Grief and stars and love

No sign yet of the online link, so here's my interview with Hermione Ross (aka Hennessy), daughter of the late and wonderful singer-songwriter Christie Hennessy, published in the Indo's Weekend mag yesterday. Above is a photograph of Christie as a new, 19-year-old dad, in London with his beloved Hermione as a baby.

DAUGHTERS are supposed to adore their daddies. Some fathers do their best to justify that expectation; some, sadly, turn out to disappoint.

Hermione Hennessy has never doubted to which category her late father, singer-songwriter Christie Hennessy, belonged. “He was just the most incredible person,” she says.

When news of Christie’s death from cancer caused by asbestosis broke two Christmases ago, the airwaves were flooded with tributes and an outpouring of grief. RTE’s Liveline was extended by an unprecedented half an hour to facilitate those paying their respects to the artist who Christy Moore described as the “most beautiful of men”.

Most remembered Christie’s good humour, his charm and his warm onstage presence. “Dad had always been quite shy,” says Hermione, “Mum remembers the first time she saw him on stage, cracking jokes and falling off his chair to make the audience laugh, and she thought, ‘My goodness, who IS this man? I’ve been married to him for five years and this is a different person!’ Dad was such a great storyteller and so comfortable with language. And he was so naturally funny.”

Then there were the songs. Some of his seminal tracks were made famous by other people: he wrote the Francis Black hit All The Lies That You Told Me, and Christy Moore’s recording of his Don’t Forget Your Shovel has been described as Ireland’s alternative national anthem. The influential BBC DJ John Peel championed Christie’s music from the early 1970s but it was only with the triple platinum-selling album The Rehearsal in 1992 that Christie - at the age of 47 – found himself in the limelight as a performer.

In the following 15 years, up until his death on December 11, 2007, his gently quavering voice and story-based songs of what Juliet Turner once described as “grief and stars and love” finally put him in his rightful place in the canon of classic Irish balladeers. The public sense of loss was palpable – one can only imagine the private devastation felt by the Ross family (Christie’s original surname; Hennessy was a stage name).

“When Dad died, I was in such a blur,” says Hermione, Christie and wife Jill’s eldest child, his longtime manager and sometime duettist. “I knew people were paying all these wonderful tributes to him, we were aware that it had hit people, but I didn’t want anyone to visit. It was overwhelming.”

Asbestosis is a particularly cruel disease – it has its roots in prolonged exposure to asbestos, a material that was often used in buildings and manufacturing. It often incubates for decades before a virulent cancer develops, aggressively attacking the body. In Christie’s case, it “knocked him for six”. He was diagnosed from the disease and died in the same year. His family believe he contracted it while working on building sites in London in the 1960s like so many young men forced to emigrate from Ireland’s economic wasteland at that time.

“I remember when I was a child, seeing him coming home covered in this white stuff,” says Hermione. “Once the warnings were out there, he wore a mask, he was diligent about it. It took 40 years to incubate and show up. He never drank, smoked, did drugs. He ate well. He was always doing the right thing for other people, and he also did the right thing by himself. So it’s really tragic that he probably got it in his very late teens.”

Hermione is now patron of the Asbestos Forum, offering support and information to others facing the “horrible, horrible” fate that Christie suffered.
She is as softly-spoken as her late father, and her voice drops almost to a whisper when she speaks about the ongoing impact of his loss on the family, her mum and her younger sister and brother, Amber and Ross. “Talking about him will never get easier,” she says, smiling sadly, “but then I have spent most of my life talking about him (as his manager and promoter).

“I said to a girlfriend after he passed - she had lost her mum when she was about 14 – ‘How do you cope with this, does it get any better?’ She said, ‘It doesn’t get any better, you just get more used to it.’
“And that’s the truth. You get used to it but you miss them even more.”

One way of coping has been to throw herself into projects that keep Christie’s memory close. Hermione’s sweet vocal harmonies appear on some of Christie’s best-loved tracks, from Messenger Boy to I Am A Star, but she had always resisted her dad’s encouragement to record her own solo material. Before he died, he wrote out a list of songs he thought would suit her voice.

“The choices in the list were so spot-on,” she says, “He thought I could sing a female version of Hallelujah – and this was way before the Alexandra Burke thing on X-Factor. And he was right as he always was because Dad was a great producer as well as everything else. I started managing Aled Jones at one stage to get dad to produce his album. It worked out so well.”

In May 2008, Hermione went on the Late Late Show to sing Messenger Boy to mark the release of an album of duets Christie recorded just before he died. A busy music industry creative herself (currently working with the likes of Bette Midler and Elaine Paige), she was just off a plane from LA, and was hazy on what was to happen with the performance. “I thought I was going to be duetting or doing backing vocals with this band!” she recalls with a laugh, “They said Christy Moore might come in or Ronan Keating or somebody. Then they went: ‘Get up there and sing’. My heels were too high, I thought I’d fall over on the walk over to Pat (Kenny) after the song; I just thought, ‘Oh God, I’m a disaster’.”

She wasn’t a disaster, of course. She performed beautifully and her friends began to insist that Christie’s instincts had been correct. Nick Stewart, the man who signed U2, gave her the name for the album: “I still wasn’t sure what I was doing or why I was doing it and he just said, ‘Daisy, listen to me, don’t be stupid, it’s Songs My Father Taught Me, isn’t it?’”

So, at the age of 44 – not that the incredibly pretty woman in front of me looks a day of it – she has recorded her first solo album, produced by brother Tim and featuring sister Amber on violin. The final song, Soho Square, a duet written by Christie and featuring his vocals, is particularly moving.

The family affair will continue when Hermione, Tim – also a talented pianist – and Amber take the album on the road next month (SUBS: April). The family already live close to each other in south London, and to their mum. Hermione feels a real sense of purpose to the time they will spend together touring, remembering, healing and enjoying unexpected time together as siblings. She explains: “Tim is 19 years younger than me and Amber is 6 years younger. Mum was 40 when she had Tim, and 19 when she had me so there is the same gap between Tim and me as there is between me and Mum.

“It was really hard having Dad gone and it’s really hard to find your way in your early 20s anyway so I’m delighted for Tim. It’s a lovely thing for us all to be able to do.”

The familial get-up-and-go is clearly inherited from Christie. That album of duets, The Two of Us, was conceived and recorded even as Christie was in his final months. His online diary on www.christiehennessy.com shows that he was still touring as late as August 2007, charming all-comers as he went. One night he obliged a wedding party with an impromptu sing-song when they recognised him as he returned to his hotel one night – on another occasion, he found himself playing special requests for an enclosed order of nuns in Ennis, Co Clare when they spotted he was playing the Glor theatre opposite their convent.

His conviviality perhaps stemmed from the fact that he never took his belated success for granted. Christie left school in Co Kerry at the age of 11, an undiagnosed dyslexic, unable to read and write. By 15, he was working on the building sites of London. At night though, he was playing in bands and Hermione remembers him arriving home after a day’s work, washing and changing and heading out again to catch a train or a lift to a gig. At one point he had a breakdown, something she says was “absolutely, definitely down to overwork”.

She adds: “He was always trying to help people by talking about the things that challenged him in his life, including his mental illness. He would answer every letter from every fan.”

Such extraordinary kindness will be remembered for a long time to come. As Hermione sees it, her job now is to ensure his musical legacy is strengthened and carried on. At the time of his death, Christie was signed to a two-record deal and had just finished composing a musical which was to open in the Gaiety in Dublin. As he recorded all his material on to tapes and videos to be transcribed later by someone else, Hermione has been sifting through a mountain of material to rescue his hidden gems.

“It took two years before I felt I could do it,” she says. “I decided I was going to view it quite dispassionately and I spent the time between Christmas and New Year going through them. There are hour upon hour of tapes of him doing all the different characters for his musical, with all the accents. He had an incredible all-round talent.

“There would be bits of him singing, or then talking a bit, it was organised randomness but random. And then right in the middle he would break off and sing Danny Boy, beautifully. Pick up his guitar and sing Messenger Boy.
“Dad had big dreams for stuff, and he had big plans. I hope I can bring some of that to people now. I’m just trying to take it day by day.”

• Songs My Father Taught Me, Hermione Hennessy’s album, is in record shops now. Details of her April tour dates in Ireland are at www.hermionehennessy.com
• Christie Hennessy’s 1972 debut, The Green Album, has also been re-released through RMGChart – this was the album that brought Hennessy to the attention of John Peel with classics like Messenger Boy and Don’t Get Yourself A Shovel (re-recorded as Don’t Forget Your Shovel by Christy Moore).

A photograph in the CD sleeve of Songs My Father Taught Me has a poignant arrangement of some of Christie's most treasured belongings. Hermione talks us through them...
• Christie’s rosary beads: he was a deeply spiritual man.
• His Superman wallet: “He was obsessed with Superman, he would tell hilarious stories on stage, pretending to be Superman. It was a metaphor of sorts for him, positive and aspirational – that anything is achievable, that we all have some superpowers in us.”
• Desperate Dan figurine: “We would buy him Dandy and Beano annuals for Christmas – he used to get a real kick from them. Not being able to read, he loved comics, the pictures, but he also had a sense of wonder about him, a sense of the child.”
• His most personal belonging; his watch.
• Beatles memorabilia: “Dad was a Rolling Stones fan to begin with, a total Mod in his day, but as he grew older and more into songwriting, he really adored John Lennon.”
• His St Patrick’s Day badge: Decades in London never dimmed Christie’s pride in his Irish upbringing and his native Tralee.
• Christie’s reading glasses: Although his severe dyslexia meant he left school unable to read and write, Christie taught himself to use diagrams to compose music.
• Music box: Hermione bought him this as a present – “He was fascinated by music boxes and sometimes included them on his tracks. He thought they gave a sense of magic.”
• Backstage pass for his The Rehearsal tour: That 1992 album brought him belated commercial success.
• Book of Norman Rockwell posters, a favourite artist – resting on top is his Pioneer badge. A lifelong teetotaler, “he came from a family of drinkers,” says Hermione, “I think, and this is just my guess, that he saw the odd disturbance here and there and decided that wasn’t for him from an early age.”

Just be happy, can't you?

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/sarkozy-and-bruni-have-power-live-in-a-palace-and-are-waited-on-by-servants-when-people-have-it-all-why-cant-they-just-be-happy-2097378.html

By Susan Daly

Friday March 12 2010

IT seems no-one believes in fairy tales these days -- not even those living in one.

Take Nicolas Sarkozy, France's pocket-rocket President. He might be a small man at 5ft 5ins but it would be hard to think of one other single area in which his life comes up short.

He overcame a difficult childhood to become the most powerful man in his country. He lives in a real, actual, gilt-edged palace. His wife doesn't just look good in fancy French knickers: she made a career out of it.

It's like some secret fairy godmother took him aside as a child and said: "Listen kid, I know you weren't exactly hit by the handsome wand, but I swear I'll make it up to you."

All his life is missing now is some magic beans and a few talking bears to make his porridge in the morning. And let's face it, you don't need them when you've got a gardener and a cook stashed away in the Elysee.

So why the whispers of discontent? Why the rumours that he's been having an affair with one of his junior ministers? When you've reached the top, must the only way forward be down?

We've seen too much of this before. I hate to say the 'T' word again in case I wear it out but, okay, Tiger Woods is a prime example. He had the success, the talent, the riches and the beautiful, blonde wife. Now all he's got is a world of pain and middle America praying for his soul.

As for his opposite numbers in the "beautiful game" across the water? Well, it's all gone ugly there too. Some people just don't seem to know when they're well off.

I'm starting to think that not only is youth wasted on the young, but success is wasted on the successful. That the same drive and over-arching ambition that gets them to the point of having it all is also what makes them perpetually dissatisfied with their lot.

That's not to say that anyone ever thought Sarko and Bruni were a match made in heaven. There were a few sniggers behind the hands when they got married after only four months of meeting -- and five months after his previous wife left the marital bed.

If it's any fairy tale, it's a strange, sideways one where the princess kissed the frog and he stayed a frog. Neither is it a fairy tale where the princess stayed in every night embroidering pillowcases for her trousseau and waiting for her prince to come.

In an interview she gave before she married Sarkozy, Bruni said that monogamy bored her. And how. This is the woman who slept with the father of a man who fathered her son. Figure that one out.

So, forged in heaven, no. But sex, power, glamour and beauty are a pretty attractive mix on earth. And Carla looked very cute in her mid-height heels beside her president-on-a-box.

Notoriously sensitive about his height, or lack of it, Sarkozy has been snapped standing on a pedestal to make a speech beside his taller counterparts Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.

At a French factory, only the smallest workers were allowed to stand behind him for the official publicity photographs. He's even been seen standing on tippytoes during a photoshoot with Michelle Obama.

Now it appears that's not the height of his folly.

The thing is, Carla was reported to be in the throes of an affair of her own, with a younger musician. So what's going on here? It could be a hoax -- and there are plenty who never bought into the Bruno-Sarkozy fairy tale. They would readily believe that there won't be a happy ever after.

Or could it be that the pair have agreed amicably to an "open" marriage?

The French are very practical about this kind of thing. They don't generally care if their politicians have lovers or mistresses or second families as long as it doesn't interfere with the job in hand. (Well, the other job in hand). They call one's private affairs 'des jardins secrets' -- literally 'secret gardens' -- where no-one else should trespass.

Perhaps Sarko is not a malcontent sitting up in his ivory Elysee wondering what next to do for fun. Perhaps he and his princess bride have come to some 'arrangement'. If that's the case, then he's not only living the fairytale these days -- he's living the dream.

Studio Red lay down the blueprint for architects

My latest foray... into the property pages. Better to write about a place than buy one, I suppose.
These girls are aaa-mazing. Check it out...

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/property-plus/take-advantage--its-a--clients-market-2096909.html

Take advantage ... it's a client's market
Architects have been among the hardest hit by the property crash, with almost half of graduates unemployed. Now is the time to take advantage of their experience and make the most of your home. Susan Daly reports

Friday March 12 2010

ARCHITECTURE has been one of the most unfortunate victims of the property bust. Long-standing firms that have weathered the storm so far are struggling to keep busy and many have been forced to let go highly trained staff.

Setting up a new design practice in such an inhospitable climate might seem brave at best. Nicola Ryan and Grainne Dunne did just that, however, establishing their Studio Red practice in 2008.

"The first few years of a company are always going to be hard," says Dunne, "but as it turns out, if we had stayed with a larger company, we would definitely be unemployed now, or in another country."

The 30-year-olds had spent several years working in larger practices before they decided to set up their partnership.

The saving grace for their new company has been the pair's willingness to adapt their skills to a range of projects, large and modest.

"It really is a good time for clients," says Dunne. "We have to have a happy client because our next project depends on that.

"That can be said for every architect out there and that might not always have been the case."

People sometimes dismiss the thought of using an architect unless they're looking at a large-scale new-build, but an architect can be invaluable in reimagining the use of an existing space.

"Houses have to last now," says Ryan. "If people are going to stay there for 20, 30 years, the house needs to grow with them. We have to see all the different roles that house will play in that family's life."

It is what Dunne calls "future-proofing" -- literally, a design for life.

"You don't know if your mom is going to be in a wheelchair in 10 years' time and living with you; you don't know if your kids are going to be rugby monsters and need somewhere to dump all their mucky stuff," says Dunne.

When the pair enter a prospective client's house, they ask that the place not be tidied up beforehand.

They want to see how the household operates and identify what changes they can make to the light, space and flow of the rooms to improve the quality of living.

While redesigning and adding a two-storey extension to a 1930s redbrick house on York Road in Dun Laoghaire, for example, storage was a clear problem for the family who live there.

"In their new open-living plan, we used a lot of fitted furniture, lots of shelving, we used any kind of recesses or nooks in the rooms. It was bespoke and, despite what people think, bespoke doesn't cost the world."

As labour and material costs have dropped across the board, Dunne and Ryan are able to secure quality craftspeople and the finest building materials for about half of what it would have cost in boom times.

It's a similar story on a kitchen renovation the pair designed for a house on Whitebeam Road in Milltown. All is air and light thanks to new double doors, rooflights and a shadow gap around the bottom of the walls which replaces the skirting board and makes the wall appear to float.

The ingenuity in the design also proved hugely economical. "The brief was that they wanted an extension for a living, utility and kitchen area," says Dunne.

"We did a survey and drew what we thought would work and we said: 'You've got buckets of space, you actually don't need an extension'."

Friends and former classmates at DIT Bolton, where they earned first-class honours degrees, it's clear Ryan and Dunne share a passion for making good design available on all budgets. They see the role of the architect expanding rather than contracting with the tough times.

"People think you're going to do them a drawing and then they're on their own and terrified," says Dunne.

"No. We'll liaise with the builders to make sure the contract is completed as agreed. We'll advise you what heating system to put in, and so on.

"For example, we would have researched maybe 30 window companies, looking at price, how the window performs, how it looks. People are so vulnerable out there trying to do this stuff on their own. We take away that worry."

For more info visit www.studiored.ie or tel 01 4451772

How to make the most of your architect...

1 Ask for recommendations from homeowners who have used your architect.

2 Don't clean up for the architect's first visit to your home. They want to identify your needs: Underpants on all the radiators = need for a laundry room!

3 Be clear to the architect about what you want more of, eg, light/storage/ floorspace.

4 Talk to your architect about your budget.

Your architect can administer the building contract fairly, ensuring that the contractor builds what they are being paid to.

5 The architect can also specify materials, supervise the building and certify that they are in accordance with building regulations.

6 Our movements in our home tend to be hardwired but be open to the fact that just because the kitchen has been on a particular wall for 10 years, it doesn't have to stay there.

7 The simplest of tweaks can be effective -- an increase in lighting levels and the reconfiguration of space can revolutionise your home life.

8 If you are uneasy about an element of the design tell your architect. It may just need clarification but the worst thing would be to stand in a built project with regrets.

9 Consider maintenance. If you're not into polishing, then a high-gloss kitchen with black granite worktops is not for you.

10 Bespoke fitted furniture can give a sense of spaciousness and despite popular perception, it need not cost the earth.

Angie, Aaaaaaangie

I was very nearly christened 'Angela' but my mother was put off by my father's insistence that he would call me 'Angie'. Mother hates diminuitives in names, for some reason. So I was named Susan instead (because clearly, Susan, can't be shortened to anything... er... Sue, Susie, Suze etc.?)
If you're the type who believes in nominal determinism, you might wonder how differently I might have turned out if my name was Angie...

From today's Irish Independent:
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/would-you-trust-your-man-with-angelina-2095055.html

Would you trust your man with Angelina?
Susan Daly on Hollywood's number one femme fatale

Thursday March 11 2010

Who's afraid of Angelina Jolie? It's now apparently the turn of Johnny Depp's missus. Vanessa Paradis, his partner of 12 years, was reportedly unhappy to discover that Depp's latest film The Tourist requires him to film a long and steamy sex scene in the shower with La Jolie.

Either Ms Paradis has environmental concerns about water wastage or she is worried Jolie will try to take a bite out of Johnny. Perhaps the whole story is trumped-up publicity for the movie but it says something about the widespread belief in Angelina Jolie's magnetism. French songbird Paradis might have the second-sharpest pair of cheekbones in showbiz (after those of her paramour) but Jolie is, we are constantly reminded, a maneater. Ooh oh, here she comes, and she's coming for her co-star.

What is it about Angelina Jolie that -- six children later -- she is still considered Hollywood's top vamp? Clearly, the looks have something to do with it. Vanity Fair readers have crowned her the most beautiful woman on the planet. The perfect symmetry of her facial features has been used by scientists to illustrate the ideal of female beauty, and its proportions directly compared to those of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.

Jolie has admitted that she looks a bit odd. "I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet," she once said. Her beauty is so extreme, it is almost cartoonish. From the moment in 2001 when she was poured into rubber and Lycra to bring to life the pneumatic video game heroine Lara Croft, she has become fetishised. The poster for her 2004 film Taking Lives took for granted that she has one of the most scrutinised faces in the world -- it featured only a close-up of her instantly recognisable lips.

Jolie's other-worldly appearance tips over from being every man's fantasy into the realm of the merely fantastical. Jennifer Aniston, the woman she will forever be pitted against as long as she remains with Brad Pitt, is arguably the more conventionally desirable star. Women imagine that with the right personal trainer, dietician and stylists, they could come close to emulating Jennifer. Men imagine that in similar circumstances, they might be in with a chance.

The idea of being Angelina Jolie -- or being with her -- doesn't seem a possibility for mere mortals. No wonder we feel that should Jolie want something, or someone, not a person on earth is powerless to stop her. The alleged Paradis paranoia we have seen before: in 2004, pop star Kylie Minogue -- again a much-desired woman in her own right -- felt the need to fly to the set where her then-lover Olivier Martinez was filming with Jolie and hang out just off-camera.

What is surprising is that Jolie still has the power to make tongues wag six years later -- it was claimed recently that she once had an affair with Mick Jagger while he was married to Jerry Hall -- despite being in the most settled relationship of her life.

In recent years, especially since the trauma of her mother's death from cancer three years ago, Jolie's slim frame has grown terribly gaunt. Too rich? Not when you and your lover are passionate philanthropists; but too thin? Probably.

Also playing against the old 'homewrecker' perception is the fact that her personal likeability is supposed to be on the up. Her Q score -- a US index used to decipher how positively the public feels towards a celebrity -- has increased since her union with Brad Pitt, the creation of their family and her high-profile work for the UN. Jennifer Aniston or Laura Dern (who was dumped in favour of Jolie by her fiance Billy Bob Thornton) may not consider Jolie to be a friend to women but feminist writer Naomi Wolf has given the actress her influential stamp of approval.

Her paean to Jolie as the new embodiment of 'having it all' graced the cover of Harper's Bazaar last summer. "Polls show that her appeal and magnetism play at least as powerfully in the fantasy life of females," argued Wolf.

It is true that Jolie has thrown off some of the scent of crazy danger that she used to trail through her early to mid-20s. Back then, she spoke freely about bisexuality, her knife collection and self-harming. Her short marriage to Hackers co-star Jonny Lee Miller was notorious chiefly for her wedding outfit of skin-tight leather trousers and a white shirt with Jonny's name written on it in her own blood. The second marriage, to Pushing Tin co-star Billy Bob, was written in tattoos, vials of each other's blood worn around the neck and public displays of groping.

Her new role as matriarch of a family of eight seems Brady Bunch by comparison. Yet the frisson of distrust remains. The Pitt-Jolie relationship is still tarnished by the "uncool" (Jen's word) revelation by Jolie not too long ago that she and Pitt fell in love on the set of Mr and Mrs Smith, while he was still married. She might claim the pair didn't get "intimate" until after Aniston and Pitt separated, but the notion of her homing in on her alpha-male mate like a heat-seeking missile is hard to shake.

Jolie hasn't entirely lost her mystique by becoming a mother. When she was married all those years ago, she was far from a Stepford wife. In the same way, now that she is apparently 'settled', she is still subverting societal norms by not marrying Pitt.

Like her or loathe her -- and few have no opinion at all on Jolie -- she is undeniably a woman of power. That, even more than her pillowy lips, is most seductive of all.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE FEMME FATALE:
DELILAH: The emasculation of the male is a big hobby of the femme fatale -- Delilah managed it by giving her husband Samson a bad haircut.

She's just one of many Old Testament temptresses but the only one Tom Jones ever sang about.

THEDA BARA: The film industry loves its femme fatales and every star from Rita Hayworth as seductive cabaret singer Gilda to Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction has Theda Bara to thank for the blueprint.

Her predatory roles popularised the term 'vamp' (short for vampiress) in the silent cinema era.

AVA GARDNER: As sexually notorious off-screen as on was La Gardner. An excellent biography by Lee Server, Love is Nothing, detailed Gardner's insatiable carnal appetites.

She had countless lovers and a callous attitude towards those obsessed with her beauty -- including her third husband Frank Sinatra.

MATA HARI: The Dutch exotic dancer picked up her sexy moves while married to an army officer in Java, and exploited them when she moved to Paris in 1903.

She manipulated her rich lovers to pay for her luxurious lifestyle but in World War 1 she was tried for spying for the Germans and executed.

Can't buy you love

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/susan-daly-our-lucky-little-fighters-are-blessed-with-the-one-thing-money-cant-buy--the-love-of-amazing-parents-2092718.html

From today's Evening Herald

THE greatest accident of birth is that none of us get to choose our parents. Like it or lump it, they are who they are. Some parents love and cherish their offspring; some never take responsibility for them at all. If you're lucky, your folks might muddle along somewhere in the middle.

Then there are the exceptional parents. Those whose children turn out to have extra challenges beyond the basic trauma of being born and having to get to grips with the world. Parents like Angie and Azzedine Benhaffaf from Cork who are proud mum and dad to conjoined twins Hassan and Hussein.

Tiny babies are vulnerable on every level. The Benhaffaf boys have had a bigger battle than most. When their conjoined status was first spotted in the womb, it wasn't expected that they could survive. Now they are three months old and thriving, in part thanks to superb medical care, but also very clearly as a result of their amazing parents.

There hasn't been a set of conjoined twins born to Irish parents in five years. The level of interest in their extraordinary story was always going to be high. Angie and Azzedine -- on top of coping with the very specific needs of their little boys and their worries for their future -- have had to deal with that public spotlight.

How they have dealt with it is a measure of the kind of people they are: and how lucky the twins are to have them as their protectors. Angie revealed how a British tabloid wanted exclusive photo rights to the boys for f80,000. The offer could have been tempting. The boys will need surgery in the near future and their medical costs are soaring.

For the Benhaffafs, their children's dignity was paramount. They would not trade a second of their boys' time for money. Instead, they shared their "great gifts" with the Irish public, allowing all of the media access to their story for free. The whole family -- parents, boys and their big sisters Malika and Iman -- went on the Late Late to show off the gorgeous new arrivals.

"We may be broke but we are morally rich," said Angie of their decision to invite the country to share their joy, rather than sell it piecemeal to the highest bidder. "When the boys look back on it they will be proud we did not accept money for their story," she added.

Even had she never explained her motivation, it would have been clear to anyone who saw the couple on the Late Late Show. They were honest about their concerns for the boys'

health, and the impact on the family as a whole of the new pressures. But what outshone every other emotion in that studio was their tender love for the two tiny mites in Angie's arms.

On one level, the purely physical, those boys have been handed one of the toughest starts in life you could imagine. On every other level, they are blessed.

Most gratifyingly of all, the Benhaffafs have been given what they deliberately never asked for: financial support. Inspired by their devotion, fundraisers around the country have started to fill what has been dubbed 'The Little Fighters' Fund'.

TV chef Clodagh McKenna is just one person who has devoted time and effort to raising money towards the twins' medical expenses: at the weekend, more than 1,000 bikers took part in a charity motorcycle event in their name.

The outpouring of generosity will be helpful when the twins hopefully travel for surgery to separate them later this year. Hopes are high for them -- they do not share any major organs -- but it will be an intricate and tense operation.

But beyond money, Hassan and Hussein have the best support team in the world behind them. Mum and Dad.

Anyone wishing to donate to The Little Fighters' Fund can send a donation to the Permanent TSB branch in Patrick Street, Cork: sort code 99-07-03; a/c no: 16556196

Then one by one, the stars would all go out...

For Oscars weekend, I had a look at the fading star system for the Irish Independent's Review section.
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/film-cinema/star-wars---its-the-final--showdown-2090776.html

Actors will battle with computer-animated sprites for tomorrow's Oscars as technology threatens the big names, writes Susan Daly

PICTURE three A-lister actors in a room together. Sandra Bullock, the star whose movies made most money in 2009; Morgan Freeman, the actor who has just crowned a career of playing wise, dignified men by playing wise, dignified Nelson Mandela; and Jeff Bridges, hotly tipped to take the Best Actor Oscar for A Crazy Heart.

They are gathered for Newsweek magazine’s annual Oscar nomination shortlist discussion. And they are not entirely happy. They have just been asked what they think of motion-capture acting, the method used in the blockbuster Avatar to capture actors’ facial expressions and map them onto computer-generated images.

Avatar, the most commercially successful and technologically advanced film in
cinematic history, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards.
Not one of those nominations is for an actor.

Freeman looks stern. “I think it’s a bit faddish,” he says. “Because it’s really cartoons.” Bullock maintains she hasn’t seen it yet. Jeff Bridges plays the diplomatic card. “It was a little uncomfortable,” he says, “but there’s something exciting about it too. It’s where it’s all going.”

Mind you, Bridges would say that – he had his face animated by the same technique for the upcoming sequel to his 1982 science fiction hit Tron.

Their unease is understandable. Avatar suggests that a film can make actors a secondary concern and still be nominated for Best Picture. It may even win – Hollywood does like a movie that shows the industry can still churn out $2 billion-dollar blockbusters.

It’s clear that motion-capture still requires an actor to emote the incredibly accurate range of expression that appears on screen – they just don’t need to be big name stars. Sam Robinson and Zoe Saldana are the actors behind the blue-skinned ‘avatars’ of the movie. If you haven’t heard of them, you are in excellent company.

The Avatar outcry is interesting because this technology has been making inroads at the box office for a few years now. The hideous Gollum creature in Lord of the Rings was created through motion-capture (dubbed MoCap by the industry, don’t you know). The actor he was based on was the very excellent but not at all well-known character actor Andy Serkis. Serkis was also the face emoting the tantrums of King Kong in the 2005 CGI remake of that movie. At least that’s one actor making a few bob out of the new technology.

The hugely successful Pixar animation films started off using stars to voice their movies. Toy Story in 1995 had Tom Hanks and Monsters, Inc (2001) had Billy Crystal, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. As time went on, the stellar line-ups largely disappeared but success continued. No Pixar film has ever made a loss. Its latest – and also a runner for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars – is Up. The voice actor with the highest profile attached to the project is probably Ed Asner, best known for playing TV’s Lou Grant.

By contrast, a huge star doesn’t guarantee big box office. Last summer’s record for star-cast movies was bad enough: Julia Roberts, the first Hollywood actress to be able to command a $20m cheque for her ability to lead movies to box office receipts of $100m or more, had a deflated return to the screen with the loss-making Duplicity. Denzel Washington and John Travolta made a disappointing profit of about $50m with The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Even Eddie Murphy, the so-called critic-proof star, saw his fans turn their nose up at his comedy, Imagine That. It cost around $55m to make and took in around $22m. Imagine that.

The bigger picture looks no better. The lead actors in the highest-grossing movies of the decade included Elijah Wood (the Lord of the Rings trilogy), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Tobey Maguire and Christian Bale (Spider-man and Batman), Shia LaBeouf (Transformers). Johnny Depp also gets a look-in based mainly on his participation in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Mike Myers is there mostly in voice alone, for the animated Shrek series. In fact, you have to go to No.25 to find a bona fide star, Tom Hanks, with The Da Vinci Code – and that film arguably traded off the bestselling book it was based on.

We speak of George Clooney as the successor to Cary Grant. Clooney, however, has only just tasted what it is to be the lead of a $100m film as Up In The Air has nudged over that mark. (The Oceans series made over the $100m, but he was sharing the limelight with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.) Tom Cruise, formerly the actor with the longest consecutive runs of $100m opening weekends, only managed a $22m opening weekend with Valkyrie – although it has taken over $200m since its Christmas 2008 launch.

So here’s the situation: franchise movies and movies based on comics, books and video games are hot, hot, hot. Franchise actors are not. In the so-called golden age of Hollywood in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, John Wayne, Bing Crosby or the aforementioned Grant hardly knew what it was to flip-flop between hits and misses. (See the panel for the all-time biggest box office draws). Their names were franchises in the way the new Harry Potter film is now, guaranteeing a sellout opening weekend.

Individual star wattage shone even more brightly in accepted franchise pairings – Tracy and Hepburn, Bogie and Bacall, Astaire and Rogers, Crosby and Hope, Crawford and Gable, Powell and Loy, Garland and Rooney. Certain actor-director combos were also surefire winners – Grant and Hitchcock, Wayne and Ford spring to mind.

Some of the most popular actors did consistently well because they were contained within the studio star system which, when it identified a genre that was working well for their starlets, tended to want them to stay in it. Screwball comedy and westerns produced some of the biggest stars because that’s what the audience wanted to see. If you think about it, genre films continue to be the biggest draw at today’s box office: comedy, action, horror and teen franchises like Twilight or Harry Potter. It’s just that the demographic of the audience has changed to a much younger one and so the genres they prefer have too.

All is not entirely lost for our dwindling pack of A-list stars. It is true that they have had more trouble justifying the $20m pay cheque if their films consistently fail to attract box office heat. But there are still some stars who can do it – after that modest opening weekend, Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie ended up taking $200m worldwide and he’s taking no chances by signing up to Mission Impossible IV.

Either way that one turns out, he can either claim a success based on his brand name, or a failure that shows franchises are not the always a winner. Brad Pitt is acknowledged as a still substantial draw – that’s why the promotion for Inglorious Basterds focused largely on him, even though he’s only in half the movie.

There is also the argument that technology has been threatening to overtake the star system for about, oh, three decades now, from the introduction of CGI in the early 1980s. And what happened there? Actor and CGI managed to peacefully co-exist. In fact, would Titanic have made stars of Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet in 1997 had they been forced to ‘keep it real’ and make it on a ferry?

Morgan Freeman shouldn’t worry too much about being made redundant – but he might want to think about getting fitted for a MoCap face mask.

PANEL:
PULLING POWER – The definitive list of box office stars
The A-list star is not yet extinct but the cold, hard facts of cash show that they don’t have the same wattage at the box office as the stars of yesteryear.
The Quigley Publishing Company has been reliably compiling a list of Hollywood’s top money-making stars every year since 1932. The annual Quigley Poll is based on the revenue a star’s movies generate - but also on the votes of movie theatre owners on who they know will attract an audience.

Last summer, Quigley’s compiled their all-time top 20 of the past 77 years, carefully weighted by the number of annual lists a star appeared on during their career. It is interesting to see how few of this generation’s A-listers appear in the top score. Even the few who do – Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson – are all on the wrong side of 40.

And the all-time box office big-hitter? John Wayne, a man who appeared in over 150 films but only won one Academy Award, for True Grit.

Quigley’s All-Time Top Money-Making Stars:
1. John Wayne: He became a star in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and their partnership endured over 20 further successful movies. Wayne was consolidated as an icon of American masculinity, notwithstanding the variety of hairpieces he wore from the late 1940s onwards to hide his balding pate.

2. Clint Eastwood: Eastwood was another star embedded on the public consciousness by the western thanks to his role in the TV series Rawhide from 1959-64. Shortly afterwards he transferred that recognition to the big screen and created an unbeatable niche as the tough guy anti-hero.

3. Tom Cruise: His break with Paramount Pictures in 2006 and his much-mocked interest in Scientology was heralded as the beginning of the end for the star system. That same year, however, he still topped Forbes magazines list of 100 most influential celebrities. News just broke in the past week that he is on board for the fourth installment of Mission Impossible – it can’t hurt these days to stay hitched to a franchise that has raked in $1.4bn worldwide.

4. Gary Cooper: He once said that “The general consensus is that I don’t act at all.” Luckily for ‘Coop’, the strong, silent type proved to be very suitable to the westerns (yes, those again) adored by the vast movie-going audiences of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. It helped that he nearly always played the good guy.

5. Clark Gable: Even though he had already been nominated twice for an Oscar before Gone With The Wind came along in 1939, Rhett Butler sent him stratospheric in the same way Titanic would anoint Leonardo diCaprio 60 years later. Gable’s appeal was such that he was second only to Shirley Temple in popularity in the 1930s – and she’s the film star who apparently helped pulled America out of the Depression.

6. Bing Crosby: The ultimate crossover star, Crosby reinforced his movie star status by being one of the most successful recording artist for 20 years from the mid-1930s onwards. He was the person who did most to boost GI morale in World War II, according to Yank magazine. As a multimedia artist, he was almost unprecedented and certainly unrivalled.

7. Paul Newman: How to explain the enduring appeal of Old Blue Eyes? Was it his
beauty, his talent, his contrary choice to play loners and outcasts that played against his looks? Whatever it was, when he died in 2008, Kevin Spacey remarked: “An era just ended.”

8. Tom Hanks (tie): Hanks might be more of a powerhouse producer these days, but as an actor he has brought in $3bn in box office receipts. If ever there was a test of star power, it was his ability to seduce audiences to watch him play with a volleyball on a deserted island for the best part of the huge 2000 hit, Castaway.

Bob Hope (tie): Hope had a mutually beneficial screen partnership with best friend Bing Crosby that yielded the seven hugely successful ‘Road’ movies from 1940 to 1962. At that time he began his 18-time stint as host of the Academy Awards and a career in broadcasting: no wonder his name could sell a film or two.

Mel Gibson (tie): Like Tom Cruise, his off-screen antics have tarnished his personal reputation, but for the 13 years during his career when he was a top ten powerhouse, he’s earned his place in the pantheon.

The top twenty is rounded out by: Burt Reynolds, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy, Cary Grant, Abbott & Costello, Harrison Ford, Shirley Temple and James Stewart.

My words are bigger than yours

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/my-words-are--bigger-than--yours-2090773.html

Martin Amis and his verbal brawls are no classier than Pete 'n' Kate's split, writes Susan Daly

Saturday March 06 2010

He says he's misunderstood. She says he's a selfish cad. His friend calls her spiteful. The parties involved, all well-known faces, chose to air their dirty linen through the pages of a British national newspaper rather than settle their grievances in private.

You would be forgiven for thinking this to be the latest volley in the bitter split between glamour model Katie 'Jordan' Price and pop-singer Peter Andre. The protagonists in this petty tit-for-tat, however, would be horrified by the presumption. Martin Amis is the enfant terrible of modern English literature. Anna Ford was once the face of BBC news. Surely a spat between them is of public importance?

It was certainly reported as such. The row was sparked when Amis complained to The Guardian newspaper that the press made a habit of twisting his quotes and making him look controversial when, really, he's just a nice old man. Ford, whose late husband was a close friend of Amis, took umbrage at this image of victimhood and called Amis to tell him to get over himself.

Except, of course, she didn't. She aired her accusations that Amis had been disrespectful at her husband's deathbed and neglectful of her daughter, his godchild, in a letter to The Guardian newspaper. Amis vowed to reply to Ford "personally". It transpired that to Amis, this meant a rebuttal fired off to the letters page, admitting his shortcomings as a godfather but calling her other grievances an "unworthy farrago".

A few days later, novelist Christopher Hitchens, a mutual friend of Amis and Ford's late husband Mark Boxer, stuck his oar in to take Amis's side in what he described as this "cultural free-for-all".

Hitchens was right about one thing: it was a free-for-all. The row was as undignified as drunken fisticuffs on a Friday night -- and every bit as trivial. Yet because this bit of luvvie hand-flapping was conducted through the pages of a liberal broadsheet, it acquired the sheen of intelligentsia.

The chattering classes had a licence to gawk at what was essentially a tabloid smackdown with bigger words. (Who uses 'farrago' as a term of abuse?)

Pete 'n' Jordan's bitchfests are in the tuppenny place to the tawdry squabbles of Amis and his literary cohorts. Amis -- the misunderstood guy, remember -- is as prolific in making enemies as writing novels. He threw over Pat Kavanagh, his agent of 22 years, in favour of a bigger advance in the early 1990s, losing his long-time friend Julian Barnes, Kavanagh's husband, in the process.

He dirtied his bib chez Kavanagh a second time by replacing his lover Julie Kavanagh, sister of Pat, with her best friend. He left his first wife, also for her best friend, the writer and now current Mrs Amis, Isabel Fonseca.

Amis's second in his recent duel, Christopher Hitchens, is no less generous with his sabre. An extract from his forthcoming memoir -- and it is forthcoming in many ways -- detailed his trysts in college with two young men who would later become members of Margaret Thatcher's government. He also included the nugget that he had slept with Sally Amis, Martin's younger sister. Amis himself has detailed Sally's battle with the alcoholism that would eventually kill her and what he called her "pathological promiscuity".

If this level of tawdry detail spilled over the pages of Heat magazine, it would be deemed tacky. Literary giants don't do sordid though -- they have grand passions.

Amis is a magnet for negative publicity that he says he does nothing to create. In the column that got Ford so riled up, Amis claimed a "mishmash of quotes" were responsible for reports that he had called for euthanasia for the elderly, and expressed dismay that women have "too much power for their own good".

His talent for generating attention is ironic considering comments he made about Katie Price a few months ago, reducing her appeal to "two bags of silicone". Amis feels he too is being reduced to the sum of his most gossiped-about parts, and his work overlooked. (He has a book out, you know.) He wrote: "The vow of silence looks more and more attractive."

It's a threat unlikely to be carried out. Amis's wordy circle can't resist the frisson of a bit of verbal mudslinging. Salman Rushdie has had a long-running feud with Germaine Greer since she -- he says -- dubbed him a megalomaniac almost 20 years ago. He in turn calls her "sanctimonious".

Chris Hitchens called Gore Vidal a "crackpot" last month and fell out with his journalist brother Peter for years, their dispute re-ignited from time to time in various publications.

The roots of such arguments are as banal as any in the world of celebrity -- professional rivalry, sexual jealousy, sheer bitchiness -- but are elevated by the self-importance of some literary showboats.

Yet, somehow, an obsession with the marriage of the Beckhams or the Coles is regarded as purely for the hard of thinking.

Take the case of VS Naipaul and Paul Theroux, who broke their 30-year friendship in 1996. Theroux later took the trouble to paint a thinly-veiled Naipaul as a miserly snob in his novel Sir Vidia's Shadow. The initial bone of contention between these two literary megaliths? Naipaul had married a "new and hostile" wife.

Essentially, they fell out because one didn't like the other's missus.

Time has passed..

(Pic by Ronan Lang)
..That was the title of the haunting elegy Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh wrote to her Altan co-founder and husband Frankie Kennedy. A beautiful interviewee, a beautiful spirit and a beautiful voice - here is my interview with Mairead for the Irish Independent's Saturday magazine, Weekend:

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/issues/music-is-a-great-healer-2090907.html


By Susan Daly

Saturday March 06 2010

'Music is a great healer'

This is Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh's year. As lead singer of Altan, she is celebrating 25 years as the most recognisable face of Ireland's most recognisable trad group. She has just been crowned Donegal Person of the Year -- she is only the fourth woman to be given the award in 36 years. "The people who normally get it are usually long established, from a more conservative situation," she says with slight wonder. "I like the idea of them reaching out to the arts."

Mairéad (47) hesitates to consider herself an establishment. Her career trajectory has been remarkable, transporting her from a fiddle-playing teenager in Gweedore to sell-out concerts in the Sydney Opera House and the Hollywood Bowl. "The night we stood in the Hollywood Bowl," she remembers, "all I could think was, 'The Beatles played here!'."

But then, for Mairéad, the journey has been much more than geographical and professional. That quarter of a decade has encompassed great love and great sorrow.

Mairéad was only 22 when she founded Altan with her then husband Frankie Kennedy. The pair had met when Belfast native Frankie came to Donegal on a summer trip and spotted a gorgeous blonde 15-year-old playing fiddle at a session. Four years later -- and a crash course in learning the flute to impress Mairéad -- they were married.

They were both trained as teachers but soon took a full-time risk on their burgeoning performing career. Altan released their first album in 1987 to instant acclaim. By 1994, they were players on the global stage. They were fourth on the Billboard world music charts that year and, in an unprecedented signing of a trad band by a major record label, were about to get on board with Virgin.

It should have been Altan's most glorious year. Instead, 1994 is etched deep on the band's soul as the year they lost Frankie. He had been diagnosed with a vicious form of bone cancer in 1992 but had been in remission. Two years later, it came back with doubled aggression and he died that September.

Mairéad's voice softens when she speaks of that time. "I grew up very quickly when poor Frankie passed away," she says.

Before he died, Frankie had insisted that Altan continue without him. It was to be his last great gift to Mairéad, who considers touring with the band to have been her saving grace in the dark months that followed. "After Frankie passed away, it was very good for my head because it gave me something to do, a point in my day."

Other voices have dedicated songs to Frankie's memory, including past collaborators and friends Enya and Luka Bloom. But it is Mairéad's haunting vocals on a song called Time Has Passed, on Altan's 1997 album Runaway Sunday, that remains the most poignant elegy to her late husband. A jig she composed, called A Tune For Frankie, appeared on the previous year's Blackwater -- a specially arranged version is included on the 25th anniversary album.

"Music is a great healer," says Mairéad. "It sounds like a cliché, but it is. Words sometimes can't describe something that goes to a deeper level, and it's helped me through an awful lot."

None of this is said with melancholy. There is something intensely warm and joyous about Mairéad. She also speaks kindly of everyone who has passed through her life. Although her second marriage, to Altan accordionist Dermot Lynch, ended after eight years in 2007, they still work together amicably.

"You have to be sensible about it," she says of the split. "It was a hard thing but life's too short. I think I learned that from losing my first husband. He was nearly 40 (just 11 days short of his 39th birthday) when he passed and I realised that life is like a feather.

"Then when Dermot and myself weren't getting along, I just thought, 'Why? Why bother?' It's to do with quality. Every minute to me is important. I don't claim to know everything but I do think that you have to go for the plusses."

One of those plusses is six-year-old Nia, her daughter with Dermot. I thought Mairéad had taken a detour from Monaghan to Dublin for our interview, but she actually went home to Donegal last night. "I have a little one," she smiles, "I promised her I'd be away for two sleeps. If I was away a third sleep, I'd be dead."

It is very important to her that Nia grows up surrounded by the language and countryside that has inspired Mairéad. She lived in Dublin for a long time, but now she and Nia live in a house built of local sand and stone, the stunning Errigal mountains its backdrop. "I brought her back up here when my father [the legendary trad musician Proinsias O Maonaigh] was passing away and they got to know one another."

Altan's music is intensely rooted in Irish culture, but it has transcended the boundaries one would expect to limit a trad band. They are in huge demand in the States, Europe and Japan.

"Japan is a very good indicator of how the music translates to people who don't have any connection to the country," muses Mairéad.

It's not just the Japanese who adore them. Bill Clinton has had them play for him -- twice -- and President Mary McAleese requested they accompany her on several State visits, to Greece, Korea and, of course, Japan. They have recorded with Alison Krauss, Bonnie Raitt and Ricky Skaggs -- and one Dolly Rebecca Parton. On her 2001 bluegrass album Little Sparrow Mairéad's father translated The Sweet Bye and Bye for Dolly. "She liked that idea, because she says her people stemmed from over this way and Scotland," says Mairéad.

It would be lovely to sit and listen to her soft Donegal burr all day but she has to go. "I will be home again by 3pm," she says happily. Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh might be a global ambassador for Ireland, but her heart will always be firmly in Donegal.

How to lose disgracefully

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-no-fun-at-the-losers-table-2089664.html

By Susan Daly

Friday March 05 2010

The best backhanded compliment I've ever received came from a very drunk RTE personality. "You're a very cheerful person," he slurred, "for someone sitting at the losers' table."

Hell hath no fury like an ego scorned. There we were, guests at the sparkling jewel in the crown of Irish awards ceremonies (at least that's how the IFTA press release may have described it), but this guy wasn't having fun. And if he was going down, he was bringing the rest of us with him.

This is how it really is at awards ceremonies. Painted smiles served with a side of bitter lemon. In my tiny, highly partisan, bit of experience, the best way to enjoy them is from your couch with all the dull bits and tedious bores edited out. I won't be alone in being glued to the Oscars show on Sunday night. The best dresses, the frocky horrors, the glitz, the glamour! But it's a total spectator sport.

Angelina Jolie might look like she's having the time of her life as the bulbs pop on the red carpet, but what she's probably thinking is: "Oh Christ, it's my turn to get up in the morning with the kids." Jeff Bridges is probably wishing he was at home in his underpants. George Clooney is probably wishing Jeff Bridges was at home in his underpants so he could nab his Best Actor award. It's all me, me, me with these people.

Which brings me back to my disgruntled neighbour at the IFTAs a few years back. I've been to the awards a few times, through chance, by association -- but never on talent, let me assure you. The first time I went -- last-minute date of a desperate colleague -- my eyes were on stalks for the first hour. There's Rosanna Davison in the jacks! She's putting on lipstick! There are some people from Corrie! They're having the beef!

It took my colleague's threat to have me removed by security to calm me down.

In any case, subsequent proceedings tore the rosy veil from my eyes. A notoriously grumpy Irish director didn't smile back when I smiled at him (I found out about his notorious grumpiness later). The only bona fide star was Mischa Barton, who sat lonely as a Californian cloud while all the rest of us plebs did that Irish thing and studiously ignored the most famous person in the room lest they think we were uncool or something.

When it came time to take our seats, I got a little lesson in how to tell you're not at a VIP table. You're seated right beside the kitchen. The swinging service doors hit the back of your chair. Repeatedly. You wave and wave and wave every time a camera pans across the room but your mammy, watching patiently at home with her finger on the video record button, doesn't spot you once.

By the time of my last foray to the IFTAs -- and after this column is printed, no doubt it will be my very last -- I was wise to the old somebody/nobody ballroom divide. There were award nominees at our table for sure, but we were so far from the stage that if one of our number was to actually win something, they'd have to set a new world record for hurdling to get up to their gong in the allotted time.

Our new pal, the TV personality, clearly hadn't cottoned on to the geographical impossibility of his win. As he slipped into the seat beside me, he was all handshakes and bon mots. It was only after he questioned us all on our credentials and nominations that the truth dawned on him. A table populated by some nice but inoffensive documentary-makers, a few hangers-on and one incredibly dour comedian was clearly not the glamour table.

You could see the chagrin spread across his face like a bad case of the pox. The rest of the night was an arse-numbing blur of endless technical awards and hissed mutterings of "bastards" and "outrageous" from my increasingly wine-soaked table buddy. Kanye West would have thought he was over-reacting.

The next day, he rang into my answering machine and left an apologetic message. He needn't have bothered: I'm quite happy to be a loser if it means I can stick to watching awards show in my pyjamas in future.

The money-happiness index

This was an interesting subject for the time that's in it - how closely linked are your levels of happiness with the bottom line of your bank balance?
Could have written a book on it - and might still do! - but here's a small overview from Wednesday's Irish Independent...

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/issues/can-having-too-much-money--really--make-you--miserable-2086198.html

Can having too much money really make you miserable?
Susan Daly ponders the question as a millionaire gives away his fortune

For those of us not rolling in it, the idiom that money can't buy happiness brings a certain comfort. But the notion that riches can make you actively unhappy? Would that we could all test that theory.

An Austrian multi-millionaire has done just that -- and claims his fat bank balance made him miserable. Karl Radeber has sold all his worldly possessions: his home; his luxury cars; his collection of glider planes; his €4m interior furnishings business -- and donated the proceeds to charity.

The process has left him feeling "free, the opposite of heavy", he says. "Money is counter-productive -- it prevents happiness to come."

Radeber is no bored trust-fund baby, playing at being penniless for kicks. He came from a poor family and built his business from scratch. The accumulation of money, he says, made him chronically dissatisfied.

"I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need."

Radeber's story seems to back up what is known in the literature on human happiness as the Easterlin Paradox. In 1974, economist Richard Easterlin found that once income was sufficient to meet a person's basic needs, happiness did not necessarily increase incrementally with income. It reaches a plateau.

That research was challenged by a 2008 study that linked higher incomes to higher happiness -- but it did add that once a certain point was reached, the rate of increasing happiness slowed.

"I think that what is happening in the economy right now is leaving people more open to the concept of what is enough," says Dr Anne B Ryan of NUI Maynooth, author of Balancing Your Life and Enough Is Plenty. "The Irish phrase 'go leor' has the dual meaning of 'enough' and 'plenty'. There is an optimum and more than that isn't necessarily helpful."

Dr Ryan's first book, Balancing Your Life, was written at the height of the Celtic Tiger in 2002. What she discovered from her case studies was that working harder for money generated a "treadmill" effect.

"People were so tired by their hectic loves that they spent money to compensate for it," she says. "They bought themselves 'treats', massages, retail therapy, ate out or bought expensive ready-meals.

"The people who said they had satisfying lives were often living on what would be considered smallish incomes. The pay-off for them was free time to do voluntary work, work that really interested them or time for loved ones."

It would be glib to suggest that someone facing foreclosure on their house or someone on the poverty line in a slum in Guatemala is happier than Richard Branson. Yet even in dire poverty, the key to happiness is not necessarily money.

Research in Costa Rica between 2004 and 2006 found that not all people who were considered poor recorded low levels of life satisfaction.

Those who came out of poverty were as likely to be unhappy if they were dissatisfied in other areas -- family, health, how much they liked their job.

A famous 1978 study pitted the happiness levels of a group of lottery winners against a group of people who were paralysed in accidents. Both groups experienced a drastic shift in happiness in the initial months after the event -- those paralysed were often thrown into deep depression, while the lottery winners existed in a state of euphoria.

After that period, the injured's state of happiness returned to levels akin to those they experienced before their accidents. The ecstasy also wore off for the lottery winners but most seemed unable to find happiness in the mundane things that had previously brought them joy.

That is not to say that money can't bring happiness -- it's just a case of spending it correctly.

In what the field of positive psychology would dub 'pro-social spending', spending money on creating memories brings a long-lived joy that buying goods just can't match. Bringing your partner out to dinner or buying a ticket to see a concert with friends is a good emotional investment: buying a designer dress doesn't have the same psychological return.

Richard Branson is a good case of one who spreads his billions to bring maximum joy. His extravagances are in sponsoring football teams, buying a Caribbean island retreat for friends and family, and indulging his love of adventure sports -- the purchase of experiences over things.

He is also a prominent philanthropist, something which Jordan Campbell of Philanthropy Ireland says brings satisfaction when the donor is inspired by the causes to which they give.

"I think it is part of our human instinct to look after each other," says Campbell, "and that has the side-product of making us feel good."

Philanthropy is not just for billionaires -- any regular contribution of time or resources is the kind of sustained giving at which ordinary Irish folk excel.

"Money in itself can only bring you so far. Chuck Feeney (the Irish-American billionaire who transferred the bulk of his fortune to his Atlantic Philanthropies) says that his philosophy is that once your basic needs are met, well, what are you going to do with the rest of it?"

Economically we might be devastated, but emotionally we might just recover.

"We are becoming more financially intelligent and not calling it penny-pinching," says Dr Anne B Ryan.

Should our economic circumstances improve, Frances Feeney (no relation to Chuck) of Social Capital Ireland suggests we might be wiser to how to enjoy it.

"Companies are starting to look to invest in interesting projects that might yield a blended return, financial and social. People still want to make money -- but they want it to count socially too."

All profits from sales of Enough is Plenty by Dr Anne B Ryan (see www.enoughisplenty.net) go to sustainable economics foundation Feasta.

• “People ask why I don’t charge for my expertise – where’s the fun in that?”
Landscape gardener PETER DONEGAN

“I’m not stupid with the euro in my pocket but some of the things I most enjoy I do for free. Recently I took a group of people around the war memorial gardens in Islandbridge. My wife made country apple pie and we had coffee in flasks, and we have another trip coming up to Ireland’s Eye. But what people kept bouncing back to me afterwards was: Why didn’t you charge for it?
I don’t get that. I competed at the Irish Conker Championships last year just for fun. It’s like I won’t put a shop on my blog (www.doneganlandscaping.com) because that’s not why I do it. I’d say 50 per cent of the phone calls I get are for free gardening advice, and I’ve been on the garden side of things on the Niall Mellon trips. I’m going to sound like a martyr but for me, it’s just not the point of life to always have to tie in everything you do to paying the bills.”

• “Our baby has shown me that family, love, joy give a life its value”
Ice-cream maker KIERAN MURPHY

“During the Celtic Tiger people talked about money all the time, and now we’re past it people still talk about it all the time. There are all these other things that give a life value: family, love, joy.
I know budgets are shrinking – we’ve just had a baby so I’m quite aware of it. But compared to what joy the baby has given me, the financial stresses pale.
My brother and I didn’t get into making ice-cream for money exactly – we did it because we love sweet things. No-one actually needs an ice-cream but it transcends that. People come into us because they are either happy to start with or they want to be cheered up.”

• “I never worked for the money – but now I’m very aware I need it”
TV and radio producer/director PAT O’MAHONY
“When I was a nipper, I did stuff because I wanted to do stuff. In the ’80s we were living in one big recession but I left jobs I was making good money in because I hated them.
Now I’m not that fussy – I can’t afford to be. I’ve never, ever worked for money but now I’m very aware I need money. There is a minimum basic amount that people need and it varies from person to person. I have a young lad now in college and this is not a good time to be broke.
I’m nearly 49 and for the first time, I’m thinking, Come back that money I used to earn! I left Head2Toe (RTE fashion show Pat presented) after five years because it was time for something else.
I know people who are extremely money-driven and I don’t understand that attitude of ‘I need loads of cash and I need you all to know that I have loads of it’. But I will say I’m no longer the footloose and fancy-free kid I was. It’s very easy to be a middle-class hippie when you’re young.”

Text, lies and betrayal

Emotional infidelity - as hurtful as a sexual betrayal?

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/love-sex/texts-lies-and-betrayal-2082590.html



By Susan Daly

Saturday February 27 2010

There is a tacit code when it comes to admiring a person who is not your partner: look but don't touch. It's probably best not to be caught looking either but, overall, the consensus would be that the occasional fantasy is all right -- as long as everyone keeps their clothes on.

When we think of love cheats, we think of secret trysts and illicit sex. However, the psychologists and counsellors who work at the frontline of relationship discord say that being caught in flagrante delicto is not the only way to betray your partner. Emotional infidelity -- becoming mentally intimate with someone other than your better half without taking it to a physical level -- can be just as fatal to a relationship's chance of survival.

The definition of infidelity is now as broad as Bill Clinton's interpretation of what constitutes a sexual act. Look at married radio and TV presenter Vernon Kay, forced to apologise on his BBC Radio 1 show this month for sending texts of an explicit nature to several women.

"Now this week, you may or may not be aware that because of some foolish and stupid decisions I have made, I have disappointed and I have let down a lot of people," said Kay. "To my family and everybody, I am very sorry." Clearly, his wife Tess Daly had been very hurt, even if Kay's spokesperson had stated as news of the first text broke: "Vernon has not cheated. He didn't sleep with this girl."

Kay himself had been a bit blasé initially about whether his sex texts were a form of infidelity or not. As he said: "I suppose it's like fantasy land, just words... I thought it was harmless banter and just larking around." KayGate prompted two interesting discoveries: one, that the emotional depths of bland Kay were even shallower than we had suspected; and two, that there is a real division in opinion over what constitutes cheating.

By rights, Ashley Cole should also be grappling with the definition of infidelity. His wife, Girls Aloud sweetheart Cheryl, was understandably not happy that picture messages of his naked bits had been sent to a model. Of course, as we know from Ashley, he lent the phone to a friend, who lent it to another friend, who found the pictures Ashley took of himself "larking about" in his hotel room and had forgotten to delete, and sent them on to this model as a joke.

So thankfully, there is a perfectly innocent and plausible explanation for the whole thing, but it hasn't stopped Cheryl apparently ending their relationship.

Keira Knightley addresses the same debate in an interview with this month's Elle magazine. Her upcoming film, Last Night, deals with a husband and wife who both find themselves presented with opportunities to cheat while away from each other for a night.

"When we were making it," says Knightley, "the arguments on set were just amazing about whether mental infidelity is better or worse than physical infidelity. There was a huge gender divide on the question. Every single woman said that mental infidelity is 10 times worse than [an emotionless physical fling]. And most men I spoke with said that it's the physical act that would be the ultimate betrayal."

If the genders are divided along these battle lines, it might explain Brad Pitt's reiteration last year that he and Angelina Jolie did not have an affair on the set of Mr and Mrs Smith.

He said their early relationship was "respectful" of Jennifer Aniston, which we are to take as meaning there was no hanky panky. Yet Jolie has made a point of saying that it will be nice for her and Pitt's children to "see a movie where their parents fell in love". There might not have been sex, but there were deep feelings.

"Affairs don't have to be sexual to be destructive," says Allison Keating, relationship psychologist at Dublin's bWell clinic. "A relationship is all about intimacy, sharing your hopes and dreams with someone. I personally would want my husband to come home and tell me about the big things of his day. That is the glue of a relationship -- confiding in each other the important things. If you're talking to someone else about those things, and pushing out your partner, that's not just a friendship."

That echoes the definition given by psychologist Shirley Glass in her seminal 2003 book, Not Just Friends: "The new infidelity," she wrote, "is between people who unwittingly form deep, passionate connections before realising that they've crossed the line from platonic friendship into romantic love. Infidelity is any emotional or sexual intimacy that violates trust."

The key message is that if an attached person feels the need to hide their interaction with someone outside the relationship, then they are aware that they are not being completely faithful.

Former US President Jimmy Carter told Playboy magazine back in the '70s that he had had "lust in my heart" for women other than the First Lady.

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust," he said, "I've committed adultery in my heart many times..."

"I've seen from couples down the years that literally a text was considered unacceptable," says Keating. "Some couples don't mind a degree of flirting; for others, it might mean the end. But the point is that a couple tends to be aware of the values they have set up within their particular relationship, and they know when they are crossing the line, even if they try to justify it by saying, 'It was just a text'."

Marriage and Relationship Counselling Service counsellor David Wheeler agrees that people are well aware when they have betrayed their partner's trust.

"We all have male friends and female friends, but there is a certain line that is drawn about what is appropriate and any reasonably intelligent person knows when it crossed."

He takes issue though with the notion that men take emotional entanglements more lightly than women. "Certainly the clients that I have worked with tend to have the same reaction when they discover that there has been that kind of non-sexual contact, but contact on an emotionally deep level," he says.

"The betrayed person feels cheated and angry, and the perpetrators of the betrayal use all the same justifications -- you weren't meeting my needs, it's non-sexual, I'm not doing anything wrong -- whether they are a man or a woman."

Research seems to suggest there's a lot of emotional infidelity going round. A study last year by the London School of Economics found that a quarter of mobile phone users had sent explicit text messages, and one in six used their phone to flirt with people other than their partners.

The ease of modern communication over the internet has made the e-motional affair more than a virtual reality.

Websites such as Facebook and Friends Reunited -- where England goalkeeper David James rekindled a love affair that started off online but cost him his marriage -- are being used to "live out fantasy lives" says Wheeler. He also cites internet pornography and sex chat lines as another form of betrayal because they create a sense of distance.

"Technology has certainly encouraged and exacerbated the situation," says psychologist Allison Keating. "People can be more inappropriate in text or email because there is one step of removal in it."

Some might say this type of 'virtual' infidelity doesn't cut it as a true form of unfaithfulness. That clearly isn't the opinion of the number of people upset enough about their partner's secret online and mobile phone activities to try their hand at a bit of DIY surveillance.

A Munster-based private investigator told Weekend that he has seen an increase in the number of people asking him to extract data from their partner's phones or laptops because they think they are exchanging inappropriate material with an outsider. "I do try to steer away from that because I don't want to get on the wrong side of the law, and it is difficult to prove when it's not a physical affair."

Another investigator, John Martin, runs the online spystore.ie which sells surveillance gadgets. "We are in a grey area in terms of our investigators doing that [he also runs a detective agency] so we leave it up to people to buy the gadgets -- and they do."

SIM card readers were immediately popular when the site was launched. "People send a text and erase it so their partner won't see it. What they don't realise is that most phones save these messages internally and a reader can fish them out."

Also popular is software that can be downloaded on to a computer and retrieve every move, password-protected or not, made on the internet in the previous days. "Parents use it to keep an eye on their children's safety on the internet," says Martin, "and some employers use it to check that their employees are not surfing the net when they should be working. But it's also used by people who suspect their partner is sending inappropriate emails to another person."

Perhaps we are not used to putting the label 'infidelity' on such subtle betrayal, but we are aware of it. In popular culture, the unconsummated love affair is one of the most powerful -- think Robert Redford and Kristin Scott Thomas exchanging lingering looks in The Horse Whisperer.

"The dangerous thing about emotional affairs," says counsellor David Wheeler, "is that they often lead to sexual affairs. Of the couples I have seen where there was a history of one partner getting close to a third party, there have only been four or five instances where that hasn't proceeded to the physical level."

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/love-sex/are-you-having-an-emotional-affair-2082591.html
Clinical psychotherapist Ronald T Potter-Efron co-authored The Emotional Affair: How To Recognise Emotional Infidelity and What To Do About It. If you want to examine whether your own behaviour falls into the definition of emotional infidelity, he suggests asking yourself if you agree with the following:

* I would prefer having lunch/dinner with someone other than my partner.
* Sometimes it feels as though my friend can read my mind.
* My friend meets emotional needs my partner doesn't.
* I feel empty, lonely and desperate when I cannot contact my friend.

If you agree with the above, then you must ask, 'Is this friendship adding to and complementing my relationship, or is it taking away from it?'

The Farreller is fine

My interview with Colin Farrell from last Friday's Day and Night mag.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/features/the-taming-of-colin-2080713.html

THERE was a time when Colin Farrell was as Dub as you could get. He had a house in Irishtown and, for a time, an accent closer to Ringsend than to the affluent suburb of Castleknock where he grew up.
Funny then that when Farrell speaks of having come “full circle”, that realisation was formed on the toe-end of a peninsula in Cork.
He was 22 when he shot his first significant role on location in Beara as a handsome local lad who makes eyes at a married woman. The production, a four-parter TV drama called Falling For A Dancer, piqued interest in the striking young actor and his dark-eyed charisma. You could say it started there. Two years later, he was cast in Joel Schumacher’s Tigerland, his breakout role as a rebellious US army grunt that announced to Hollywood that there was a new kid in town. Hollywood had a vacancy for a hard-living Irishman and he filled it with charm and enthusiasm.
Almost a decade later, a father of two and teetotal, he arrived back in west Cork to head up Neil Jordan’s new film. In Ondine he plays Syracuse, a former alcoholic fisherman who is doing his best to stay out of trouble. All he wants is to do right by his sick young daughter (played beautifully by first-time actor Alison Barry) and shake off the nickname ‘Circus’, a legacy from drink-sodden years of acting the clown.
“He decided that he was going to extricate himself,” says Farrell, “not geographically, but he takes himself off the grid.”
It’s hard not to refer to the biographical parallels for Farrell who has credited having his eldest son, James, with US model Kim Bordenave, with transforming his life. After a few years of painting LA red, a five-month marriage to an actress, Playboy parties and a liquid diet, Farrell checked into rehab in 2005 for exhaustion and prescription drug dependency. James – or Jimmy, as his dad calls him - was still a toddler. He hasn’t drank alcohol since.
“Obviously the correlation between my life and Syracuse’s life was obvious in some ways but the script was so good when I read it that I didn’t see them or I was blind and in denial,” says Farrell, smiling politely and folding his legs neatly beneath him on an armchair in the Merrion. (Is it possible the Farreller taken up yoga? What would Richard Harris think?)
He looks well. Healthy, leanly muscular, bright-eyed and engaged – all glowing references for the potent combination of sobriety and being deeply in love.
The girl, we know about. The newspapers were full of photogenic snaps of Farrell and his gorgeous Ondine co-star Alicja Bachleda as they dazzled Dublin last week at the film’s premiere and on the IFTA red carpet.
Director Neil Jordan required them to fall in love on screen after Syracuse rescues the titular Ondine, played by Alicja, from the sea. Romance developed off-screen. “It didn’t really get to a place of intellectualising it,” says Farrell, “we just got in touch and went with it and that was it really. Cut to…” Cut to Henry, the son born to the couple on October 7 last year.
I say Alicja doesn’t look like a woman who had a baby five months ago. “I swear, love, she looked like that two days after the birth,” he says. I would hate her but all reports emanating from the room down the hall where she is ensconced are that she is warm and lovely and impossible not to like. But Farrell’s biggest smile is reserved for their boy. Fatherhood, both times, has burst open his heart. “There’s nothing bigger than it,” he beams.
When James was born in 2003, Farrell was in Morocco, stuck in the middle of filming Oliver Stone’s Alexander. When Henry arrived last autumn, filming had just wrapped on Farrell’s last project, a movie called London Boulevard, also starring Keira Knightley and Ray Winstone.
“So I haven’t been working for four or five months which has been lovely,” he says. “Because I didn’t get to meet Jimmy until he was six weeks old, on a runway in Morocco. He was six weeks old when I laid my eyes on him for the first time because I was working. I was blotto at the time anyway but it was still mad, even though I was in a haze. So it’s been lovely to be with Henry from day one.”
Farrell, 33, is disarmingly forthright. And what he says that what he admires most in the character of Syracuse – the absence of self-pity – is also a trait entirely lacking in himself.
He continues, in his free, loquacious manner, “Jimmy may as well have had a fucking driver’s licence at six weeks old for all the changes that go on, the stuff that I missed. Every day, the change that happens. You see this soul trying to connect with this body, in a way. To watch that take place was absolutely magic.”
Life is sweet right now. He, Alicja and Henry live in LA, as do James and his mother so it’s easy for Farrell to enjoy the hands-on dad role he so relishes. He has two movies coming out – London Boulevard and the hotly-anticipated The Way Back with the next generation Irish A-lister Saoirse Ronan (“She’s so fucking brilliant and able and proficient – it’s not hyperbole,” he insists.)
He’s in what the Yanks would probably call a good place – and what Farrell would probably take a few hundred more words to describe. So he does. Being back in west Cork, with its “maddeningly beautiful” scenery, reminded Farrell of what he calls a “modest epiphany” he had a few years back in the States.
“I was caught in this storm in Virginia and I felt this sublime moment of insignificance… the peace that came with it was counter to what I would have expected from feeling insignificant.
“But this feeling of insignificance I felt was in relation to nature and the power of nature was such a weight off my shoulders. I was like, Fuck me, I’ve nothing to worry about. I’m only here for a blip. I really am. This was here before me and this will be here after me. I’m not that important. I’m not the centre of the universe’.”
PLAYING IT FOR REAL: The roles close to Colin’s heart
Playing Syracuse was, says Colin Farrell, “one of the times when I felt I understood the emotional or intellectual cadence of the character very quickly. I understood it with Tigerland and I understood it with In Bruges.” Those two roles also provide a neat summation of how far the Dubliner has travelled…
TIGERLAND (2000): Farrell’s big Hollywood break was to be cast by Joel Schumacher as a Vietnam-era US Army recruit. As the rebellious Bozz, he practices compassion for his fellow grunts and disdain for his boot-camp military masters in equal measure. Variety magazine decided that the role showed Farrell had “everything it takes to become a major Hollywood star”.
IN BRUGES (2008): Despite all the big-budget fare in between, it was this low-fi surprise hit that gave Farrell some of his best critical notices since Tigerland and Phone Booth (2002). His nervy turn as hitman Ray was laced with humour and pathos. It also earned him his first Golden Globe for Best Actor (in a Musical or Comedy).
ENDS

MILF: Mother-in-law fingerpointing

You can almost hear the crack of mother-in-law jokes from here as Ashley Cole rolls out that old misogynistic chesnut...

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/susan-daly-of-course-the-motherinlaw-got-the-blame-it-couldnt-be-ashley-coles-fault-could-it-2081222.html

JUST when you thought Ashley Cole couldn't get any classier -- he blames the mother-in-law.

Has Ashley resurrected the comedian Les Dawson to do his PR? (Sample Dawson joke: "I can always tell when the mother-in-law's coming to stay: the mice throw themselves on the traps.")

Cheryl's mother Joan moved in with the couple two years ago in the wake of Ashley's first jump from the back page of newspapers to the front. A hairdresser called Aimee insisted she'd scored the England defender and the Cole marriage was thought to be in trouble.

Cheryl stood by her man-child, later telling Vogue magazine that she forgave him because he's "got a young mentality for his age anyway". A very attractive quality in a husband, you'll agree. Nonetheless, they stayed together and part of the reconciliation package was to have Joan fetch up in the spare room to support her daughter.

Now that Ashley finds himself back in hot water, he has lashed out and found an easy target. Like any reliable left-back under pressure, Ashley has decided that attack is the best defence.

Really Ashley, was your nine-bedroom mansion not big enough for the three of you? Could you not get a moment to yourself in any one of the five bathrooms, underground swimming pool area and five-a-side football pitch area? Could you not have avoided the mother-in-law by taking the servants' staircase?

Cheryl got one thing right in her marriage to Mr Cole. He's a little boy trapped in adult-size Premiership pants. How depressingly predictable that he won't take responsibility for the devastation of his marriage.

Then again, isn't that we've been told to expect from some men? Take this other theory being circulated by a 'close friend' of Ashley: Cheryl's successful career had driven a wedge between the couple. She left him to his own devices while she was off filming X Factor or on tour with Girls Aloud. Again, it's not me, it's you.

It all sounds terribly familiar. Remember when David Beckham allegedly nipped to the (Rebecca) Loos while holed up alone in Madrid? Somehow it became Posh's fault for not moving lock, stock and barrel of kids to Spain immediately on her hubby's transfer there.

Ashley's 'friends' imply Cheryl failed her marriage by not being at home 24/7 to keep her husband in line. How very 1950s. I bet she doesn't even own a frilly apron, the slattern.

No doubt they would like it very much if Cheryl made like Posh and joined herself at the hip to her husband as soon as suspicion set in. It's such a bogus accusation to level at poor Cheryl. She was a woman of her own making before she met baby-man Ashley. In fact, it probably did her credibility some temporary damage to stay with him as long as she did.

The problem is that while Cheryl is returning to the rest of us here in the 21st century, the door to the time machine that is being a WAG is still open. After all, the players still want them. A talented boy needs a devoted mummy to come home to (and not someone else's devoted mummy, apparently) and kiss their grazed knees better.

The women are to blame too. By aspiring to the post of WAG as some seem to do, they make themselves accessories to their famous and wealthy boyfriends and husbands.

Luckily for Cheryl she can buy her own diamonds and pay her own bills.