largely ignored by the people living next to them. We had the Glen of Aherlow on our doorstep, a lushly forested valley carved deep into the foothills of the Galtee Mountains. English friends of my parents on a visit from London decided they and their accents wanted to explore it.
They managed to find a trout farm, a discovery to us all. We had to listen to the unfortunate fish flopping about in the boot of the Mini all the way home.
I remember my mother grimly gutting the trout at the sink, no doubt wondering why her visitors couldn't be happy with a few chops for dinner.
It was the same with the continentals who swung through the village in their unwieldy camper vans on their way to glowering Galtymore. Mountain hiking was not something locals did. How was sweating unnecessarily to the top a form of relaxation? Madness.
But when I nipped over the border to stay with my grandparents in east Limerick, I was the tourist. We would cycle our bikes with Grandad O'Regan to Grange Stone Circle outside Bruff, where he would talk about the Neolithic people who had died there 4,000 years earlier as if they built their funny circular huts only yesterday.
This was their clock, he would say, pointing out the two proud stones through which the sun would shine in a perfect line every summer solstice.
We would nose around an old wedge tomb for the bleached bones of those first farmers, and look out for Carraig Aille, where Grandad's own father had helped sift painstakingly through the soil during the excavations by Professor Sean P O Riordan.
"My father would say sitting on a potato sack with a small brush was an easier job than saving the hay," Grandad would laugh. I thought so too: I went on to study archaeology in my first year at UCC.
Onto Lough Gur (The Lake, natch) where we clambered up Knockfennell Hill to survey our kingdom and feast on Polo biscuits and bottles of milk. Knockfennell was an easy trot -- it was only climbing the Galtees that was idiocy. Summers smelled exotically of coconut: the dessicated white shards of it in the Polo biccies and the sweet coco-nutty scent from gorse bushes.
Afterwards Grandad would grab my sister and I by a hand each and run full tilt down the hill, laughing like a maniac. That man knows no danger, Granny used to tut, but his wildness was intoxicating to us.
You think your grandparents can walk on water at that age. And true to form, Grandad rode his bicycle across the surface of the lake when it froze hard in the winter of 1939.
He also let us sit in front of him on the lozenge-shaped saddle of his Honda 50, us 'steering' the motorbike. "Jack!" my granny would yell as she spotted our approach towards the cross near the house. "We're for it now," he'd nudge and wink. He's 90 now, and still climbing ditches. The thrill-seeking didn't end there. Oh no.
The Pride of Tipperary festival would bring a funfair to town. We had chair-o-planes. We had disco waltzers. We had a stupendous tower with a spiral staircase in the middle.
The stair brought you to a doorway at the top from where a slide twisted its way down the outside of the structure. You were plonked down onto a bristly doormat, given a push-off from whatever spotty teen was "in charge" and whizzed to the bottom. Danger? We hardly knew you.
The credit munch
The number of calls I got from radio stations looking to get in touch with the woman I interview in the article below is a pretty strong indication of what people are obsessing over at the moment. (Money, or the lack of it). Or, it could be that we media are obsessed with the idea that it's what people want to hear...
Here it is anyway - from Tuesday's Indo: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/how-i-can-feed-a-family-of-five-on-less--than-8364100-a-week-1862244.html
How I can feed a family of five on less than €100 a week
This mum knows how to plan ahead, writes Susan Daly
Tuesday August 18 2009
Cooking has become a spectator sport. At a time when we are being advised to cook purse-friendly meals at home to beat the pinch, celebrity chefs are still crowding our TV screens.
Even Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep has gotten in on the act, with her turn as Julia Childs in new movie Julie and Julia. Childs was a TV chef credited with popularising sophisticated French cooking among convenience food-obsessed Americans of the 1960s.
Food campaigner Michael Pollan has pointed out it is ironic that Streep resurrects Childs' achievements at a time when the art of home cooking has almost died out.
"How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen, but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?" he asked.
Other foodies are taking a more constructive attitude to the loss of cooking skills. The BBC has begun a new series called Economy Gastronomy (BBC2, Wednesdays, 8pm). The aim of the series is to show families how to assemble simple, nourishing dishes using good-quality, affordable ingredients. Waste nothing is the key phrase.
Yvonne Rosenkrantz, who runs a cookery school for children from her house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, is a keen advocate of cheap and healthy family cooking. She and her husband have a 12-year-old son, Caelum. They also take in Spanish students for the summer. Here Yvonne makes a menu she would use to keep her food bill under €100, feeding 4 to 5.
BREAKFAST:
"Porridge is my cupboard staple, nutritious and cheap. I sometimes make pancakes using brown flour and if you make muffins, they can be used again for lunch. Once a week, we might have a special breakfast, honey, yoghurts, small Canadian pancakes -- it's not much effort and it breaks up the rest of the week."
LUNCH:
"Half-brown and half-white bread sandwiches cost no more than usual but look more interesting to kids. It doesn't blow the budget to use little pitta breads from time to time. I toast them, fill them with leftover chicken and wrap in foil. I empty a fruit yoghurt into a bigger spill-proof cup and add chopped fruit. Homemade fruit cake is a big hit with us, as are homemade crisps -- just throw some thinly sliced root veg on a roasting tray with olive oil and a pinch of salt."
TREATS:
"Fizzy drinks are a waste of money. I keep squash concentrates like Robinson's, where a little goes a long way when diluted with water. Kids get used to what they are given. I make a batch of flapjack bars at the start of the week and keep in an airtight container. They are a doddle and full of things in your cupboard; nuts, oats, honey, seeds."
EVENING MEALS:
MONDAY:
"It's normally a roast on Sunday so I make a white sauce, add mushrooms and the leftover chicken to pasta for an easy carbonara.
Chicken pies are good too -- puff pastry is tricky to make so I don't mind buying frozen. It's only an expensive option when people roll it out too thickly. I get 14 squares (one square per little pie) out of one roll of pastry. It's only really a cover for the pie. Leftover pies can be kept frozen."
TUESDAY:
"I never buy vegetables on a Monday because most fresh ingredients don't go into the shops until Monday evening. Do a shop then if you can because your veg will last much longer at home. It's a mince day today. Irish people tend to use too much meat in our mince dishes like spaghetti bolognese, so I would bulk up the veg content with celery, onion and garlic and stretch the mince over two days, maybe to a lasagne."
WEDNESDAY:
"The other half of the mince is gorgeous in tortilla wraps -- kids always love this meal. Use the same spag bol sauce, stuff your wraps, top off with a little cheese in the oven and it's just divine. I give the mix an edge with different spices I keep in the store cupboard."
THURSDAY:
"If my son has had meat at lunch, I would maybe use up eggs in a Spanish omelette. You can throw anything into it you want so that nothing goes to waste at the bottom of the fridge -- potatoes, onions, bits of rashers, carrots, and so on."
FRIDAY:
"Salmon is expensive but there are lots of cheap fish out there. I like hoki, which is very good value and has no bones, so it's great for family meals. I make homemade fish and chips by cutting the fish fillets into strips, rolling them in flour, egg and breadcrumbs (or I use up stale cream crackers by crumbling them up very finely) and frying.
"Forget bags of oven chips -- it only takes a minute to scrub a few spuds, chop them in eighths, toss in olive oil and mixed herbs, roast, and you have lovely potato wedges."
SATURDAY:
"Instead of a takeaway, there is a simple sweet and sour chow mein that I get kids making from the age of four up. You stir fry chicken and whatever veg you have -- frozen or fresh, I always have a bag of peas in the freezer.
"For the sauce, mix a tablespoon of runny honey, garlic and ginger, 2tbs soy sauce, juice of half an orange, 1tsp of cornflour, and a little chicken stock and toss everything in it before cooking. It's a cheat Chinese. I really begrudge paying €40 or €50 a head to eat out these days."
SUNDAY:
"Generally, I have potatoes left over for the roast so this is just the price of a good chicken or meat joint, and a few veg."
For information on courses at Yvonne's Junior Chef cookery school, visit www.juniorchef.ie or ring 01 2780382.
Here it is anyway - from Tuesday's Indo: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/how-i-can-feed-a-family-of-five-on-less--than-8364100-a-week-1862244.html
How I can feed a family of five on less than €100 a week
This mum knows how to plan ahead, writes Susan Daly
Tuesday August 18 2009
Cooking has become a spectator sport. At a time when we are being advised to cook purse-friendly meals at home to beat the pinch, celebrity chefs are still crowding our TV screens.
Even Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep has gotten in on the act, with her turn as Julia Childs in new movie Julie and Julia. Childs was a TV chef credited with popularising sophisticated French cooking among convenience food-obsessed Americans of the 1960s.
Food campaigner Michael Pollan has pointed out it is ironic that Streep resurrects Childs' achievements at a time when the art of home cooking has almost died out.
"How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen, but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?" he asked.
Other foodies are taking a more constructive attitude to the loss of cooking skills. The BBC has begun a new series called Economy Gastronomy (BBC2, Wednesdays, 8pm). The aim of the series is to show families how to assemble simple, nourishing dishes using good-quality, affordable ingredients. Waste nothing is the key phrase.
Yvonne Rosenkrantz, who runs a cookery school for children from her house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, is a keen advocate of cheap and healthy family cooking. She and her husband have a 12-year-old son, Caelum. They also take in Spanish students for the summer. Here Yvonne makes a menu she would use to keep her food bill under €100, feeding 4 to 5.
BREAKFAST:
"Porridge is my cupboard staple, nutritious and cheap. I sometimes make pancakes using brown flour and if you make muffins, they can be used again for lunch. Once a week, we might have a special breakfast, honey, yoghurts, small Canadian pancakes -- it's not much effort and it breaks up the rest of the week."
LUNCH:
"Half-brown and half-white bread sandwiches cost no more than usual but look more interesting to kids. It doesn't blow the budget to use little pitta breads from time to time. I toast them, fill them with leftover chicken and wrap in foil. I empty a fruit yoghurt into a bigger spill-proof cup and add chopped fruit. Homemade fruit cake is a big hit with us, as are homemade crisps -- just throw some thinly sliced root veg on a roasting tray with olive oil and a pinch of salt."
TREATS:
"Fizzy drinks are a waste of money. I keep squash concentrates like Robinson's, where a little goes a long way when diluted with water. Kids get used to what they are given. I make a batch of flapjack bars at the start of the week and keep in an airtight container. They are a doddle and full of things in your cupboard; nuts, oats, honey, seeds."
EVENING MEALS:
MONDAY:
"It's normally a roast on Sunday so I make a white sauce, add mushrooms and the leftover chicken to pasta for an easy carbonara.
Chicken pies are good too -- puff pastry is tricky to make so I don't mind buying frozen. It's only an expensive option when people roll it out too thickly. I get 14 squares (one square per little pie) out of one roll of pastry. It's only really a cover for the pie. Leftover pies can be kept frozen."
TUESDAY:
"I never buy vegetables on a Monday because most fresh ingredients don't go into the shops until Monday evening. Do a shop then if you can because your veg will last much longer at home. It's a mince day today. Irish people tend to use too much meat in our mince dishes like spaghetti bolognese, so I would bulk up the veg content with celery, onion and garlic and stretch the mince over two days, maybe to a lasagne."
WEDNESDAY:
"The other half of the mince is gorgeous in tortilla wraps -- kids always love this meal. Use the same spag bol sauce, stuff your wraps, top off with a little cheese in the oven and it's just divine. I give the mix an edge with different spices I keep in the store cupboard."
THURSDAY:
"If my son has had meat at lunch, I would maybe use up eggs in a Spanish omelette. You can throw anything into it you want so that nothing goes to waste at the bottom of the fridge -- potatoes, onions, bits of rashers, carrots, and so on."
FRIDAY:
"Salmon is expensive but there are lots of cheap fish out there. I like hoki, which is very good value and has no bones, so it's great for family meals. I make homemade fish and chips by cutting the fish fillets into strips, rolling them in flour, egg and breadcrumbs (or I use up stale cream crackers by crumbling them up very finely) and frying.
"Forget bags of oven chips -- it only takes a minute to scrub a few spuds, chop them in eighths, toss in olive oil and mixed herbs, roast, and you have lovely potato wedges."
SATURDAY:
"Instead of a takeaway, there is a simple sweet and sour chow mein that I get kids making from the age of four up. You stir fry chicken and whatever veg you have -- frozen or fresh, I always have a bag of peas in the freezer.
"For the sauce, mix a tablespoon of runny honey, garlic and ginger, 2tbs soy sauce, juice of half an orange, 1tsp of cornflour, and a little chicken stock and toss everything in it before cooking. It's a cheat Chinese. I really begrudge paying €40 or €50 a head to eat out these days."
SUNDAY:
"Generally, I have potatoes left over for the roast so this is just the price of a good chicken or meat joint, and a few veg."
For information on courses at Yvonne's Junior Chef cookery school, visit www.juniorchef.ie or ring 01 2780382.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sells Like Teen Spirit
From Review, Irish Independent, last Saturday, Aug 15...
SOME of the world’s most influential people took to one stage last weekend.
The event generated acres of newsprint, 53 million references on the internet, was watched by nearly 4 million people and represents an industry worth at least e75 billion.
This wasn’t a convention of oil-producing countries, nor was it a meeting of the leaders of the free world. It was the Teen Choice Awards 2009 and it was, like, totally awesome.
A few of the presenters and performers at the LA show would be familiar to people of all age groups – Britney Spears, for example, who received a special award for her contribution to entertainment.
But unless you have a 12-year-old girl in your household it is possible that the juggernaut of Robert Pattison’s fame has passed you by. Or that of Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, David Archuleta, Chace Crawford, Leighton Meester and Kristen Stewart. Yet to the tween and teen market, these are A-list idols in music, movies and TV.
The Teen Choice Awards are a public recognition of what any marketing exec already knows: teenagers and their taste in clothes, gadgets, food and entertainment is very big business. Teenagers and their likes and dislikes didn’t exist 100 years ago when the end of childhood was signalled by the moment a young person was capable of earning their keep.
But by 1959, Life magazine was soberly identifying the emergence of the New Teen-age Market. American teenage girls were spending $20m on lipstick and both sexes were “gobbling” 145 million gallons of ice-cream a year. Elvis Presley, Life noted, was their “musical idol”, selling 25 million singles in four years.
Fast forward 50 years and Miley Cyrus, whose alter-ego Hannah Montana is the darling of Disney’s kiddie TV, is flogging millions of records and has written an autobiography at the age of 16. When she charged e85 a ticket for her upcoming gigs in the O2 venue in Dublin, they sold out in minutes.
Cyrus therefore caused a bit of an uproar therefore when she slipped out of her sweet persona to perform a pole dance during her performance at the Teen Choice Awards last Sunday night. Fox television, who was broadcasting the show, cut away so that viewers (or more like, their parents) would not be offended.
She was probably well aware of the implications of her raunchy moves, which reflect the steps away she has taken in her singing career from the cutesie child star vehicle of Hannah Montana. We saw this before with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera marking their maturity by kissing Madonna on stage at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.
Teen idols are meant to appeal to their target audience’s burgeoning sexuality – but remain unthreatening and almost attainable. This is why boyband and girlband members have traditionally been coy about their private romances. Teens, the wisdom goes, like to think that they might one day marry their crush. (Well Katie Holmes did it with Tom Cruise, right?)
The problem with being a teen idol is that your fanbase tends to grow out of your music or your films, or you grow out of your baby-faced good looks. For every Elvis and Frank Sinatra, there is a David Cassidy or Hanson whose star waned as their audience grew up and away from them. That’s why marketing to teens has become so aggressive – their obsessive devotion is shortlived, be it to High School Musical or Hello Kitty merchandise.
What’s hot and what’s not has been hugely influenced by teen TV. Where there were once a handful of TV programmes aimed at teens – from American Bandstand to Top of The Pops – now there are entire channels and networks. Cyrus built global fame on her TV show, as did cast members of The OC and Gossip Girl.
MTV’s biggest hit of recent years, the quasi-reality show The Hills, has made a bunch of rich Beverley Hills teenagers cultural icons. In the show, they don’t sing, they don’t make dance, they just pout their way through minor dating crises. Yet when Lauren Conrad, one of the show’s stars, sported black Chanel nail polish in one episode, the product instantly sold out worldwide.
That’s the kind of selling power every big brand would love to harness, if only they knew how. The teen sector is notorious for being a ‘stubborn’ one. Things get old real quick. This generation has grown up with 24-hour television and internet access and are a lot more savvy about being given the hard sell.
So marketers have to be seen to be authentic. Red Bull energy drinks for example became a phenomenon among teens thanks to a clever marketing campaign that initially limited supply of the product to make it seem more exclusive and used cryptic, fun ads like ‘Red Bull gives you wings!’
In some ways, far from being exploited, teens are dictating the market. The huge sales of Stephanie Meyer’s teenage vampire books were unforeseen – but it prompted film bosses to quickly snap up their film incarnation, the Twilight movie, which took 11 of the Teen Choice awards last weekend.
It is so difficult for a 40-year-old marketing exec to get into the fickle mind of a 16-year-old that teenagers find themselves being solicited for feedback. Online sites pay cash for teens to fill out their surveys; teen trendspotters keep major companies informed about what’s popular with kids on the streets. When 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson wrote a report for investment bank Morgan Stanley last month that argued social networking website Twitter was “not for teens”, it made the front page of the Financial Times.
Robson outlined the crux in the battle to understand what teens want: no-one knows better than teens themselves. They are the only generation to fully communicate through the internet, which is why the most popular websites were founded for the most part by kids barely in their 20s. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his college dorm at the age of 20 and became the world’s youngest billionaire. Teens don’t buy CDs anymore, they download tunes – so every band in the world has samples of their music on MySpace.
Apple, a coveted teen brand, has set up ‘Genius Bars’ in cities across the State and beyond where kids can exchange tips and info on the latest tecchie sensations. Geeks are chic – as with most teen trends, it’s just one more thing we adults didn’t see coming.
WHAT NEXT?
So-called ‘coolhunters’ are employed by marketers to give them the heads-up on the next big thing in youth culture. This is a selection of the latest trends as identified by pioneering coolhunting firms such as Youth Intelligence, Label Networks and Look-Look…
DJ HERO: Just as the guitar simulator Guitar Hero became the biggest gaming sensation in years, this Christmas, teens will be adding DJ Hero to their wishlist. The simulated record turntable is not for sale until the end of autumn but gaming bosses know it’s going to be big – there is already another competitor making its way to the market called Scratch: The Ultimate DJ.
PRE-PAID CREDIT CARDS: Pre-paid cards have existed for some time but financial institutions are cottoning onto the fact that teens are major online shoppers. Parents will be targeted to sign up for cards that they can preload with pocket money, rather than be pestered for the use of their own.
SUMMER START-UPS: With the casual summer jobs market drying up, teens are turning to entrepreneurship. Start-up business courses in the US reported a 30 per cent increase in enquiries from under-18s this summer, which suggests a flash of bedroom-based businesses is on the way. Expect to be offered web services from internet-savvy teens, or products based on hobbies – cupcake-baking; jewellery-making; musical prodigies for hire.
DECLINE IN TV WATCHING: Trend-obsessed youths in Japan are worth watching for their trickle-down influence. The time Japanese teens spend watching TV declined by one hour per day in 2007, but their viewing of MTV shows and streaming of programmes onto their PCs increased – a similar situation is now developing in the west.
GIRLS IN EXTREME SPORTS: Forget tennis babe Maria Sharapova – female teen interest in adrenaline-pumped minority sports is on the rise. Surfing brands like Quiksilver and Roxy are on top, as are those linked to women’s motorcross, like Rockstar Energy drinks. Iconic skateboarder Tony Hawk’s foundation says that young women are the future of that sport.
I WAS A TEEN IDOL
Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron didn’t invent the phenomenon of the teen idol. Rudolph Valentino kicked it off with his heart-throb film roles in the early 20th century and each subsequent generation has had its own crushes…..
FRANK SINATRA: Sinatra was idolised by the “bobbysoxers” of the 1940s. While his career stalled in the early ’50s, he reignited it to appeal to an older fanbase as a member of the Rat Pack and actor.
ELVIS PRESLEY: Elvis was famously filmed from the waist up only on his performance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 to protect impressionable female viewers from his hip gyrations. On the flipside, Presley was so hated by jealous boys that his car was firebombed by a teen gang during a concert in Texas.
JAMES DEAN: Like Holden Caulfield, the teen narrator of cult novel Catcher in The Rye, James Dean remains a powerful icon for teenage outsiders. His portrayal of the misunderstood Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (1955) was a watershed portrayal of the generation gap.
FRANKIE AVALON: Singer and star of beach-based movie comedies of the 1960s, Avalon was one of the first idols whose image was tailored to appeal to the teen market, first on 1950s show American Bandstand and later with simple pop songs like Venus and Why.
THE BEATLES: Before the Fab Four grew out their mop tops, Beatlemania gripped the screaming masses in the early ’60s. Elvis Presley (maybe a bit put out by their success) asked President Nixon in 1966 to ban them from entering the States. Ironically, John Lennon said that his most formative musical influence was Elvis.
THE BAY CITY ROLLERS: The Rollers dominated the charts in the 1970s with peppy hits like Bye Bye Baby. While not a record label creation, their youthful appeal resembled that of The Monkees, the world’s cleanest-cut rock band from the 1960s TV show.
DAVID CASSIDY: The eldest ‘son’ of singing TV clan The Partridge Family was the bedroom poster boy of the ’70s although he has since said he hated the bubblegum pop he was contracted to sing. A 14-year-old girl died and 650 fans were injured in a hysterical stampede at one of his concerts in London in 1974.
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: Boybands never really went away - Motown mass marketed Jackson 5 youth-targeted merchandise like colouring books, posters and sew-on clothes badges in the ’70s. NKOTB sparked a new targeted assault on the market in the late ’80s that continued from Take That to Boyzone, through to N’Sync , The Backstreet Boys and Westlife.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Now all grown up, not entirely happily, Britney is nonetheless the big sister of the current crop of female teen idols. She and Christina Aguilera brought their child fans from Disney’s Mickey Mouse Show to their debuts as teen solo acts. The Forbes Rich List 2009 had her earning $35m in one year and she was won the Ultimate Choice Award at last week’s Teen Choice Awards.
SOME of the world’s most influential people took to one stage last weekend.
The event generated acres of newsprint, 53 million references on the internet, was watched by nearly 4 million people and represents an industry worth at least e75 billion.
This wasn’t a convention of oil-producing countries, nor was it a meeting of the leaders of the free world. It was the Teen Choice Awards 2009 and it was, like, totally awesome.
A few of the presenters and performers at the LA show would be familiar to people of all age groups – Britney Spears, for example, who received a special award for her contribution to entertainment.
But unless you have a 12-year-old girl in your household it is possible that the juggernaut of Robert Pattison’s fame has passed you by. Or that of Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, David Archuleta, Chace Crawford, Leighton Meester and Kristen Stewart. Yet to the tween and teen market, these are A-list idols in music, movies and TV.
The Teen Choice Awards are a public recognition of what any marketing exec already knows: teenagers and their taste in clothes, gadgets, food and entertainment is very big business. Teenagers and their likes and dislikes didn’t exist 100 years ago when the end of childhood was signalled by the moment a young person was capable of earning their keep.
But by 1959, Life magazine was soberly identifying the emergence of the New Teen-age Market. American teenage girls were spending $20m on lipstick and both sexes were “gobbling” 145 million gallons of ice-cream a year. Elvis Presley, Life noted, was their “musical idol”, selling 25 million singles in four years.
Fast forward 50 years and Miley Cyrus, whose alter-ego Hannah Montana is the darling of Disney’s kiddie TV, is flogging millions of records and has written an autobiography at the age of 16. When she charged e85 a ticket for her upcoming gigs in the O2 venue in Dublin, they sold out in minutes.
Cyrus therefore caused a bit of an uproar therefore when she slipped out of her sweet persona to perform a pole dance during her performance at the Teen Choice Awards last Sunday night. Fox television, who was broadcasting the show, cut away so that viewers (or more like, their parents) would not be offended.
She was probably well aware of the implications of her raunchy moves, which reflect the steps away she has taken in her singing career from the cutesie child star vehicle of Hannah Montana. We saw this before with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera marking their maturity by kissing Madonna on stage at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.
Teen idols are meant to appeal to their target audience’s burgeoning sexuality – but remain unthreatening and almost attainable. This is why boyband and girlband members have traditionally been coy about their private romances. Teens, the wisdom goes, like to think that they might one day marry their crush. (Well Katie Holmes did it with Tom Cruise, right?)
The problem with being a teen idol is that your fanbase tends to grow out of your music or your films, or you grow out of your baby-faced good looks. For every Elvis and Frank Sinatra, there is a David Cassidy or Hanson whose star waned as their audience grew up and away from them. That’s why marketing to teens has become so aggressive – their obsessive devotion is shortlived, be it to High School Musical or Hello Kitty merchandise.
What’s hot and what’s not has been hugely influenced by teen TV. Where there were once a handful of TV programmes aimed at teens – from American Bandstand to Top of The Pops – now there are entire channels and networks. Cyrus built global fame on her TV show, as did cast members of The OC and Gossip Girl.
MTV’s biggest hit of recent years, the quasi-reality show The Hills, has made a bunch of rich Beverley Hills teenagers cultural icons. In the show, they don’t sing, they don’t make dance, they just pout their way through minor dating crises. Yet when Lauren Conrad, one of the show’s stars, sported black Chanel nail polish in one episode, the product instantly sold out worldwide.
That’s the kind of selling power every big brand would love to harness, if only they knew how. The teen sector is notorious for being a ‘stubborn’ one. Things get old real quick. This generation has grown up with 24-hour television and internet access and are a lot more savvy about being given the hard sell.
So marketers have to be seen to be authentic. Red Bull energy drinks for example became a phenomenon among teens thanks to a clever marketing campaign that initially limited supply of the product to make it seem more exclusive and used cryptic, fun ads like ‘Red Bull gives you wings!’
In some ways, far from being exploited, teens are dictating the market. The huge sales of Stephanie Meyer’s teenage vampire books were unforeseen – but it prompted film bosses to quickly snap up their film incarnation, the Twilight movie, which took 11 of the Teen Choice awards last weekend.
It is so difficult for a 40-year-old marketing exec to get into the fickle mind of a 16-year-old that teenagers find themselves being solicited for feedback. Online sites pay cash for teens to fill out their surveys; teen trendspotters keep major companies informed about what’s popular with kids on the streets. When 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson wrote a report for investment bank Morgan Stanley last month that argued social networking website Twitter was “not for teens”, it made the front page of the Financial Times.
Robson outlined the crux in the battle to understand what teens want: no-one knows better than teens themselves. They are the only generation to fully communicate through the internet, which is why the most popular websites were founded for the most part by kids barely in their 20s. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his college dorm at the age of 20 and became the world’s youngest billionaire. Teens don’t buy CDs anymore, they download tunes – so every band in the world has samples of their music on MySpace.
Apple, a coveted teen brand, has set up ‘Genius Bars’ in cities across the State and beyond where kids can exchange tips and info on the latest tecchie sensations. Geeks are chic – as with most teen trends, it’s just one more thing we adults didn’t see coming.
WHAT NEXT?
So-called ‘coolhunters’ are employed by marketers to give them the heads-up on the next big thing in youth culture. This is a selection of the latest trends as identified by pioneering coolhunting firms such as Youth Intelligence, Label Networks and Look-Look…
DJ HERO: Just as the guitar simulator Guitar Hero became the biggest gaming sensation in years, this Christmas, teens will be adding DJ Hero to their wishlist. The simulated record turntable is not for sale until the end of autumn but gaming bosses know it’s going to be big – there is already another competitor making its way to the market called Scratch: The Ultimate DJ.
PRE-PAID CREDIT CARDS: Pre-paid cards have existed for some time but financial institutions are cottoning onto the fact that teens are major online shoppers. Parents will be targeted to sign up for cards that they can preload with pocket money, rather than be pestered for the use of their own.
SUMMER START-UPS: With the casual summer jobs market drying up, teens are turning to entrepreneurship. Start-up business courses in the US reported a 30 per cent increase in enquiries from under-18s this summer, which suggests a flash of bedroom-based businesses is on the way. Expect to be offered web services from internet-savvy teens, or products based on hobbies – cupcake-baking; jewellery-making; musical prodigies for hire.
DECLINE IN TV WATCHING: Trend-obsessed youths in Japan are worth watching for their trickle-down influence. The time Japanese teens spend watching TV declined by one hour per day in 2007, but their viewing of MTV shows and streaming of programmes onto their PCs increased – a similar situation is now developing in the west.
GIRLS IN EXTREME SPORTS: Forget tennis babe Maria Sharapova – female teen interest in adrenaline-pumped minority sports is on the rise. Surfing brands like Quiksilver and Roxy are on top, as are those linked to women’s motorcross, like Rockstar Energy drinks. Iconic skateboarder Tony Hawk’s foundation says that young women are the future of that sport.
I WAS A TEEN IDOL
Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron didn’t invent the phenomenon of the teen idol. Rudolph Valentino kicked it off with his heart-throb film roles in the early 20th century and each subsequent generation has had its own crushes…..
FRANK SINATRA: Sinatra was idolised by the “bobbysoxers” of the 1940s. While his career stalled in the early ’50s, he reignited it to appeal to an older fanbase as a member of the Rat Pack and actor.
ELVIS PRESLEY: Elvis was famously filmed from the waist up only on his performance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 to protect impressionable female viewers from his hip gyrations. On the flipside, Presley was so hated by jealous boys that his car was firebombed by a teen gang during a concert in Texas.
JAMES DEAN: Like Holden Caulfield, the teen narrator of cult novel Catcher in The Rye, James Dean remains a powerful icon for teenage outsiders. His portrayal of the misunderstood Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (1955) was a watershed portrayal of the generation gap.
FRANKIE AVALON: Singer and star of beach-based movie comedies of the 1960s, Avalon was one of the first idols whose image was tailored to appeal to the teen market, first on 1950s show American Bandstand and later with simple pop songs like Venus and Why.
THE BEATLES: Before the Fab Four grew out their mop tops, Beatlemania gripped the screaming masses in the early ’60s. Elvis Presley (maybe a bit put out by their success) asked President Nixon in 1966 to ban them from entering the States. Ironically, John Lennon said that his most formative musical influence was Elvis.
THE BAY CITY ROLLERS: The Rollers dominated the charts in the 1970s with peppy hits like Bye Bye Baby. While not a record label creation, their youthful appeal resembled that of The Monkees, the world’s cleanest-cut rock band from the 1960s TV show.
DAVID CASSIDY: The eldest ‘son’ of singing TV clan The Partridge Family was the bedroom poster boy of the ’70s although he has since said he hated the bubblegum pop he was contracted to sing. A 14-year-old girl died and 650 fans were injured in a hysterical stampede at one of his concerts in London in 1974.
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: Boybands never really went away - Motown mass marketed Jackson 5 youth-targeted merchandise like colouring books, posters and sew-on clothes badges in the ’70s. NKOTB sparked a new targeted assault on the market in the late ’80s that continued from Take That to Boyzone, through to N’Sync , The Backstreet Boys and Westlife.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Now all grown up, not entirely happily, Britney is nonetheless the big sister of the current crop of female teen idols. She and Christina Aguilera brought their child fans from Disney’s Mickey Mouse Show to their debuts as teen solo acts. The Forbes Rich List 2009 had her earning $35m in one year and she was won the Ultimate Choice Award at last week’s Teen Choice Awards.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Girls' night out, the Boo Hoo Factor and M3 tolls
I've been a bit neglectful of posting my stuff for the last week, so here are three bitteens you may have missed...
From last Friday's Day and Night magazine:
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1853921.html
GIRLS' NIGHT OUT IS OVER
By Susan Daly
Friday August 07 2009
By the power of Jimmy Choo, I despise all those "girls' night out" ads. That includes the one for a brand of sparkling wine that has the unmistakeable bang of a gone-off Sex and The City plotline about it.
Two girls sit in a bar, one with a face on her like a rabid wasp, the other waving her hands and looking a bit mad because she's telling the Most Hilarious Joke Ever. Then their third gal pal arrives, breathless, just in time to clink glasses.
Ah! There's the punchline! She's the One Who's Always Late; the crazy hand-waver is the group's Joker and the humourless cow is the Organiser who is a stickler for punctuality.
And all are absolute tools.
It's the laziest type of marketing for women: Girls! Which one of these lady stereotypes do you conform to?
We had it with the Spice Girls and we had it with Sex in the bloody City and their personality-by-hair diktat. (The red one was angry, the brunette straight-laced, the curly one a bit quirky, and the blonde a slapper.)
But -- whisper it -- I suspect the Girls' Night Out is over. I came to this conclusion at dinner with my two best female friends last week. That might sound like a contradiction, but it's not.
We did not start the night trying on each other's bras or whatever the male advertising exec fantasises about. We didn't ban boys; they just weren't around. We were three friends catching up over a meal, and we just happened to be women.
"Do you think we're the odd ones out in this room?" I asked, looking around.
"You're the oddest person in most rooms," said my pregnant friend.
The pregnant bit is important: she gets away with cracks like that, and she is allowed two-thirds of the communal dish of fries. If we were really on a Girls' Night Out, I would have rushed to the bathroom to sob because that's what the hormonal imbalance of a room full of girl drama does to you.
What I meant was we were the only table of women in the restaurant on a Saturday night in Dublin. Time was when, to paraphrase Joyce, you couldn't draw a line across Dublin city without hitting a bistro stuffed with gaggles of ladies who dine. The one we were eating in would have been attractive to girl-girl-girl-girl seating arrangements: soft lighting, cute waiters, scrumptious chocolate desserts.
On that night we were surrounded by families, tourists, male-female twosomes and a gay couple who were feeding each other. Oestrogen and testosterone were both equally on the menu.
And -- now that we thought about it -- this was our first dinner out together in months. We had seen plenty of each other, but nothing that required a taxi into town.
I'm not sure anyone I know is going out as frequently as they did two years ago. There's less of this 'oh, it's cocktails with the girls tonight, romantic dinner a deux tomorrow, his pub night with the lads on Sunday'. You might pick one blow-out night -- and you have to be open to catch up with everyone.
It happened seamlessly last Saturday. After Ms Expectancy had waved regally out the back window of her taxi home, my other friend and I went off for a post-prandial snifter. The Fella rang to see if we were around, and he and his mates joined us. (They had been watching a match and eating curry, so I guess some gender stereotypes remain intact.)
Even if I'm wrong and the whole world but me is on a never-ending pink-cowboy-hatted hen night, would it be a bad thing if the term Girls' Night Out got the bullet?
To me, it denotes Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan losing their knick-knacks somewhere between their house and getting out of their limo. It's Carrie Bradshaw, the single most irritating fictional character ever created, self-obsessedly moaning to her friends while they knock back Cosmopolitans to numb the whine of her voice.
It's not about sisters doing it for themselves and being freer in each other's company. Girls' Night Out is fun facism: if you're not bankrupting yourself on Mojitos, a new dress, stilettos and fake eyelashes in BTs, then apparently you're not putting in the effort.
In any case, I like talking to men and women. I like the vibe when you have a room full of interesting, friendly people who don't discriminate by naughty bits. So shoot me. Or buy me a pint.
From last Saturday's Review section in the Indo...
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/the-boo-hoo-factor-1854908.html
The boo hoo factor
The X Factor publicity machine knows the sweetest tune to our ears is the one that plays on our heartstrings.
By SUSAN DALY
Saturday August 08 2009
The producers of the ITV phenomenon The X Factor have noses like bloodhounds. If there is a sob story lurking in the swarms of hopefuls who audition for the hit show, they will hunt it down.
As this year's show launch date of August 22 edged closer this week, the publicity machine cranked up a notch. Judge Dannii Minogue let slip the "amazing" backstory of one of the latest batch of contestants, a 21-year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer who had hidden himself away in his bedroom for years.
Scott James managed to make it to the X Factor auditions in Manchester however -- and blew the judges away with his performance of that reliable tear-jerker 'You Raise Me Up'.
"He told us that because of his Asperger's Syndrome and the fact that he'd been picked on, he hadn't left the house in seven years," Minogue relayed breathlessly to an interviewer this week. "Then he started singing. You will not believe his performance when you see it."
Whatever about his voice, Scott's life story has the X Factor. The show thrives on its image as a second chance for the underdog who fights through the tough times on sheer talent. It's a sort of Rocky for pop music.
The show's canny producers -- of which chief judge Simon Cowell is the masterminding force -- know that there is no tune more seductive than the one plucked out on our heartstrings. Scott James is blessed with a two-pronged attraction. The hardships he has had to overcome have been great, and he has raw talent.
This potent combination is what transformed Susan Boyle from quiet-living Scottish spinster to SuBo, unlikely star of Britain's Got Talent (a show which is also a Cowell creation). She too had suffered bullying and social difficulties.
She was frumpy and frizzy-haired. Then she opened her mouth and silenced the sneering judges and audience with her soaring vocals.
That magical moment of discovery, an instant YouTube hit, is known in TV circles as "the reveal". Boyle would have had to perform several times for producers to get to the filmed audition. From the pantomime jeers to the perfect 'O' of surprise which took shape in Amanda Holden's mouth, a talented choreographer had been hard at work.
But that would be the view of a cynic and The X Factor's success relies on its fans to be the least cynical of all TV audiences. The desperate, the destitute and the plain pathetic all have a place in our hearts -- and the show has an unerring talent in rooting them out.
The stories swing from the trite to the traumatic. A female auditionee told how she had fallen down a staircase and was almost paralysed; a soldier elaborated on his memories of serving in Iraq and witnessing the deaths of two friends.
There is some authenticity -- after all, a person putting themselves through such a public ordeal as The X Factor must be seriously motivated to change their circumstances. (Even so, there appear to be a disproportionate number of agoraphobics who manage to cope admirably to achieve a lifelong dream to top the charts).
The talented Shayne Ward won X Factor 2006 but the runner-up, bin man Andy Abraham (42) had his blue-collar struggle remembered when he was chosen to represent the UK in last year's Eurovision. He came last.
Ward, initially a chart-topper and tipped for American stardom, has largely disappeared, showing that an X Factor win on any basis is not a guarantee of career longevity unless you are Leona Lewis. Last year's winner Alexandra Burke went double platinum with 'Hallelujah' but where is she now?
Like Abraham, former Happy Mondays backing singer Rowetta Satchell attracted attention for her visit to last-chance saloon in the 2005 series. She didn't take the charts by storm but continues to perform, and revealed her alcoholism on reality show Rehab last year.
At the other end of the age spectrum came 15-year-old Eoghan Quigg from Co Derry, his baby face and fluffy mop of hair charming audiences into voting him into the final three of last year's X Factor. His debut album was greeted with dire reviews in April but he's been touring with Boyzone this summer and, sure, hasn't he his whole life ahead of him?
More rivetting still are the contestants haunted by past traumas and the beloved departed. Natasha Benjamin's life with a violent partner was aired in her first audition for the 2007 show. Her seven-year-old daughter Jazmine was sent to stand at the table with the judges while mum performed her heart out.
That year's show also featured Niki Evans who had a poignant reason for auditioning: she found an application for X Factor in her late father's personal belongings.
Judge Louis Walsh said at the end of X Factor 2007 that "there were far too many sob stories and far too much crying in this series. This is supposed to be a talent show, not Jeremy Kyle".
Nonetheless, with 2008 came the pinnacle in the Boo Hoo Factor. Daniel Evans was targeted for interview by X Factor presenter Dermot O'Leary at general auditions as he sat cuddling his cute blonde toddler daughter. By the time he stood nervously before the judges we knew this was going to be a masterclass in pathos.
"Why are you here today?" asks Louis, evidently no longer jaded by contestants' motivations. Daniel dropped the bombshell. His wife had died in childbirth. He was a swimming pool cleaner struggling to raise three children.
As doe-eyed Cheryl Cole dabbed away tears, sad music swelled in the background -- the cue for the rest of us to take Daniel and his dead wife to our hearts.
Evans later declared: "I want the X Factor to be about me and my singing. I don't want to be seen as the sob story guy."
Also featured last year was Rachel Hylton, a former drug addict who had three of her children taken into care by the age of 26. Hylton didn't play up the 'second chance' card herself -- but the programme made such frequent reference to it that Hylton later said she felt "exploited".
Contestant Andy Turner's hopes also went under in 2008 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His appeal for his real parents to come forward and get to know him was rubbished by his birth father who said he had recently spoken to him by phone.
The hype has been cleverly constructed to the point that everyone has an opinion on The X Factor -- even Oasis's Noel Gallagher. "It's a bit s***e really, to be honest," he said last December. "'Oh, my f*****g god, my cat died, and his outstretched paw was pointing to an X, so I'm going to sing 'What's New Pussycat'!"
Now that's publicity you just can't buy.
From yesterday's Herald... (and er, no, that's not me biting the steering wheel...)
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/hidden-toll-idea-gives-me--road-rage-1858988.html
By Susan Daly
Thursday August 13 2009
With all these business big wigs going bust, it must surely be a good time to get a helicopter on the cheap.
God knows, commuters are going to need some alternative to travelling the new tolled M3.
Commandeering a chopper may well work out as economic as stumping up nearly €12 a day to pay the tolls on a return trip from Kells to Dublin.
That's the equivalent of throwing a 10-cent piece out the window of your car every single kilometre of that 120km total drive. (Or €2,600 a year for a Monday-to-Friday commute, if you prefer the bigger picture).
There is always the new train to Navan of course -- as long as you don't live north of that town and can wait until 2015.
But even the helicopter plan has a catch (Just the one, you ask?). Even if you manage to persuade some snivelling developer to part with his old Bell chopper for a knockdown price, you might end up paying the M3 road toll anyway.
The bright sparks in charge of negotiating the Government's deal with the private company who will manage the M3 tolls have allowed them to insert a "minimum traffic" agreement into the contract.
That means that the company, Eurolink, will be compensated by the Government if the number of motorists using the M3 falls below target. Not that we know what that target is. Nobody in the National Roads Authority wants us to know.
Suffice to say that if we motorists don't stump up and use the road to the level envisaged by Eurolink, then they will be looking for the Government to make up the difference.
And by the Government, of course, that doesn't mean Brian Cowen will have to personally shoulder the burden.
It means every taxpayer will take the hit, even the ones who chose not to use the overpriced piece of tarmac in the first place.
Seriously, what kind of buffoon signs off on a contract like that?
There cannot be another business in this country that is guaranteed to be kept afloat by the Government in the middle of a recession, which is essentially what they are promising in this case (I would mention NAMA here if I wasn't in danger of exploding into angry boils).
People don't like your product? Don't worry, we'll bridge the gap for you until they buy into it.
The advice generally given to anyone opening even a sweet shop is to get yourself on to a FAS small business course double quick.
Learn the essentials before you put so much as a price tag on a Curly Wurly.
They're not the only ones who could do with a crash course in the fundamentals of enterprise.
The problem with the Department of Transport, the NRA, and pretty much every section of Government that has its fingers in our collective till is that they haven't a scrap of business nous between them.
Remember how delighted people were to give George Lee a vote because he is an actual qualified economist? And he's stuck on the Opposition bench!
But it doesn't even take a genius business mind to have some common sense.
If anyone in Leinster House had their eyes open, they would see the large 'Sale' signs in shop windows all over the city.
The revolutionary idea is this: If custom is falling, you find other ways of getting punters in. You slash prices, come up with special offers, find a way to tempt them through the door.
If the M3 is short of traffic, it will be because drivers would rather find the longest, windiest back road to Dublin than pay a ludicrous toll fee.
Why the NRA feels the need to back up such greed instead of ordering a toll price cut is beyond me.
From last Friday's Day and Night magazine:
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1853921.html
GIRLS' NIGHT OUT IS OVER
By Susan Daly
Friday August 07 2009
By the power of Jimmy Choo, I despise all those "girls' night out" ads. That includes the one for a brand of sparkling wine that has the unmistakeable bang of a gone-off Sex and The City plotline about it.
Two girls sit in a bar, one with a face on her like a rabid wasp, the other waving her hands and looking a bit mad because she's telling the Most Hilarious Joke Ever. Then their third gal pal arrives, breathless, just in time to clink glasses.
Ah! There's the punchline! She's the One Who's Always Late; the crazy hand-waver is the group's Joker and the humourless cow is the Organiser who is a stickler for punctuality.
And all are absolute tools.
It's the laziest type of marketing for women: Girls! Which one of these lady stereotypes do you conform to?
We had it with the Spice Girls and we had it with Sex in the bloody City and their personality-by-hair diktat. (The red one was angry, the brunette straight-laced, the curly one a bit quirky, and the blonde a slapper.)
But -- whisper it -- I suspect the Girls' Night Out is over. I came to this conclusion at dinner with my two best female friends last week. That might sound like a contradiction, but it's not.
We did not start the night trying on each other's bras or whatever the male advertising exec fantasises about. We didn't ban boys; they just weren't around. We were three friends catching up over a meal, and we just happened to be women.
"Do you think we're the odd ones out in this room?" I asked, looking around.
"You're the oddest person in most rooms," said my pregnant friend.
The pregnant bit is important: she gets away with cracks like that, and she is allowed two-thirds of the communal dish of fries. If we were really on a Girls' Night Out, I would have rushed to the bathroom to sob because that's what the hormonal imbalance of a room full of girl drama does to you.
What I meant was we were the only table of women in the restaurant on a Saturday night in Dublin. Time was when, to paraphrase Joyce, you couldn't draw a line across Dublin city without hitting a bistro stuffed with gaggles of ladies who dine. The one we were eating in would have been attractive to girl-girl-girl-girl seating arrangements: soft lighting, cute waiters, scrumptious chocolate desserts.
On that night we were surrounded by families, tourists, male-female twosomes and a gay couple who were feeding each other. Oestrogen and testosterone were both equally on the menu.
And -- now that we thought about it -- this was our first dinner out together in months. We had seen plenty of each other, but nothing that required a taxi into town.
I'm not sure anyone I know is going out as frequently as they did two years ago. There's less of this 'oh, it's cocktails with the girls tonight, romantic dinner a deux tomorrow, his pub night with the lads on Sunday'. You might pick one blow-out night -- and you have to be open to catch up with everyone.
It happened seamlessly last Saturday. After Ms Expectancy had waved regally out the back window of her taxi home, my other friend and I went off for a post-prandial snifter. The Fella rang to see if we were around, and he and his mates joined us. (They had been watching a match and eating curry, so I guess some gender stereotypes remain intact.)
Even if I'm wrong and the whole world but me is on a never-ending pink-cowboy-hatted hen night, would it be a bad thing if the term Girls' Night Out got the bullet?
To me, it denotes Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan losing their knick-knacks somewhere between their house and getting out of their limo. It's Carrie Bradshaw, the single most irritating fictional character ever created, self-obsessedly moaning to her friends while they knock back Cosmopolitans to numb the whine of her voice.
It's not about sisters doing it for themselves and being freer in each other's company. Girls' Night Out is fun facism: if you're not bankrupting yourself on Mojitos, a new dress, stilettos and fake eyelashes in BTs, then apparently you're not putting in the effort.
In any case, I like talking to men and women. I like the vibe when you have a room full of interesting, friendly people who don't discriminate by naughty bits. So shoot me. Or buy me a pint.
From last Saturday's Review section in the Indo...
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/the-boo-hoo-factor-1854908.html
The boo hoo factor
The X Factor publicity machine knows the sweetest tune to our ears is the one that plays on our heartstrings.
By SUSAN DALY
Saturday August 08 2009
The producers of the ITV phenomenon The X Factor have noses like bloodhounds. If there is a sob story lurking in the swarms of hopefuls who audition for the hit show, they will hunt it down.
As this year's show launch date of August 22 edged closer this week, the publicity machine cranked up a notch. Judge Dannii Minogue let slip the "amazing" backstory of one of the latest batch of contestants, a 21-year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer who had hidden himself away in his bedroom for years.
Scott James managed to make it to the X Factor auditions in Manchester however -- and blew the judges away with his performance of that reliable tear-jerker 'You Raise Me Up'.
"He told us that because of his Asperger's Syndrome and the fact that he'd been picked on, he hadn't left the house in seven years," Minogue relayed breathlessly to an interviewer this week. "Then he started singing. You will not believe his performance when you see it."
Whatever about his voice, Scott's life story has the X Factor. The show thrives on its image as a second chance for the underdog who fights through the tough times on sheer talent. It's a sort of Rocky for pop music.
The show's canny producers -- of which chief judge Simon Cowell is the masterminding force -- know that there is no tune more seductive than the one plucked out on our heartstrings. Scott James is blessed with a two-pronged attraction. The hardships he has had to overcome have been great, and he has raw talent.
This potent combination is what transformed Susan Boyle from quiet-living Scottish spinster to SuBo, unlikely star of Britain's Got Talent (a show which is also a Cowell creation). She too had suffered bullying and social difficulties.
She was frumpy and frizzy-haired. Then she opened her mouth and silenced the sneering judges and audience with her soaring vocals.
That magical moment of discovery, an instant YouTube hit, is known in TV circles as "the reveal". Boyle would have had to perform several times for producers to get to the filmed audition. From the pantomime jeers to the perfect 'O' of surprise which took shape in Amanda Holden's mouth, a talented choreographer had been hard at work.
But that would be the view of a cynic and The X Factor's success relies on its fans to be the least cynical of all TV audiences. The desperate, the destitute and the plain pathetic all have a place in our hearts -- and the show has an unerring talent in rooting them out.
The stories swing from the trite to the traumatic. A female auditionee told how she had fallen down a staircase and was almost paralysed; a soldier elaborated on his memories of serving in Iraq and witnessing the deaths of two friends.
There is some authenticity -- after all, a person putting themselves through such a public ordeal as The X Factor must be seriously motivated to change their circumstances. (Even so, there appear to be a disproportionate number of agoraphobics who manage to cope admirably to achieve a lifelong dream to top the charts).
The talented Shayne Ward won X Factor 2006 but the runner-up, bin man Andy Abraham (42) had his blue-collar struggle remembered when he was chosen to represent the UK in last year's Eurovision. He came last.
Ward, initially a chart-topper and tipped for American stardom, has largely disappeared, showing that an X Factor win on any basis is not a guarantee of career longevity unless you are Leona Lewis. Last year's winner Alexandra Burke went double platinum with 'Hallelujah' but where is she now?
Like Abraham, former Happy Mondays backing singer Rowetta Satchell attracted attention for her visit to last-chance saloon in the 2005 series. She didn't take the charts by storm but continues to perform, and revealed her alcoholism on reality show Rehab last year.
At the other end of the age spectrum came 15-year-old Eoghan Quigg from Co Derry, his baby face and fluffy mop of hair charming audiences into voting him into the final three of last year's X Factor. His debut album was greeted with dire reviews in April but he's been touring with Boyzone this summer and, sure, hasn't he his whole life ahead of him?
More rivetting still are the contestants haunted by past traumas and the beloved departed. Natasha Benjamin's life with a violent partner was aired in her first audition for the 2007 show. Her seven-year-old daughter Jazmine was sent to stand at the table with the judges while mum performed her heart out.
That year's show also featured Niki Evans who had a poignant reason for auditioning: she found an application for X Factor in her late father's personal belongings.
Judge Louis Walsh said at the end of X Factor 2007 that "there were far too many sob stories and far too much crying in this series. This is supposed to be a talent show, not Jeremy Kyle".
Nonetheless, with 2008 came the pinnacle in the Boo Hoo Factor. Daniel Evans was targeted for interview by X Factor presenter Dermot O'Leary at general auditions as he sat cuddling his cute blonde toddler daughter. By the time he stood nervously before the judges we knew this was going to be a masterclass in pathos.
"Why are you here today?" asks Louis, evidently no longer jaded by contestants' motivations. Daniel dropped the bombshell. His wife had died in childbirth. He was a swimming pool cleaner struggling to raise three children.
As doe-eyed Cheryl Cole dabbed away tears, sad music swelled in the background -- the cue for the rest of us to take Daniel and his dead wife to our hearts.
Evans later declared: "I want the X Factor to be about me and my singing. I don't want to be seen as the sob story guy."
Also featured last year was Rachel Hylton, a former drug addict who had three of her children taken into care by the age of 26. Hylton didn't play up the 'second chance' card herself -- but the programme made such frequent reference to it that Hylton later said she felt "exploited".
Contestant Andy Turner's hopes also went under in 2008 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His appeal for his real parents to come forward and get to know him was rubbished by his birth father who said he had recently spoken to him by phone.
The hype has been cleverly constructed to the point that everyone has an opinion on The X Factor -- even Oasis's Noel Gallagher. "It's a bit s***e really, to be honest," he said last December. "'Oh, my f*****g god, my cat died, and his outstretched paw was pointing to an X, so I'm going to sing 'What's New Pussycat'!"
Now that's publicity you just can't buy.
From yesterday's Herald... (and er, no, that's not me biting the steering wheel...)
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/hidden-toll-idea-gives-me--road-rage-1858988.html
By Susan Daly
Thursday August 13 2009
With all these business big wigs going bust, it must surely be a good time to get a helicopter on the cheap.
God knows, commuters are going to need some alternative to travelling the new tolled M3.
Commandeering a chopper may well work out as economic as stumping up nearly €12 a day to pay the tolls on a return trip from Kells to Dublin.
That's the equivalent of throwing a 10-cent piece out the window of your car every single kilometre of that 120km total drive. (Or €2,600 a year for a Monday-to-Friday commute, if you prefer the bigger picture).
There is always the new train to Navan of course -- as long as you don't live north of that town and can wait until 2015.
But even the helicopter plan has a catch (Just the one, you ask?). Even if you manage to persuade some snivelling developer to part with his old Bell chopper for a knockdown price, you might end up paying the M3 road toll anyway.
The bright sparks in charge of negotiating the Government's deal with the private company who will manage the M3 tolls have allowed them to insert a "minimum traffic" agreement into the contract.
That means that the company, Eurolink, will be compensated by the Government if the number of motorists using the M3 falls below target. Not that we know what that target is. Nobody in the National Roads Authority wants us to know.
Suffice to say that if we motorists don't stump up and use the road to the level envisaged by Eurolink, then they will be looking for the Government to make up the difference.
And by the Government, of course, that doesn't mean Brian Cowen will have to personally shoulder the burden.
It means every taxpayer will take the hit, even the ones who chose not to use the overpriced piece of tarmac in the first place.
Seriously, what kind of buffoon signs off on a contract like that?
There cannot be another business in this country that is guaranteed to be kept afloat by the Government in the middle of a recession, which is essentially what they are promising in this case (I would mention NAMA here if I wasn't in danger of exploding into angry boils).
People don't like your product? Don't worry, we'll bridge the gap for you until they buy into it.
The advice generally given to anyone opening even a sweet shop is to get yourself on to a FAS small business course double quick.
Learn the essentials before you put so much as a price tag on a Curly Wurly.
They're not the only ones who could do with a crash course in the fundamentals of enterprise.
The problem with the Department of Transport, the NRA, and pretty much every section of Government that has its fingers in our collective till is that they haven't a scrap of business nous between them.
Remember how delighted people were to give George Lee a vote because he is an actual qualified economist? And he's stuck on the Opposition bench!
But it doesn't even take a genius business mind to have some common sense.
If anyone in Leinster House had their eyes open, they would see the large 'Sale' signs in shop windows all over the city.
The revolutionary idea is this: If custom is falling, you find other ways of getting punters in. You slash prices, come up with special offers, find a way to tempt them through the door.
If the M3 is short of traffic, it will be because drivers would rather find the longest, windiest back road to Dublin than pay a ludicrous toll fee.
Why the NRA feels the need to back up such greed instead of ordering a toll price cut is beyond me.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Whatta man
Cover story from last Friday's Day and Night mag....
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/features/pulling-power-1847699.html
Pulling Power
By Susan Daly
Friday July 31 2009
WHEN 90s hip-hop trio Salt-n-Pepa wrote Whatta Man, their ode to the ideal guy, they knew what they wanted. "A body like Arnold, with a Denzel face."
The Body went on to become the Governator of California. The Face, we dreamed, was set for president. Hey, if Ronald Reagan could make the leap from Hollywood to the White House, then so could Denzel. Courageous, strong, dignified, intelligent: he had all the qualities desirable in the leader of the free world. And his surname is Washington.
As we know, Denzel Washington did not become the first black president of the United States. But even the man who did has reserved a place at the Oval desk for him. When Barack Obama was the hottest senator on the presidential campaign trail in 2008, Tyra Banks asked him who he would like to play him in the movie of his life.
"Initially, Denzel would be the choice," said the future prez, to whoops of delight from Tyra's mainly female audience. "But somebody pointed out, with my ears, it might have to go to Will [Smith]." It was a typically cute move on Obama's part -- self-deprecating, but smart enough to at least put himself in the same frame as Denzel. The Denzel reference said: 'I'm dynamic, revolutionary and kind of hot. I respect Morgan Freeman as your fantasy president, but I ain't no old dude.'
It has been the fate of Washington to be idealised. Several factors dovetailed in his ascension: that perfectly symmetrical face, his position as heir to Sidney Poitier's dignified legacy, his own portrayal of historically significant characters including Steve Biko and Malcolm X.
With his new movie, The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of the 1974 subway hijack thriller, Washington is turning his back on the perfect man. He plays Walter Garber, a paunchy New York City subway dispatcher who brings his lunch to work in a plastic bag and spills coffee on his ugly brown tank top.
This being the actor who underwent army bootcamp for Courage Under Fire (1996), lost 60 pounds and trained as a boxer for a year for The Hurricane (1999), he had no problem applying himself to the serious job of piling on the pounds.
"You just don't exercise, eat late and have that burger and all the fries and the shake and dessert and you can get there really easy!" laughs Washington. At the age of 54, he says, putting on weight was easy. "Yes, I had been heading that way and so I went with it and kept going."
He goes on to say that he finds Garber a sympathetic character. "He's overweight, he's clumsy but he's a decent guy."
Of course, Washington has played flawed characters before, from drug-dealer Frank Lucas in American Gangster (2007) to homophobic lawyer Joe Miller in Philadelphia (1993) to twisted narcotics cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day (2001). It was Harris and not one of his more heroic alter-egos who brought Washington his first Oscar for Best Actor. (Although he earned a Best Supporting Actor statuette in 1989 for Trip, his defiant ex-slave in Glory.)
With Washington, even his portrayal of imperfect men demonstrates how untouchable he is as an actor. The Chicago Tribune describes his performance in Pelham 123 as an illustration of "that valuable paradox: the relatable supernova". He is credible as the ordinary guy caught up in an extraordinary situation, but quietly commands the screen. He masterfully underplays the character of Garber, while John Travolta rages psychotically as the hijacker who takes control of a subway train and vows to shoot the passengers if he isn't delivered a massive ransom within the hour.
Washington, so warmly praised by previous co-stars including Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, had the unusual situation of not filming face-to-face with Travolta for the first weeks on set.
"We actually filmed separately the first three or four weeks and so much of it is us talking back and forth on the microphone," he says. "But over the mike, we'd exchange, 'Good morning, John, how are you today?' and sing songs and tell jokes. It was an interesting relationship and interesting the way it developed, the way it did in the film."
Washington's Garber has the unhappy task of trying to negotiate the release of the hostages with Travolta's criminal mastermind Ryder. Garber was a policeman in the original 1974 film, but Washington didn't want to repeat the role he played in Inside Man three years ago, when he played a cop and a hostage negotiator.
"Early on, I said to Tony [Scott, director and four-time Washington collaborator] ... I said, 'I don't want to be a cop. How about if he's never had anything to do with hostage negotiations or handling guns?' So the fact of the matter is Ryder, John's character, just likes the guy and he's a sociopath and thinks he has a relationship with my character and only wants to talk to him."
You see, Washington doesn't like to be typecast. After garnering A-list recognition in Cry Freedom (1987), Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Malcolm X (1992), he was approached with scripts for every black American historical figure going, from Martin Luther King to baseball icon Jackie Robinson. He turned down both those roles, as he did the offer to star in Amistad, saying he didn't feel like wearing chains around his neck at that moment. He was done with being anybody's poster boy.
Washington is protective of his image and the universality of his appeal. He keeps his off-screen life private. He is a devout Christian who has raised a family of four with wife Pauletta, whom he met in 1977.
And while he is credited with advancing a positive image of African-American manhood in the US, he has been notably cautious about portraying interracial love scenes in his films. He refused to kiss white female co-star Kelly Lynch in Virtuosity (1995) -- she said in an interview that he was concerned that the target white male audience would react negatively. Julia Roberts wanted romance with his character in The Pelican Brief, but it didn't happen.
Today, Washington resists any interpretation of his choice of roles. "What I've done is done, the past is the past and I don't believe in looking back," he says. "I never even thought about that kind of evaluation. A thought might come into my head occasionally about what I did and why, but I don't sit around trying to look for a reason. If you are looking for a reason, you'll find one -- but it doesn't mean it's the right one!"
For all his reluctance to be analysed, he does give an insight into the journey he has taken from son of a Pentecostal minister and a beautician in upstate New York to Hollywood superstar. The filming of Pelham 123 required him to spend weeks grubbing around on the dangerous trainlines of the New York subway system.
"I hadn't taken the subway in over 20 years because I used to spend two hours each way on it every day going to school and back and did everything on it -- slept, ate, homework -- and I swore as soon as I had two pennies to rub together I would never ride it again and I didn't! Until this movie, of course!" he says.
Not that Washington was afraid to get his A-list hands dirty. He, Travolta and the crew had to undertake full safety training for scenes they would be shooting underground, a place where he says you have to "always be on your toes if you want to stay alive".
The third rail, he discovered, is the most dangerous. "They showed you pictures of what happens to people -- they fry and it's not nice -- but what happens is you relax after a few weeks or months, so I made sure not to. They were turning power on and off for us all the time, but I kept acting like the power was always on."
The physical strain of the underground filming must have been immense, especially as Washington was carrying extra weight -- and had just had knee surgery. One scene in which he is "running hard" while chasing Travolta had to be shot 18 or 19 times, he thinks. "So that was challenging, because then your ego is involved and you are thinking, 'I can't be out here huffing and puffing and looking bad' even though I'm overweight and had surgery. So I'm thinking, 'Wait, I have to have some sense of style and grace about this!'"
On the whole, though, vanity appears to have passed one of movie's most beautiful people by. When Barack Obama's biopic comments were put to him, Washington apparently demurred modestly, saying that by the time the 47-year-old Obama's story is ready to be told, he would be far too old to play him.
Whatta man.
CASTING DENZEL…. While Washington has revelled in taking risks and playing the anti-hero, we would still love to see him in a few more iconic historical roles:
Barack Obama: Age is not important, Denzel. We at Day and Night still think you’re the only man to convincingly swat a fly while simultaneously reviving the international reputation of the US.
Desmond Tutu: Washington likes to study his subjects and has already met Tutu, when the Nobel Prize-winning Archbishop renewed Denzel and his wife’s wedding vows in 1995.
Nelson Mandela: If he’s going to do Tutu, he might as well take on the middle years of the talisman of the South African anti-apartheid struggle.
Morgan Freeman: Denzel might be the man who would be president, but Morgan is the voice of God. And it would be interesting to see how he would play a man who said that the only way to end racism is to stop talking about it.
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/features/pulling-power-1847699.html
Pulling Power
By Susan Daly
Friday July 31 2009
WHEN 90s hip-hop trio Salt-n-Pepa wrote Whatta Man, their ode to the ideal guy, they knew what they wanted. "A body like Arnold, with a Denzel face."
The Body went on to become the Governator of California. The Face, we dreamed, was set for president. Hey, if Ronald Reagan could make the leap from Hollywood to the White House, then so could Denzel. Courageous, strong, dignified, intelligent: he had all the qualities desirable in the leader of the free world. And his surname is Washington.
As we know, Denzel Washington did not become the first black president of the United States. But even the man who did has reserved a place at the Oval desk for him. When Barack Obama was the hottest senator on the presidential campaign trail in 2008, Tyra Banks asked him who he would like to play him in the movie of his life.
"Initially, Denzel would be the choice," said the future prez, to whoops of delight from Tyra's mainly female audience. "But somebody pointed out, with my ears, it might have to go to Will [Smith]." It was a typically cute move on Obama's part -- self-deprecating, but smart enough to at least put himself in the same frame as Denzel. The Denzel reference said: 'I'm dynamic, revolutionary and kind of hot. I respect Morgan Freeman as your fantasy president, but I ain't no old dude.'
It has been the fate of Washington to be idealised. Several factors dovetailed in his ascension: that perfectly symmetrical face, his position as heir to Sidney Poitier's dignified legacy, his own portrayal of historically significant characters including Steve Biko and Malcolm X.
With his new movie, The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of the 1974 subway hijack thriller, Washington is turning his back on the perfect man. He plays Walter Garber, a paunchy New York City subway dispatcher who brings his lunch to work in a plastic bag and spills coffee on his ugly brown tank top.
This being the actor who underwent army bootcamp for Courage Under Fire (1996), lost 60 pounds and trained as a boxer for a year for The Hurricane (1999), he had no problem applying himself to the serious job of piling on the pounds.
"You just don't exercise, eat late and have that burger and all the fries and the shake and dessert and you can get there really easy!" laughs Washington. At the age of 54, he says, putting on weight was easy. "Yes, I had been heading that way and so I went with it and kept going."
He goes on to say that he finds Garber a sympathetic character. "He's overweight, he's clumsy but he's a decent guy."
Of course, Washington has played flawed characters before, from drug-dealer Frank Lucas in American Gangster (2007) to homophobic lawyer Joe Miller in Philadelphia (1993) to twisted narcotics cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day (2001). It was Harris and not one of his more heroic alter-egos who brought Washington his first Oscar for Best Actor. (Although he earned a Best Supporting Actor statuette in 1989 for Trip, his defiant ex-slave in Glory.)
With Washington, even his portrayal of imperfect men demonstrates how untouchable he is as an actor. The Chicago Tribune describes his performance in Pelham 123 as an illustration of "that valuable paradox: the relatable supernova". He is credible as the ordinary guy caught up in an extraordinary situation, but quietly commands the screen. He masterfully underplays the character of Garber, while John Travolta rages psychotically as the hijacker who takes control of a subway train and vows to shoot the passengers if he isn't delivered a massive ransom within the hour.
Washington, so warmly praised by previous co-stars including Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, had the unusual situation of not filming face-to-face with Travolta for the first weeks on set.
"We actually filmed separately the first three or four weeks and so much of it is us talking back and forth on the microphone," he says. "But over the mike, we'd exchange, 'Good morning, John, how are you today?' and sing songs and tell jokes. It was an interesting relationship and interesting the way it developed, the way it did in the film."
Washington's Garber has the unhappy task of trying to negotiate the release of the hostages with Travolta's criminal mastermind Ryder. Garber was a policeman in the original 1974 film, but Washington didn't want to repeat the role he played in Inside Man three years ago, when he played a cop and a hostage negotiator.
"Early on, I said to Tony [Scott, director and four-time Washington collaborator] ... I said, 'I don't want to be a cop. How about if he's never had anything to do with hostage negotiations or handling guns?' So the fact of the matter is Ryder, John's character, just likes the guy and he's a sociopath and thinks he has a relationship with my character and only wants to talk to him."
You see, Washington doesn't like to be typecast. After garnering A-list recognition in Cry Freedom (1987), Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Malcolm X (1992), he was approached with scripts for every black American historical figure going, from Martin Luther King to baseball icon Jackie Robinson. He turned down both those roles, as he did the offer to star in Amistad, saying he didn't feel like wearing chains around his neck at that moment. He was done with being anybody's poster boy.
Washington is protective of his image and the universality of his appeal. He keeps his off-screen life private. He is a devout Christian who has raised a family of four with wife Pauletta, whom he met in 1977.
And while he is credited with advancing a positive image of African-American manhood in the US, he has been notably cautious about portraying interracial love scenes in his films. He refused to kiss white female co-star Kelly Lynch in Virtuosity (1995) -- she said in an interview that he was concerned that the target white male audience would react negatively. Julia Roberts wanted romance with his character in The Pelican Brief, but it didn't happen.
Today, Washington resists any interpretation of his choice of roles. "What I've done is done, the past is the past and I don't believe in looking back," he says. "I never even thought about that kind of evaluation. A thought might come into my head occasionally about what I did and why, but I don't sit around trying to look for a reason. If you are looking for a reason, you'll find one -- but it doesn't mean it's the right one!"
For all his reluctance to be analysed, he does give an insight into the journey he has taken from son of a Pentecostal minister and a beautician in upstate New York to Hollywood superstar. The filming of Pelham 123 required him to spend weeks grubbing around on the dangerous trainlines of the New York subway system.
"I hadn't taken the subway in over 20 years because I used to spend two hours each way on it every day going to school and back and did everything on it -- slept, ate, homework -- and I swore as soon as I had two pennies to rub together I would never ride it again and I didn't! Until this movie, of course!" he says.
Not that Washington was afraid to get his A-list hands dirty. He, Travolta and the crew had to undertake full safety training for scenes they would be shooting underground, a place where he says you have to "always be on your toes if you want to stay alive".
The third rail, he discovered, is the most dangerous. "They showed you pictures of what happens to people -- they fry and it's not nice -- but what happens is you relax after a few weeks or months, so I made sure not to. They were turning power on and off for us all the time, but I kept acting like the power was always on."
The physical strain of the underground filming must have been immense, especially as Washington was carrying extra weight -- and had just had knee surgery. One scene in which he is "running hard" while chasing Travolta had to be shot 18 or 19 times, he thinks. "So that was challenging, because then your ego is involved and you are thinking, 'I can't be out here huffing and puffing and looking bad' even though I'm overweight and had surgery. So I'm thinking, 'Wait, I have to have some sense of style and grace about this!'"
On the whole, though, vanity appears to have passed one of movie's most beautiful people by. When Barack Obama's biopic comments were put to him, Washington apparently demurred modestly, saying that by the time the 47-year-old Obama's story is ready to be told, he would be far too old to play him.
Whatta man.
CASTING DENZEL…. While Washington has revelled in taking risks and playing the anti-hero, we would still love to see him in a few more iconic historical roles:
Barack Obama: Age is not important, Denzel. We at Day and Night still think you’re the only man to convincingly swat a fly while simultaneously reviving the international reputation of the US.
Desmond Tutu: Washington likes to study his subjects and has already met Tutu, when the Nobel Prize-winning Archbishop renewed Denzel and his wife’s wedding vows in 1995.
Nelson Mandela: If he’s going to do Tutu, he might as well take on the middle years of the talisman of the South African anti-apartheid struggle.
Morgan Freeman: Denzel might be the man who would be president, but Morgan is the voice of God. And it would be interesting to see how he would play a man who said that the only way to end racism is to stop talking about it.
When are you going to make me a granny?
From yesterday's Indo...
IT'S NO SECRET, BUT WE DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IVF...
It's a taboo subject for many couples, but presenter Miriam O'Callaghan brought it into the spotlight when she revealed that she had fertility treatment to help her conceive. Susan Daly reports
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/its-no-secret-but-we-dont-want-to-talk-about-ivf-1850920.html
Wednesday August 05 2009
'So when are you going to make me a grandmother?" It's a flippant remark but it can be devastating for a couple struggling with infertility.
The National Infertility Support and Information Group estimate that one in six Irish couples seek outside assistance to achieve pregnancy. Observe any busy street: it's impossible to tell which passer-by is secretly nursing the heartache of childlessness but it's a guarantee that some are.
RTE Prime Time presenter Miriam O'Callaghan, for example, is not a woman one would associate with reproductive problems. She surprised many last week when she told how she sought treatment from a fertility expert in England after the birth of her first child.
"After my first child I couldn't get pregnant, so I went to a gynaecologist, a man called Peter Snow (the broadcaster Jon Snow's cousin)," she said. "I got three children in 10 months. A very effective fertility drug!"
Miriam had a daughter, and then twins 10 months later. Multiple births are a frequent consequence of fertility treatment.
Miriam, as we know, is now a mum of eight but says that she "didn't find it easy" to have children. "I am now their best success story in this fertility clinic. But, hey, I want to put it out there, because I know for some people it is hard to have babies," she added.
There are a number of fertility clinics in Ireland, some private and some linked to major maternity hospitals.
But there is still a taboo about saying you sought help to have your child says Anna (31) who had twins 10 months ago after a course of IVF (in vitro fertilisation). Anna asked for her real name to be kept out of this article. Although she has been open with family and friends about her treatment, she has just started a new business and feels that strangers might not understand.
As it was, she says, even her GP seemed wary of advising her on fertility treatments. "We got married when I was 26, and after a few years of trying, we went to the GP. All the GP would say was 'Take a break for a while, relax, it will happen'. But we were young and healthy, and it just wasn't happening. We felt we had to push the issue. In general, I feel that GPs aren't educated to the possibilities out there."
Anna was referred to HARI (Human Assisted Reproduction Ireland) in the Rotunda maternity hospital in Dublin, but says they faced a five-month wait to get a consultation. She and her husband turned to a private fertility clinic in Dublin. They had a procedure called ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) where the sperm is injected into the egg outside the body -- "it's more proactive than letting them mix in a Petri dish" -- and were successful on their first cycle of IVF when the fertilised embryos were implanted in Anna's uterus.
"We were very lucky," she says. "A very good friend of mine has had three failed attempts at IVF. She feels like she's hitting a brick wall while all around her, friends are having families. She's tortured, that's the only word for it."
The treatments, and the possibility of failure, can put huge emotional strain on a couple. "Everyone has a different opinion on the hormone injections you have to give yourself, but it can be very trying. We just kept very positive in our thinking, saying 'We're giving ourselves the best possible chance'. But you are pumping yourself full of hormones and you're swaying from low to high for about 10 days a month," says Anna.
Ireland doesn't have any cohesive data on babies born as a result of fertility treatment but the latest figures from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology state that around 30pc of patients who go through IVF and ICSI have successful pregnancies. Many couples begin with IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) where prepared sperm from a woman's partner is injected directly into the uterus at the time of ovulation. It's less invasive than IVF and ICSI because eggs don't have to be harvested and fertilised outside the body, but often it's not enough and women go on to those procedures.
Dr David Walsh of SIMS, one of Ireland's largest fertility clinics, says that people do not seek their help lightly. "Occasionally, we might be approached by someone who has been trying for about six months," he says. "But often that is an older woman, over 35, and it is on her mind that she has a limited time frame and just wants to check there is no major reason why she has not yet conceived."
Dr Walsh says there are three major risks associated with fertility treatment: failure to conceive, or miscarriage, and the emotional trauma that inflicts; over-stimulation of the ovaries (there has been one death in Ireland from this condition); and the possibility of multiple births.
"The incidence of twins is significant with fertility treatments and a lot of clinics are trying to reduce that, especially for younger women," says Dr Walsh. "But in the example of say a 39-year-old who is trying for her first child, twins can be very welcome."
Anna says she and her husband almost fell off their chairs with shock when they were told they were expecting twins.
They said because of our age and a 40pc chance of the treatment working, that there was a one in six chance that two eggs could take. To be honest, you are thinking the odds are against you."
On hearing the news, she says, "we wobbled out of the clinic that day!" Now they are delighted. "We count it as double luck."
The high cost of fertility treatment is another stumbling block for many couples. While units like the Merrion Fertility Clinic, which is linked to the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street, Dublin, is a non-profit charitable organisation, private clinics can charge €4,000 and up for a cycle of IVF. Even a cycle of IUI is around €1,000 a go.
Ethical concerns revolve around what happens to the 'leftover embryos' that result when multiple eggs are fertilised in the hope of creating healthy embryos. In February of this year, Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan described as "extraordinary" the fact that the Government has taken no steps to legislate fertility treatment here. The result is that there is still hot debate over whether an embryo has the legal protection of an "unborn" child if it is not actually implanted in a mother's womb.
Freakish stories from other countries about the possible abuse of fertility treatment add fuel to the fire.
Leading embryologists voiced their concerns that the birth of eight babies to Nadya Suleman in California, USA this year constituted "inappropriate medical therapy". The controversial Spanish woman Maria del Carmen Bousada, who gave birth to twins at the age of 66 as a result of fertility treatment, died of cancer last month. Her twin boys are now orphans at the age of two.
There are alternatives to the IVF route -- private clinics like the Galway Clinic, which offers the NaPro reproductive treatment, and the Cork Natural Fertility Clinic claim to address the issue of infertility on a more holistic level.
For Anna, having successfully had her first two children by IVF, she is hoping to try for a third child at the clinic. "I won't have to go through the harvesting of the eggs again as we have our embryos stored," she says. "That's a relief."
IT'S NO SECRET, BUT WE DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IVF...
It's a taboo subject for many couples, but presenter Miriam O'Callaghan brought it into the spotlight when she revealed that she had fertility treatment to help her conceive. Susan Daly reports
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/its-no-secret-but-we-dont-want-to-talk-about-ivf-1850920.html
Wednesday August 05 2009
'So when are you going to make me a grandmother?" It's a flippant remark but it can be devastating for a couple struggling with infertility.
The National Infertility Support and Information Group estimate that one in six Irish couples seek outside assistance to achieve pregnancy. Observe any busy street: it's impossible to tell which passer-by is secretly nursing the heartache of childlessness but it's a guarantee that some are.
RTE Prime Time presenter Miriam O'Callaghan, for example, is not a woman one would associate with reproductive problems. She surprised many last week when she told how she sought treatment from a fertility expert in England after the birth of her first child.
"After my first child I couldn't get pregnant, so I went to a gynaecologist, a man called Peter Snow (the broadcaster Jon Snow's cousin)," she said. "I got three children in 10 months. A very effective fertility drug!"
Miriam had a daughter, and then twins 10 months later. Multiple births are a frequent consequence of fertility treatment.
Miriam, as we know, is now a mum of eight but says that she "didn't find it easy" to have children. "I am now their best success story in this fertility clinic. But, hey, I want to put it out there, because I know for some people it is hard to have babies," she added.
There are a number of fertility clinics in Ireland, some private and some linked to major maternity hospitals.
But there is still a taboo about saying you sought help to have your child says Anna (31) who had twins 10 months ago after a course of IVF (in vitro fertilisation). Anna asked for her real name to be kept out of this article. Although she has been open with family and friends about her treatment, she has just started a new business and feels that strangers might not understand.
As it was, she says, even her GP seemed wary of advising her on fertility treatments. "We got married when I was 26, and after a few years of trying, we went to the GP. All the GP would say was 'Take a break for a while, relax, it will happen'. But we were young and healthy, and it just wasn't happening. We felt we had to push the issue. In general, I feel that GPs aren't educated to the possibilities out there."
Anna was referred to HARI (Human Assisted Reproduction Ireland) in the Rotunda maternity hospital in Dublin, but says they faced a five-month wait to get a consultation. She and her husband turned to a private fertility clinic in Dublin. They had a procedure called ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) where the sperm is injected into the egg outside the body -- "it's more proactive than letting them mix in a Petri dish" -- and were successful on their first cycle of IVF when the fertilised embryos were implanted in Anna's uterus.
"We were very lucky," she says. "A very good friend of mine has had three failed attempts at IVF. She feels like she's hitting a brick wall while all around her, friends are having families. She's tortured, that's the only word for it."
The treatments, and the possibility of failure, can put huge emotional strain on a couple. "Everyone has a different opinion on the hormone injections you have to give yourself, but it can be very trying. We just kept very positive in our thinking, saying 'We're giving ourselves the best possible chance'. But you are pumping yourself full of hormones and you're swaying from low to high for about 10 days a month," says Anna.
Ireland doesn't have any cohesive data on babies born as a result of fertility treatment but the latest figures from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology state that around 30pc of patients who go through IVF and ICSI have successful pregnancies. Many couples begin with IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) where prepared sperm from a woman's partner is injected directly into the uterus at the time of ovulation. It's less invasive than IVF and ICSI because eggs don't have to be harvested and fertilised outside the body, but often it's not enough and women go on to those procedures.
Dr David Walsh of SIMS, one of Ireland's largest fertility clinics, says that people do not seek their help lightly. "Occasionally, we might be approached by someone who has been trying for about six months," he says. "But often that is an older woman, over 35, and it is on her mind that she has a limited time frame and just wants to check there is no major reason why she has not yet conceived."
Dr Walsh says there are three major risks associated with fertility treatment: failure to conceive, or miscarriage, and the emotional trauma that inflicts; over-stimulation of the ovaries (there has been one death in Ireland from this condition); and the possibility of multiple births.
"The incidence of twins is significant with fertility treatments and a lot of clinics are trying to reduce that, especially for younger women," says Dr Walsh. "But in the example of say a 39-year-old who is trying for her first child, twins can be very welcome."
Anna says she and her husband almost fell off their chairs with shock when they were told they were expecting twins.
They said because of our age and a 40pc chance of the treatment working, that there was a one in six chance that two eggs could take. To be honest, you are thinking the odds are against you."
On hearing the news, she says, "we wobbled out of the clinic that day!" Now they are delighted. "We count it as double luck."
The high cost of fertility treatment is another stumbling block for many couples. While units like the Merrion Fertility Clinic, which is linked to the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street, Dublin, is a non-profit charitable organisation, private clinics can charge €4,000 and up for a cycle of IVF. Even a cycle of IUI is around €1,000 a go.
Ethical concerns revolve around what happens to the 'leftover embryos' that result when multiple eggs are fertilised in the hope of creating healthy embryos. In February of this year, Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan described as "extraordinary" the fact that the Government has taken no steps to legislate fertility treatment here. The result is that there is still hot debate over whether an embryo has the legal protection of an "unborn" child if it is not actually implanted in a mother's womb.
Freakish stories from other countries about the possible abuse of fertility treatment add fuel to the fire.
Leading embryologists voiced their concerns that the birth of eight babies to Nadya Suleman in California, USA this year constituted "inappropriate medical therapy". The controversial Spanish woman Maria del Carmen Bousada, who gave birth to twins at the age of 66 as a result of fertility treatment, died of cancer last month. Her twin boys are now orphans at the age of two.
There are alternatives to the IVF route -- private clinics like the Galway Clinic, which offers the NaPro reproductive treatment, and the Cork Natural Fertility Clinic claim to address the issue of infertility on a more holistic level.
For Anna, having successfully had her first two children by IVF, she is hoping to try for a third child at the clinic. "I won't have to go through the harvesting of the eggs again as we have our embryos stored," she says. "That's a relief."
Silly season
From the Irish Independent on Bank Holiday Monday (natch)...
CHILDHOOD SUMMER MEMORIES
THEY say the past is a foreign country. That’s the closest most Irish people over the age of 30 got to a trip abroad in the summers of their childhood.
The quintessential Irish summer holiday was one of simple pleasures. A caravan in a field, a two-week stay with country cousins, a hormone-awakening trip to the Gaeltacht. Few kids of the ’80s, ’70s and beyond ever made it onto an airplane – a ferry to visit emigrant aunts in England was about as glamorous as it got.
We asked a number of well-known Irish faces to recount their childhood summer memories. Ice-cream, eternal sunshine, mobile homes and saving hay all figure strongly in their recollections….
DEREK DAVIS, 4FM radio presenter
“My mother was from Bray, Co Wicklow and we would spend two weeks south of the border every year. She would meet with old buddies to go to the Theatre Royal or the Dublin Horse Show.
I was born in 1948, and rationing continued in the North until 1953, so we thought of the South as a place of indulgence and comfort. Ice-creams were always twice the size south of the Border.
I have very fond memories of going to a beach called the Silver Strand; just the clarity and warmth of the water, little mackerel fry swimming around in it.
In Bray, there was a swimming pool under Bray Head and a funicular railway ran up Bray Head. These were marvels to kids. Relatives would give you five shillings to buy flippers and snorkels from the kiosks and ice-creams from the Italian ice-cream parlours. I also remember the wonderful taste of sausages and puddings made by German families like Caprani and Haffner; we couldn’t go back up North without the boot of the car groaning with the weight of them at the end of the holiday!”
KAREN KOSTER, TV3 Xpose presenter
“We went to Kelly’s Resort in Wexford because it was so child-friendly. There was a ten-year age gap between me and my older brother and sister so I think my parents liked that there were plenty of kids for me to play with.
There was proper crazy golf and these massive chess pieces and chess board painted onto the tarmac. The ballroom had a mural of seaside and deckchairs if I remember.
Kelly’s has gone a bit fancy in recent years, with the new spa and so on. It felt strange to go back when they started to refurbish it. I felt a bit like they were changing my home!”
DAVY CARTON, Lead singer with the Saw Doctors
“I get flashbacks from that episode of Fr Ted where they are all stuffed into a caravan. We ended up in one in Ballybunion in Co Clare - and that would have been exotic! I remember my father, God love him, trying to set up a camping gas stove on the beach with methylated spirits. He almost set fire to the whole bush surrounding the beach.
When we grew up a bit, we were let loose in the Gaeltacht for a couple of weeks. It was great fun, the chance to go daft, but as for ‘firsts’ all I was interested in at the time was football and drink!”
TANYA AIREY, MD of Sunway Holidays
“My father was involved in the travel business but my mother wasn’t keen on going abroad. We had a mobile home in Carn in Wexford, where we went for six weeks. That was in the ’70s, and I think summers were different then, weren’t they? We felt like the sun was shining all the time.
It was about that sense of independence. Riding your bicycle everywhere, eating outside. Freedom!
I did go to Majorca once as a child and I have strong memories of the excitement of such a different place, the heat, the colours. It was really great.”
DEREK MOONEY, RTE radio and TV broadcaster
“I remember my first holiday out of Dublin for a reason. It was Galway and I went with my parents, my brother Mike, my sister and her husband and we were staying out in Salthill.
I was still in short trousers so I could have been anything from 8, 9, 10 up and we were walking down a country lane. There was a big black bull in a field and the next thing I knew, I fell off the stone wall and into the field. I will never forget the fright I got that day – I had fallen in a big bunch of nettles and I was crying my eyes out while my brother tried to fish me out.
We went into the centre of Galway later that day and I was put sitting on the knee of that Padraig O Conaire statue. I remember thinking, ‘Here I am sitting with Padraig O Conaire who used to write about the black donkey, and there I was today with a black bull’.”
LINDA MARTIN, singer and TV personality
“We used to spend a few weeks every year in the Bray/Dun Laoghaire area with my grandmother’s cousin Grace Tobin. We used to decamp from Belfast by train every summer. Her house used to seem huge to me – everything seemed to be made of wood, and there was this enormous staircase going right up the middle of it.
Grace had live-in help and she used to take my sister and me to the carnival. Of course all I can remember is sunshine and how we would spend all day on the beach in Bray with no sun oil on. I remember the promenade, the beach and ice-cream: just glorious memories. Grace turned 90 last year and we’re still in contact.”
Actress DAWN BRADFIELD
“Our holidays were spent at my granny’s in Galway, doing the hay, taking the cows out. I had a few posh girls in my class in Cork and they would be heading off to Disneyland but I didn’t feel like I was missing out.
I have a lot of English cousins who used to come to Granny’s too and they made it very glamorous with their English accents! I had one cousin who was a year older than me. She had lovely trendy clothes, long hair (when I had short) and perfect eyesight (I wore glasses!) I thought she was the most divine creature!”
JOHN CREEDON
“Both my parents were from west Cork so we 12 children were dispensed to the countryside to farms of family members. I absolutely loved it. I remember distinctly sitting on my uncle Jack’s cart with his beautiful big red horse, bringing in the loose cocks of hay.
We did have one big family trip and it was hilarious. My father had a big old red and cream Mercedes that he got cheap and he rented this monstrosity of a ten-berth caravan. On day one, we went to Dublin Zoo and Malahide. I sprained my ankle at the zoo and we all got sunburnt at Malahide beach so by night-time my mother nursing a caravan full of kids!
But the best bit of organisation was when they timed our arrival in Belfast for the Twelfth of July. It would have been the summer of ’69, the Troubles were breaking out and as we entered Belfast the sky was darkened with smoke. My mom and dad were anxious about being recognised as Catholics from the south but they were looking for the field where all the bands were amassed.
The next thing, my dad lowered the window, put on his ‘best’ Belfast accent and asked an RUC man where the field was. The officer looked in the back at the rake of kids, pushed back his cap and asked, ‘Are ye from Cork or from Kerry?’
My parents were both great, colourful characters. If life is a lottery, then my numbers came up with them.”
Ballydung Manor bachelors PODGE and RODGE
“There was a burnt out double decker bus in the field opposite us, and Mammy used to rent our bedroom out for the August bank holiday every year and make us camp in it.
She said it was a holiday but then Rodge’s lungs nearly collapsed due to the asbestos roof we’d used to keep the rain out, so that was the end of that.
One year, when Daddy had won a few bob at an illegal gambling night, he said he’d take us all up to Bundoran. The problem was we had to walk, so by the time we got there we had to turn around and come home. Which was just as well as he hadn’t booked anywhere to stay.”
• This August Bank Holiday Monday, Derek Mooney and John Creedon will be manning their shows on RTE Radio 1 as usual, and The Saw Doctors will be releasing their new single, She Loves Me, on CD and iTunes. Derek Davis will be relaxing after presenting his Sunday show, Davis on 4 from 10am-noon.
- Susan Daly
CHILDHOOD SUMMER MEMORIES
THEY say the past is a foreign country. That’s the closest most Irish people over the age of 30 got to a trip abroad in the summers of their childhood.
The quintessential Irish summer holiday was one of simple pleasures. A caravan in a field, a two-week stay with country cousins, a hormone-awakening trip to the Gaeltacht. Few kids of the ’80s, ’70s and beyond ever made it onto an airplane – a ferry to visit emigrant aunts in England was about as glamorous as it got.
We asked a number of well-known Irish faces to recount their childhood summer memories. Ice-cream, eternal sunshine, mobile homes and saving hay all figure strongly in their recollections….
DEREK DAVIS, 4FM radio presenter
“My mother was from Bray, Co Wicklow and we would spend two weeks south of the border every year. She would meet with old buddies to go to the Theatre Royal or the Dublin Horse Show.
I was born in 1948, and rationing continued in the North until 1953, so we thought of the South as a place of indulgence and comfort. Ice-creams were always twice the size south of the Border.
I have very fond memories of going to a beach called the Silver Strand; just the clarity and warmth of the water, little mackerel fry swimming around in it.
In Bray, there was a swimming pool under Bray Head and a funicular railway ran up Bray Head. These were marvels to kids. Relatives would give you five shillings to buy flippers and snorkels from the kiosks and ice-creams from the Italian ice-cream parlours. I also remember the wonderful taste of sausages and puddings made by German families like Caprani and Haffner; we couldn’t go back up North without the boot of the car groaning with the weight of them at the end of the holiday!”
KAREN KOSTER, TV3 Xpose presenter
“We went to Kelly’s Resort in Wexford because it was so child-friendly. There was a ten-year age gap between me and my older brother and sister so I think my parents liked that there were plenty of kids for me to play with.
There was proper crazy golf and these massive chess pieces and chess board painted onto the tarmac. The ballroom had a mural of seaside and deckchairs if I remember.
Kelly’s has gone a bit fancy in recent years, with the new spa and so on. It felt strange to go back when they started to refurbish it. I felt a bit like they were changing my home!”
DAVY CARTON, Lead singer with the Saw Doctors
“I get flashbacks from that episode of Fr Ted where they are all stuffed into a caravan. We ended up in one in Ballybunion in Co Clare - and that would have been exotic! I remember my father, God love him, trying to set up a camping gas stove on the beach with methylated spirits. He almost set fire to the whole bush surrounding the beach.
When we grew up a bit, we were let loose in the Gaeltacht for a couple of weeks. It was great fun, the chance to go daft, but as for ‘firsts’ all I was interested in at the time was football and drink!”
TANYA AIREY, MD of Sunway Holidays
“My father was involved in the travel business but my mother wasn’t keen on going abroad. We had a mobile home in Carn in Wexford, where we went for six weeks. That was in the ’70s, and I think summers were different then, weren’t they? We felt like the sun was shining all the time.
It was about that sense of independence. Riding your bicycle everywhere, eating outside. Freedom!
I did go to Majorca once as a child and I have strong memories of the excitement of such a different place, the heat, the colours. It was really great.”
DEREK MOONEY, RTE radio and TV broadcaster
“I remember my first holiday out of Dublin for a reason. It was Galway and I went with my parents, my brother Mike, my sister and her husband and we were staying out in Salthill.
I was still in short trousers so I could have been anything from 8, 9, 10 up and we were walking down a country lane. There was a big black bull in a field and the next thing I knew, I fell off the stone wall and into the field. I will never forget the fright I got that day – I had fallen in a big bunch of nettles and I was crying my eyes out while my brother tried to fish me out.
We went into the centre of Galway later that day and I was put sitting on the knee of that Padraig O Conaire statue. I remember thinking, ‘Here I am sitting with Padraig O Conaire who used to write about the black donkey, and there I was today with a black bull’.”
LINDA MARTIN, singer and TV personality
“We used to spend a few weeks every year in the Bray/Dun Laoghaire area with my grandmother’s cousin Grace Tobin. We used to decamp from Belfast by train every summer. Her house used to seem huge to me – everything seemed to be made of wood, and there was this enormous staircase going right up the middle of it.
Grace had live-in help and she used to take my sister and me to the carnival. Of course all I can remember is sunshine and how we would spend all day on the beach in Bray with no sun oil on. I remember the promenade, the beach and ice-cream: just glorious memories. Grace turned 90 last year and we’re still in contact.”
Actress DAWN BRADFIELD
“Our holidays were spent at my granny’s in Galway, doing the hay, taking the cows out. I had a few posh girls in my class in Cork and they would be heading off to Disneyland but I didn’t feel like I was missing out.
I have a lot of English cousins who used to come to Granny’s too and they made it very glamorous with their English accents! I had one cousin who was a year older than me. She had lovely trendy clothes, long hair (when I had short) and perfect eyesight (I wore glasses!) I thought she was the most divine creature!”
JOHN CREEDON
“Both my parents were from west Cork so we 12 children were dispensed to the countryside to farms of family members. I absolutely loved it. I remember distinctly sitting on my uncle Jack’s cart with his beautiful big red horse, bringing in the loose cocks of hay.
We did have one big family trip and it was hilarious. My father had a big old red and cream Mercedes that he got cheap and he rented this monstrosity of a ten-berth caravan. On day one, we went to Dublin Zoo and Malahide. I sprained my ankle at the zoo and we all got sunburnt at Malahide beach so by night-time my mother nursing a caravan full of kids!
But the best bit of organisation was when they timed our arrival in Belfast for the Twelfth of July. It would have been the summer of ’69, the Troubles were breaking out and as we entered Belfast the sky was darkened with smoke. My mom and dad were anxious about being recognised as Catholics from the south but they were looking for the field where all the bands were amassed.
The next thing, my dad lowered the window, put on his ‘best’ Belfast accent and asked an RUC man where the field was. The officer looked in the back at the rake of kids, pushed back his cap and asked, ‘Are ye from Cork or from Kerry?’
My parents were both great, colourful characters. If life is a lottery, then my numbers came up with them.”
Ballydung Manor bachelors PODGE and RODGE
“There was a burnt out double decker bus in the field opposite us, and Mammy used to rent our bedroom out for the August bank holiday every year and make us camp in it.
She said it was a holiday but then Rodge’s lungs nearly collapsed due to the asbestos roof we’d used to keep the rain out, so that was the end of that.
One year, when Daddy had won a few bob at an illegal gambling night, he said he’d take us all up to Bundoran. The problem was we had to walk, so by the time we got there we had to turn around and come home. Which was just as well as he hadn’t booked anywhere to stay.”
• This August Bank Holiday Monday, Derek Mooney and John Creedon will be manning their shows on RTE Radio 1 as usual, and The Saw Doctors will be releasing their new single, She Loves Me, on CD and iTunes. Derek Davis will be relaxing after presenting his Sunday show, Davis on 4 from 10am-noon.
- Susan Daly
Rants
Some recent op-eds from the Evening Herald...
FROM TUESDAY'S EVENING HERALD - REACTION TO THE DAWN ARRESTS OF THOMAS COOK WORKERS...
WHO would have thought that the cheerful Thomas Cook assistant who booked your two weeks in the sun was a dangerous outlaw?
They don’t seem the criminal types. Yet while the rest of us were still snoozing in our beds at 5am this morning, around 20 Thomas Cook workers were being arrested by gardai. You would normally associate early morning raids with drug dealers or wanted violent offenders – not with the genial men and women who advise you on the most family-friendly holiday resorts.
Nonetheless the Thomas Cook Twenty (plus) are now languishing in the Bridewell waiting for the full rigours of the law to be meted out on their heads.
The gardai are of course just carrying out orders on foot of a High Court order for the workers to vacate the Grafton Street premises where they have been staging a sit-in protest since last Friday.
It all seems so terribly heavy-handed, not to mention precipitous, to have these frustrated employees hauled before court before the bank holiday weekend is barely out. Who knew our justice system was so efficient?
What a shame the wheels of justice were not able to grind as quickly for the fat cats who brought down the economy. I don’t see the legal repercussions for the greedy bankers and developers whose actions now have the rest of us on our knees, cancelling our holidays and keeping good people like the Thomas Cook employees out of a job.
It is a bizarre reversal of justice that the Marie Antoinettes are allowed to keep their heads while all around them, honest workers like those at Thomas Cook must face the legal guillotine.
There is no comparison between the debauched behaviour of certain moneymen and the measly few extra weeks of redundancy the Thomas Cook workers are looking for. As with all the people who are losing their jobs these days, these employees are looking only to keep their families’ heads above water.
They want to make their mortgages, get their children to school with books and a uniform. They are not asking for help to keep their multi-million empires from crumbling around their ears. They are not audacious. They are decent skins who feel cheated.
Why wouldn’t they? In May there were proposals to shut the Thomas Cook shop on Grafton Street and the Thomas Cook-owned subsidiary, Direct Holidays, on Talbot Street. Staff were willing to take the pain, freeze salaries, do what they could to keep the operation limping along.
Then last Friday they had the rug well and truly pulled out from under them when the Grafton Street shop was closed with immediate effect. That’s it, folks. Go home. Your work here is done.
I wonder if the Thomas Cook employees were thinking about all the August bank holiday breaks they had carefully organised for their customers’ enjoyment. And how they would be spending theirs facing into a bleak hole of unemployment – and desperation, considering the likelihood of securing a new post in the struggling travel industry.
Of course they felt bitter. Of course they felt frustrated. The sit-in protest was completely impromptu. There are women involved with small children who had made no plans to abandon their families for what would normally be the last long weekend of fun before school reopens.
The atmosphere surrounding the Grafton Street shop at the weekend was benign. Local businesses dropped in food. The public, many of whom no doubt had pleasant dealings with the staff in the past, sent messages of solidarity which were pasted up on the walls. The Thomas Cook workers have a lot of sympathy and support behind them.
All of this matters for nothing of course when someone on high decides that you are to be Made An Example Of. Mere office workers shall not be allowed to embarrass Big Business. The Thomas Cook workers are paying a heavier price than they deserve because others failed to pay their share.
KIDS BEHAVING BADLY
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/kids-dont-know-whats-good-for-them--but-parents-should-1849154.html
By Susan Daly
Saturday August 01 2009
HOLD the front page: A new study says that Irish parents are sleep-deprived.
But read on. The research also finds that most of these parents could change their children's bad sleeping habits in just a few days.
Many are using "unhelpful techniques" in bringing up baby, according to the eggheads.
They reward their children by giving them a drink or toys or taking them into their bed when they wake up at night -- ensuring they'll do it again, night after night.
In a nutshell, or in this case an old chestnut, spare the rod and spoil the child.
Poor parents. Under siege again from the childcare bullies. Well, don't come looking for sympathy from this quarter. I feel like we are a nation overrun with terror tots as a result of misguided -- and I'm being kind there -- parenting.
I'm not talking about the kids who go around setting cars on fire and blinding small animals. They obviously have Jeremy Kyle-level problems.
I mean the more insidious examples of kids behaving badly. The child who talks all over a group of adults because mammy hasn't ever told them to wait their turn to speak.
Too many Irish kids are not well behaved (hate mail to the usual address, please).
Of course there are plenty of nicely mannered children out there. But you don't notice them because they're not the ones yelling at the top of their lungs in a restaurant for chips while their parents act like they have gone spontaneously deaf.
People, mainly parents, rant on about how welcoming restaurants and cafes are to children in continental Europe, compared to your average Irish establishment.
That's because kids in Italy and France are taught from an early age how to behave in public. And it doesn't involve calling your mother anything that rhymes with 'itch', or kicking your dad because he won't let you juggle the steak knives.
Look, I don't hate children. I actually quite like them (although I couldn't eat a whole one). But in the 99pc of cases where your child is not actually the result of a one-night stand with the devil, it IS the parents' fault if they turn into the anti-Christ.
Watch a TV parenting programme like Supernanny and the basic message is always the same. When parents let their kids take control, the kids go out of control.
Now, I realise that an entire industry has cynically grown up around child-rearing, and the advice given out by self-appointed childcare experts can be conflicting.
I feel for first-time parents faced with shelves of instruction books for babies, as if they were some kitchen gadget that is perfectly manageable as long as you know which button to push.
The advice can be confusing. Let them cry it out, says one. Pick them up straight away or they'll feel abandoned, says another. It's like the warnings given out about meeting a bear in a forest: are you meant to climb a tree or play dead?
Sheer information overload gives people an excuse to say, 'There's no right way to raise children'. That's a load of rubbish, too. A dose of common sense is always the way to go.
I'm not advocating a return to the days of 'seen, not heard', but I applaud parents who treat their children as the immature little folk they are.
They don't know what's good for them -- we do. They're not the adults -- we are. The kids will just have to suck it up, and thank you later.
SQUANDERING THE SKILLED ON DOLE QUEUES
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/squandering-the-skilled-on-dole-queues-is-a-waste-and-a-disgrace-1849787.html
By Susan Daly
Monday August 03 2009
IT can't be an enormous surprise that FAS has seen so few applications for its latest scheme. The idea was that unemployed people would be occupied in unpaid work experience while retaining their benefit payments.
This makes sense for recent graduates who are treading that vicious hamster wheel of not being able to get their first foot in the door of their chosen industry. No experience, no job; no job, no experience.
But a quick poll of lines at the nearest social welfare office would testify to the fact that many of the newly unemployed have reams of experience and qualifications.
The dole queues are not solely occupied by the school-leavers and semi-skilled workers who swelled the ranks of the Live Register two decades ago.
Now the lines are full of professionals with whole careers behind them, arts and sports employees, crafts and tradespeople. These are not people who need to become trainees all over again. So why not make them the trainers?
If the Government looked hard enough -- or at all -- it would see a bright idea staring it in the face.
You wouldn't leave a valuable car out to rust on a beach, so why squander these people's assets on a stagnant dole queue?
There is a seasonal industry that has mushroomed in recent years where these highly skilled people could find a new home for their expertise. There is a summer school for everything these days and they are hugely popular.
Check out the prices being charged by the next summer camp to drop its leaflet through your letterbox. (Around our way, the fliers and circulars took over from where the local election campaign literature left off.)
Parents are shelling out hundreds of euro a week for their budding Ronaldo to attend soccer camp, or for their artistic daughter to daub watercolours in an art course at the bottom of someone's garden.
Kids' extra-curricular activities on school summer break are no longer confined to kicking a ball against the side of the house.
They can learn to climb a rock face, dance a polka, programme a computer.
Parents are anxious to cultivate their talents, keep them entertained and -- you know it's true -- get them out of their hair.
So if we take for granted the idea that the summer course is here to stay, why isn't the Government getting in on the act?
Think of all the schools lying idle during summer: those are your rent-free premises on tap right there.
Add to that the thousands of unemployed, but skilled people, just dying to throw some shape on their day, and you have a winner.
They might receive a nominal fee for their time, but they go home with a sense of purpose and a value-added CV in their future job hunt.
Parents already pay premium rates to private summer camps to allow their kids to indulge their passion for everything from gym to Gaeilge.
Government-run schemes could easily turn a profit by charging parents fees, albeit slightly reduced ones considering how cost-efficient the use of school grounds would be. Parents would get a few euro back, the State coffers would receive a boost, and the instructors would feel more valued by society and less a part of the benefits merry-go-round.
Setting up such a scheme would take a good deal of planning and a fair bit of lateral thinking. But we could be looking at a whole new range of summer camps.
Imagine teens who are into modified cars getting responsible instruction from a mechanic who has seen enough death-trap bangers in his time to be passionate about kids staying out of danger.
Private gyms have been suffering from dropped memberships: wouldn't a recently redundant fitness instructor be the perfect fit for a sports camp? All those out-of-work IT techies -- straight to science camp for you.
As it stands, it is entirely ludicrous not to have some plan B for the newly redundant. This is just one. Isn't it the Department of Trade and Employment's job to -- apologies for the Celtic Tiger phrase -- think outside the box?
FROM TUESDAY'S EVENING HERALD - REACTION TO THE DAWN ARRESTS OF THOMAS COOK WORKERS...
WHO would have thought that the cheerful Thomas Cook assistant who booked your two weeks in the sun was a dangerous outlaw?
They don’t seem the criminal types. Yet while the rest of us were still snoozing in our beds at 5am this morning, around 20 Thomas Cook workers were being arrested by gardai. You would normally associate early morning raids with drug dealers or wanted violent offenders – not with the genial men and women who advise you on the most family-friendly holiday resorts.
Nonetheless the Thomas Cook Twenty (plus) are now languishing in the Bridewell waiting for the full rigours of the law to be meted out on their heads.
The gardai are of course just carrying out orders on foot of a High Court order for the workers to vacate the Grafton Street premises where they have been staging a sit-in protest since last Friday.
It all seems so terribly heavy-handed, not to mention precipitous, to have these frustrated employees hauled before court before the bank holiday weekend is barely out. Who knew our justice system was so efficient?
What a shame the wheels of justice were not able to grind as quickly for the fat cats who brought down the economy. I don’t see the legal repercussions for the greedy bankers and developers whose actions now have the rest of us on our knees, cancelling our holidays and keeping good people like the Thomas Cook employees out of a job.
It is a bizarre reversal of justice that the Marie Antoinettes are allowed to keep their heads while all around them, honest workers like those at Thomas Cook must face the legal guillotine.
There is no comparison between the debauched behaviour of certain moneymen and the measly few extra weeks of redundancy the Thomas Cook workers are looking for. As with all the people who are losing their jobs these days, these employees are looking only to keep their families’ heads above water.
They want to make their mortgages, get their children to school with books and a uniform. They are not asking for help to keep their multi-million empires from crumbling around their ears. They are not audacious. They are decent skins who feel cheated.
Why wouldn’t they? In May there were proposals to shut the Thomas Cook shop on Grafton Street and the Thomas Cook-owned subsidiary, Direct Holidays, on Talbot Street. Staff were willing to take the pain, freeze salaries, do what they could to keep the operation limping along.
Then last Friday they had the rug well and truly pulled out from under them when the Grafton Street shop was closed with immediate effect. That’s it, folks. Go home. Your work here is done.
I wonder if the Thomas Cook employees were thinking about all the August bank holiday breaks they had carefully organised for their customers’ enjoyment. And how they would be spending theirs facing into a bleak hole of unemployment – and desperation, considering the likelihood of securing a new post in the struggling travel industry.
Of course they felt bitter. Of course they felt frustrated. The sit-in protest was completely impromptu. There are women involved with small children who had made no plans to abandon their families for what would normally be the last long weekend of fun before school reopens.
The atmosphere surrounding the Grafton Street shop at the weekend was benign. Local businesses dropped in food. The public, many of whom no doubt had pleasant dealings with the staff in the past, sent messages of solidarity which were pasted up on the walls. The Thomas Cook workers have a lot of sympathy and support behind them.
All of this matters for nothing of course when someone on high decides that you are to be Made An Example Of. Mere office workers shall not be allowed to embarrass Big Business. The Thomas Cook workers are paying a heavier price than they deserve because others failed to pay their share.
KIDS BEHAVING BADLY
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/kids-dont-know-whats-good-for-them--but-parents-should-1849154.html
By Susan Daly
Saturday August 01 2009
HOLD the front page: A new study says that Irish parents are sleep-deprived.
But read on. The research also finds that most of these parents could change their children's bad sleeping habits in just a few days.
Many are using "unhelpful techniques" in bringing up baby, according to the eggheads.
They reward their children by giving them a drink or toys or taking them into their bed when they wake up at night -- ensuring they'll do it again, night after night.
In a nutshell, or in this case an old chestnut, spare the rod and spoil the child.
Poor parents. Under siege again from the childcare bullies. Well, don't come looking for sympathy from this quarter. I feel like we are a nation overrun with terror tots as a result of misguided -- and I'm being kind there -- parenting.
I'm not talking about the kids who go around setting cars on fire and blinding small animals. They obviously have Jeremy Kyle-level problems.
I mean the more insidious examples of kids behaving badly. The child who talks all over a group of adults because mammy hasn't ever told them to wait their turn to speak.
Too many Irish kids are not well behaved (hate mail to the usual address, please).
Of course there are plenty of nicely mannered children out there. But you don't notice them because they're not the ones yelling at the top of their lungs in a restaurant for chips while their parents act like they have gone spontaneously deaf.
People, mainly parents, rant on about how welcoming restaurants and cafes are to children in continental Europe, compared to your average Irish establishment.
That's because kids in Italy and France are taught from an early age how to behave in public. And it doesn't involve calling your mother anything that rhymes with 'itch', or kicking your dad because he won't let you juggle the steak knives.
Look, I don't hate children. I actually quite like them (although I couldn't eat a whole one). But in the 99pc of cases where your child is not actually the result of a one-night stand with the devil, it IS the parents' fault if they turn into the anti-Christ.
Watch a TV parenting programme like Supernanny and the basic message is always the same. When parents let their kids take control, the kids go out of control.
Now, I realise that an entire industry has cynically grown up around child-rearing, and the advice given out by self-appointed childcare experts can be conflicting.
I feel for first-time parents faced with shelves of instruction books for babies, as if they were some kitchen gadget that is perfectly manageable as long as you know which button to push.
The advice can be confusing. Let them cry it out, says one. Pick them up straight away or they'll feel abandoned, says another. It's like the warnings given out about meeting a bear in a forest: are you meant to climb a tree or play dead?
Sheer information overload gives people an excuse to say, 'There's no right way to raise children'. That's a load of rubbish, too. A dose of common sense is always the way to go.
I'm not advocating a return to the days of 'seen, not heard', but I applaud parents who treat their children as the immature little folk they are.
They don't know what's good for them -- we do. They're not the adults -- we are. The kids will just have to suck it up, and thank you later.
SQUANDERING THE SKILLED ON DOLE QUEUES
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/squandering-the-skilled-on-dole-queues-is-a-waste-and-a-disgrace-1849787.html
By Susan Daly
Monday August 03 2009
IT can't be an enormous surprise that FAS has seen so few applications for its latest scheme. The idea was that unemployed people would be occupied in unpaid work experience while retaining their benefit payments.
This makes sense for recent graduates who are treading that vicious hamster wheel of not being able to get their first foot in the door of their chosen industry. No experience, no job; no job, no experience.
But a quick poll of lines at the nearest social welfare office would testify to the fact that many of the newly unemployed have reams of experience and qualifications.
The dole queues are not solely occupied by the school-leavers and semi-skilled workers who swelled the ranks of the Live Register two decades ago.
Now the lines are full of professionals with whole careers behind them, arts and sports employees, crafts and tradespeople. These are not people who need to become trainees all over again. So why not make them the trainers?
If the Government looked hard enough -- or at all -- it would see a bright idea staring it in the face.
You wouldn't leave a valuable car out to rust on a beach, so why squander these people's assets on a stagnant dole queue?
There is a seasonal industry that has mushroomed in recent years where these highly skilled people could find a new home for their expertise. There is a summer school for everything these days and they are hugely popular.
Check out the prices being charged by the next summer camp to drop its leaflet through your letterbox. (Around our way, the fliers and circulars took over from where the local election campaign literature left off.)
Parents are shelling out hundreds of euro a week for their budding Ronaldo to attend soccer camp, or for their artistic daughter to daub watercolours in an art course at the bottom of someone's garden.
Kids' extra-curricular activities on school summer break are no longer confined to kicking a ball against the side of the house.
They can learn to climb a rock face, dance a polka, programme a computer.
Parents are anxious to cultivate their talents, keep them entertained and -- you know it's true -- get them out of their hair.
So if we take for granted the idea that the summer course is here to stay, why isn't the Government getting in on the act?
Think of all the schools lying idle during summer: those are your rent-free premises on tap right there.
Add to that the thousands of unemployed, but skilled people, just dying to throw some shape on their day, and you have a winner.
They might receive a nominal fee for their time, but they go home with a sense of purpose and a value-added CV in their future job hunt.
Parents already pay premium rates to private summer camps to allow their kids to indulge their passion for everything from gym to Gaeilge.
Government-run schemes could easily turn a profit by charging parents fees, albeit slightly reduced ones considering how cost-efficient the use of school grounds would be. Parents would get a few euro back, the State coffers would receive a boost, and the instructors would feel more valued by society and less a part of the benefits merry-go-round.
Setting up such a scheme would take a good deal of planning and a fair bit of lateral thinking. But we could be looking at a whole new range of summer camps.
Imagine teens who are into modified cars getting responsible instruction from a mechanic who has seen enough death-trap bangers in his time to be passionate about kids staying out of danger.
Private gyms have been suffering from dropped memberships: wouldn't a recently redundant fitness instructor be the perfect fit for a sports camp? All those out-of-work IT techies -- straight to science camp for you.
As it stands, it is entirely ludicrous not to have some plan B for the newly redundant. This is just one. Isn't it the Department of Trade and Employment's job to -- apologies for the Celtic Tiger phrase -- think outside the box?
The sexual gulf war
Orgasms and the sexual proclivities of OAPs are slightly surreal topics of conversation to have with a stranger at 9am but that's what happened when I got Australian sex therapist Bettina Arndt on the phone for an interview...
Saturday August 01 2009
They say men and women are from different planets, but if Bettina Arndt's research is anything to go by, most couples are light years apart in bed. SUSAN DALY talks mismatched libidos with the Australian sex therapist.
ADRIENNE dreads the "creeping hand" groping across the marital bed to check if she's in the mood for love. Rachel says, "I feel like I'm enduring sex most of the time". Megan's friend tells her husband to "Hurry up and get it over with". Unsurprisingly, he now has erectile problems.
Women want less sex than men, says Bettina Arndt, and couples spend their lives negotiating who gets what, how much of it and how often. Arndt (59) is Australia's most prominent sex therapist and the women quoted above are three of the 98 people she persuaded to keep sex diaries for six to nine months.
If The Sex Diaries, the book based on the chronicles of her male and female subjects, is representative, then we're all treading through a sexual minefield. For every couple that records joyful physical intimacies in their diaries, there are 10 describing hugely mismatched libidos.
Adam (36) has only had sex twice in six years of marriage. Once on his wedding night, when his wife fell pregnant with their first child, and on the night when his second daughter was conceived. His wife won't speak to him about the sex drought, so he's thinking of turning to prostitutes, but can't justify spending the money. "It takes milk from my babies' mouths, if you can understand," he writes.
Craig has not had sex with his wife for five years. "The last time we had sex she obviously did not enjoy it, and she got up the instant I had finished to go and wash any trace of me off her. Her manner and extreme reaction made me feel like I was dirty and worthless."
Another man made the mistake of telling his wife after yet another rejected advance that he would not ask again -- she would have to initiate sex the next time. That was eight years ago, and he's still waiting. Yet another is trying to keep a spark of intimacy alive in his marriage to a wife who suffers from severe OCD: they have agreed to have sex once a week, at 9.15am exactly every Sunday.
There are sad men lamenting the loss of the early passion of their relationships, and women who wish they felt desire -- but don't. While there are a few reversals of this state of play in the diaries -- where the woman has the higher sex drive -- Arndt believes that this is just how it is with men and women. She's very sure of herself when I ask her about the generalisation.
"I tried to spell it out in the chapter called The Search for the Elusive Pink Viagra," she says in her frank Australian accent. "I think there is something biological there that means women have a more distractible, fragile libido.
"Evolutionary psychologists argue that we are supposed to be mothers, and mothers aren't meant to be bonking all the time. We might be in the bedroom, but we have an ear to the door."
Men, she says, are the complete opposite -- they use sex as a form of relaxation, a way to sweep away the worries and arguments of the relationship. "Men are able to use it as a distraction. That's a big gulf there. They can perform in all sorts of adverse circumstances. They can have sex with people they don't even like, for goodness' sake!"
Arndt doesn't exactly offer quick fixes, but she is fond of the phrase, 'Just do it!' It puts the onus on the partner with the lower libido to have sex even when they don't feel like it. Once they decide that sex is on the cards and put themselves in a positive mindframe, they will enjoy it, says Arndt.
This nugget of advice, which is at the heart of Arndt's book, sparked outrage in her native Australia, where The Sex Diaries is currently a bestseller. "I was expecting that," says Arndt. "Did you see that I mentioned the internet blog that started with, 'F*** you, Bettina Arndt'?"
She says she is not advocating women having unwanted sex forced on them -- a return to the days before marital rape was criminalised. She paraphrases Michele Weiner-Davis, whose book The Sex-Starved Marriage is one of a range of studies and works referenced in The Sex Diaries, when she says: "Desire is a decision. You have to put sex on the 'to do' list."
She was so affected by some of the heart-breaking diaries written by the sexually-frustrated men, she is putting together a book based on their experiences, The Male Sex Diaries. "This is not about sex, getting your rocks off," says Arndt. "It's about yearning to be wanted by the woman they love. I had a man tell me the other day that he'd had no sex in 16 years and he is still there in his marriage because he loves his wife. He was joking about the gulf war -- the 16 inches in bed between them feels like thousands of miles."
Arndt is past caring what her critics think. A clinical psychologist who specialised in sexual therapy, she carried out ground-breaking sex studies. By the age of 23 she was advising Australians on sexual issues. "Sex was such a great area to work in. There had been so much ignorance and discomfort around it."
She attracted a ban from live TV and radio for two years for speaking on radio about masturbation. "Back in the early 70s, Australia was a more conservative place," says Arndt. "That was too much for the censorship authorities. They never spelled out what exactly I had done and people thought I had used four-letter words! It was these nervous middle-aged men ready to push the button." I can only imagine what reaction she might get with a similar subject in Ireland, even today.
Born to parents who fled Nazi Germany, she was widowed at a young age with young children and is divorced from her second husband. "I've learned a lot through life itself and the things that have happened to me," she says.
Arndt says the feedback from men and women who say The Sex Diaries reflect their own lives far outweighs the Outrageds from Brisbane. "One woman told me that she was sitting in the car with her husband driving and listening to me prattling on the radio about the book. As soon as she got home, she ran into the house and sent me this email. Sitting next to him and knowing that this was their problem, and neither of them saying anything, it was excruciating."
But if, as Arndt seems to contest, a drop in libido as a relationship progresses is a biological and therefore natural event, should women (and the occasional man) be worrying if they're not swinging from the light fittings every night? Yes, she says, because apparently we are conditioned to think that desire needs to come first for sex to happen. "I've had a lot of response from women saying I know I might not feel like it, but I know when I relax, I will enjoy it. I'm not saying suffer through unwanted sex, but it's not a big ask to just make the effort."
How much effort is enough is debatable. I was far from turned on by the celebratory tale in Arndt's book of young parents Shirley and Luke, who ended up having sex while her husband held their crying baby. They weren't going to let parenthood ruin their sex lives, no way! I had reservations too about a woman called Antonia (58) who gets up at 5am to do the household chores, makes her husband a cup of tea afterwards, comes back to bed to have sex with him -- every day -- and gets back up to go to work. And her husband, to be honest, comes across as a bit of an ass, who has about a tenth of Antonia's workload but makes nasty comments when she is too tired to have sex twice in one day.
A frequent contention of Arndt's male diarists is that women are harder to please in bed. One man amusingly speaks about pleasing his partner being as difficult as "a blind man in the dark searching for a black cat that isn't there". A chapter describes some particularly nasty male sexual habits, which must have contributed to the lack of desire in some of the women. "When foreplay is bad," says Claire (32), "I feel like skipping it altogether." A wife recounts her husband's hatred of kissing her: "He doesn't like kissing -- he says I'm stealing his air."
It begs the question: where's the pleasure? Arndt points to the example of Michael and Heather, both in their 60s and still enjoying a passionate sex life. They have even kept a calendar of their sexual activities for the past 23 years, each day marked with enigmatic symbols. A green square marks a mutual orgasm -- there are plenty of those -- green lines denote a 'serious' cuddle, and four interlinked circles means they had sex in their Audi car.
"That couple are what I call my juicy tomatoes," says Arndt.
The Sex Diaries: Why Women Go Off Sex and Other Bedroom Battles, by Bettina Arndt, is published by Hamlyn and is in bookshops now
PANEL: Pillow Talk - Tales from the bedroom.
THE SELF-CONFESSED 'GROPER'
Clive (48) has been married for 22 years. He and his wife make love once or twice a fortnight, while he would love it twice a day.
"I try hard not to exceed allowable limits; to sense her mood. I wonder whether us men are sometimes the more sensitive sex. We seem to have a lot of practice at it. Grope too much and you'll be 'off sex'. So you must do it carefully.
"It's almost like being a young man and trying to work out how far your girlfriend will let you go before the shutters come down, she crosses her legs and says 'NO'. I know that a caress won't get me any sex. It's more like, 'I love you, I'm desperate for you. Just touching you is a connection from me to you. I'm still here. I still adore you. Hullo! Where has she gone, this lover I married?'"
THE LONG-TERM SEXLESS MARRIAGE
Arthur (63) has been married for 37 years. He and his wife haven't had sex for 15 years.
"I wake up before her. We have to get up soon and go to work. I reach out -- she leaps out of bed and says, 'I have to go to the toilet'.
Me: 'When you are finished come back and make mad, passionate love to me.'
She: 'Ha ha!'
Two minutes later she does come back, dressing gown over nightie. I persuade her to cuddle into me. It's pretty awkward and not at all sexual."
THE NEWLYWEDS
Kevin and Amanda, both in their early 30s and together a year, are still in the 'limerence' phase of their relationship, when the initial cocktail of chemicals inspires lust in a new couple. One of their special rituals is a quickie at the kitchen sink.
"Eventually we make it to bed, hot with the expectation of what is about to happen. I can actually feel my heart rate go up as I get into bed, in anticipation of Amanda's touch. We make love a second time and it is just incredible. I feel so high when I make love to her; it must be like being on drugs. I feel like I am in a place when I am untouchable, invincible almost."
SEX VERSUS THE HOUSEWORK
Mary (42) has been married to Peter for four years. It is a second marriage for them both. Their sex life has ground to a halt over arguments about housework.
"I'm working a full five-day week, 6am to 6.30pm. I come home, usually to cook (because he cannot and will not cook; at least, not reliably).
"Occasionally, he might put himself out but it's generally, 'Let's go to Subway', which I end up spewing about because I don't want the kids learning to rely on takeout and I spend a fortune each pay day stocking up with fresh foods and meats.
"My weekends are guaranteed: all day Saturday cleaning the house itself, then Sundays attacking the ironing.
"Yes, he does 'do the washing', which consists of putting the washing into our 10kg washer/dryer and putting the finished dried washing into a pile on the lounge floor, where the dog promptly lies all over it. Now, if he took the clothes out straightaway and hung them up or folded them, life would be sweet.
"But, he piles them load on top of load, so by the time I get to them, I've got steam-dried, cardboard lumps covered in dog hair and he wonders why I'm so bloody ungrateful and why that night I'll knock his block off when he wants 'it'."
- Susan Daly
Saturday August 01 2009
They say men and women are from different planets, but if Bettina Arndt's research is anything to go by, most couples are light years apart in bed. SUSAN DALY talks mismatched libidos with the Australian sex therapist.
ADRIENNE dreads the "creeping hand" groping across the marital bed to check if she's in the mood for love. Rachel says, "I feel like I'm enduring sex most of the time". Megan's friend tells her husband to "Hurry up and get it over with". Unsurprisingly, he now has erectile problems.
Women want less sex than men, says Bettina Arndt, and couples spend their lives negotiating who gets what, how much of it and how often. Arndt (59) is Australia's most prominent sex therapist and the women quoted above are three of the 98 people she persuaded to keep sex diaries for six to nine months.
If The Sex Diaries, the book based on the chronicles of her male and female subjects, is representative, then we're all treading through a sexual minefield. For every couple that records joyful physical intimacies in their diaries, there are 10 describing hugely mismatched libidos.
Adam (36) has only had sex twice in six years of marriage. Once on his wedding night, when his wife fell pregnant with their first child, and on the night when his second daughter was conceived. His wife won't speak to him about the sex drought, so he's thinking of turning to prostitutes, but can't justify spending the money. "It takes milk from my babies' mouths, if you can understand," he writes.
Craig has not had sex with his wife for five years. "The last time we had sex she obviously did not enjoy it, and she got up the instant I had finished to go and wash any trace of me off her. Her manner and extreme reaction made me feel like I was dirty and worthless."
Another man made the mistake of telling his wife after yet another rejected advance that he would not ask again -- she would have to initiate sex the next time. That was eight years ago, and he's still waiting. Yet another is trying to keep a spark of intimacy alive in his marriage to a wife who suffers from severe OCD: they have agreed to have sex once a week, at 9.15am exactly every Sunday.
There are sad men lamenting the loss of the early passion of their relationships, and women who wish they felt desire -- but don't. While there are a few reversals of this state of play in the diaries -- where the woman has the higher sex drive -- Arndt believes that this is just how it is with men and women. She's very sure of herself when I ask her about the generalisation.
"I tried to spell it out in the chapter called The Search for the Elusive Pink Viagra," she says in her frank Australian accent. "I think there is something biological there that means women have a more distractible, fragile libido.
"Evolutionary psychologists argue that we are supposed to be mothers, and mothers aren't meant to be bonking all the time. We might be in the bedroom, but we have an ear to the door."
Men, she says, are the complete opposite -- they use sex as a form of relaxation, a way to sweep away the worries and arguments of the relationship. "Men are able to use it as a distraction. That's a big gulf there. They can perform in all sorts of adverse circumstances. They can have sex with people they don't even like, for goodness' sake!"
Arndt doesn't exactly offer quick fixes, but she is fond of the phrase, 'Just do it!' It puts the onus on the partner with the lower libido to have sex even when they don't feel like it. Once they decide that sex is on the cards and put themselves in a positive mindframe, they will enjoy it, says Arndt.
This nugget of advice, which is at the heart of Arndt's book, sparked outrage in her native Australia, where The Sex Diaries is currently a bestseller. "I was expecting that," says Arndt. "Did you see that I mentioned the internet blog that started with, 'F*** you, Bettina Arndt'?"
She says she is not advocating women having unwanted sex forced on them -- a return to the days before marital rape was criminalised. She paraphrases Michele Weiner-Davis, whose book The Sex-Starved Marriage is one of a range of studies and works referenced in The Sex Diaries, when she says: "Desire is a decision. You have to put sex on the 'to do' list."
She was so affected by some of the heart-breaking diaries written by the sexually-frustrated men, she is putting together a book based on their experiences, The Male Sex Diaries. "This is not about sex, getting your rocks off," says Arndt. "It's about yearning to be wanted by the woman they love. I had a man tell me the other day that he'd had no sex in 16 years and he is still there in his marriage because he loves his wife. He was joking about the gulf war -- the 16 inches in bed between them feels like thousands of miles."
Arndt is past caring what her critics think. A clinical psychologist who specialised in sexual therapy, she carried out ground-breaking sex studies. By the age of 23 she was advising Australians on sexual issues. "Sex was such a great area to work in. There had been so much ignorance and discomfort around it."
She attracted a ban from live TV and radio for two years for speaking on radio about masturbation. "Back in the early 70s, Australia was a more conservative place," says Arndt. "That was too much for the censorship authorities. They never spelled out what exactly I had done and people thought I had used four-letter words! It was these nervous middle-aged men ready to push the button." I can only imagine what reaction she might get with a similar subject in Ireland, even today.
Born to parents who fled Nazi Germany, she was widowed at a young age with young children and is divorced from her second husband. "I've learned a lot through life itself and the things that have happened to me," she says.
Arndt says the feedback from men and women who say The Sex Diaries reflect their own lives far outweighs the Outrageds from Brisbane. "One woman told me that she was sitting in the car with her husband driving and listening to me prattling on the radio about the book. As soon as she got home, she ran into the house and sent me this email. Sitting next to him and knowing that this was their problem, and neither of them saying anything, it was excruciating."
But if, as Arndt seems to contest, a drop in libido as a relationship progresses is a biological and therefore natural event, should women (and the occasional man) be worrying if they're not swinging from the light fittings every night? Yes, she says, because apparently we are conditioned to think that desire needs to come first for sex to happen. "I've had a lot of response from women saying I know I might not feel like it, but I know when I relax, I will enjoy it. I'm not saying suffer through unwanted sex, but it's not a big ask to just make the effort."
How much effort is enough is debatable. I was far from turned on by the celebratory tale in Arndt's book of young parents Shirley and Luke, who ended up having sex while her husband held their crying baby. They weren't going to let parenthood ruin their sex lives, no way! I had reservations too about a woman called Antonia (58) who gets up at 5am to do the household chores, makes her husband a cup of tea afterwards, comes back to bed to have sex with him -- every day -- and gets back up to go to work. And her husband, to be honest, comes across as a bit of an ass, who has about a tenth of Antonia's workload but makes nasty comments when she is too tired to have sex twice in one day.
A frequent contention of Arndt's male diarists is that women are harder to please in bed. One man amusingly speaks about pleasing his partner being as difficult as "a blind man in the dark searching for a black cat that isn't there". A chapter describes some particularly nasty male sexual habits, which must have contributed to the lack of desire in some of the women. "When foreplay is bad," says Claire (32), "I feel like skipping it altogether." A wife recounts her husband's hatred of kissing her: "He doesn't like kissing -- he says I'm stealing his air."
It begs the question: where's the pleasure? Arndt points to the example of Michael and Heather, both in their 60s and still enjoying a passionate sex life. They have even kept a calendar of their sexual activities for the past 23 years, each day marked with enigmatic symbols. A green square marks a mutual orgasm -- there are plenty of those -- green lines denote a 'serious' cuddle, and four interlinked circles means they had sex in their Audi car.
"That couple are what I call my juicy tomatoes," says Arndt.
The Sex Diaries: Why Women Go Off Sex and Other Bedroom Battles, by Bettina Arndt, is published by Hamlyn and is in bookshops now
PANEL: Pillow Talk - Tales from the bedroom.
THE SELF-CONFESSED 'GROPER'
Clive (48) has been married for 22 years. He and his wife make love once or twice a fortnight, while he would love it twice a day.
"I try hard not to exceed allowable limits; to sense her mood. I wonder whether us men are sometimes the more sensitive sex. We seem to have a lot of practice at it. Grope too much and you'll be 'off sex'. So you must do it carefully.
"It's almost like being a young man and trying to work out how far your girlfriend will let you go before the shutters come down, she crosses her legs and says 'NO'. I know that a caress won't get me any sex. It's more like, 'I love you, I'm desperate for you. Just touching you is a connection from me to you. I'm still here. I still adore you. Hullo! Where has she gone, this lover I married?'"
THE LONG-TERM SEXLESS MARRIAGE
Arthur (63) has been married for 37 years. He and his wife haven't had sex for 15 years.
"I wake up before her. We have to get up soon and go to work. I reach out -- she leaps out of bed and says, 'I have to go to the toilet'.
Me: 'When you are finished come back and make mad, passionate love to me.'
She: 'Ha ha!'
Two minutes later she does come back, dressing gown over nightie. I persuade her to cuddle into me. It's pretty awkward and not at all sexual."
THE NEWLYWEDS
Kevin and Amanda, both in their early 30s and together a year, are still in the 'limerence' phase of their relationship, when the initial cocktail of chemicals inspires lust in a new couple. One of their special rituals is a quickie at the kitchen sink.
"Eventually we make it to bed, hot with the expectation of what is about to happen. I can actually feel my heart rate go up as I get into bed, in anticipation of Amanda's touch. We make love a second time and it is just incredible. I feel so high when I make love to her; it must be like being on drugs. I feel like I am in a place when I am untouchable, invincible almost."
SEX VERSUS THE HOUSEWORK
Mary (42) has been married to Peter for four years. It is a second marriage for them both. Their sex life has ground to a halt over arguments about housework.
"I'm working a full five-day week, 6am to 6.30pm. I come home, usually to cook (because he cannot and will not cook; at least, not reliably).
"Occasionally, he might put himself out but it's generally, 'Let's go to Subway', which I end up spewing about because I don't want the kids learning to rely on takeout and I spend a fortune each pay day stocking up with fresh foods and meats.
"My weekends are guaranteed: all day Saturday cleaning the house itself, then Sundays attacking the ironing.
"Yes, he does 'do the washing', which consists of putting the washing into our 10kg washer/dryer and putting the finished dried washing into a pile on the lounge floor, where the dog promptly lies all over it. Now, if he took the clothes out straightaway and hung them up or folded them, life would be sweet.
"But, he piles them load on top of load, so by the time I get to them, I've got steam-dried, cardboard lumps covered in dog hair and he wonders why I'm so bloody ungrateful and why that night I'll knock his block off when he wants 'it'."
- Susan Daly
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