Nightwatch: When it comes to hens, I'm chicken

Call me old-fashioned, but a hen party's not a hen party without a good selection of Willies. Oh, unshield thine eyes. It wasn't THAT kind of evening. For one thing, the hen didn't want to be called a hen.

There were to be no L-plates, no presents of edible underwear, no undie-cover stripper policemen, no banana splits topped off with provocative balls of strawberry ice-cream. I'm with the hen who wouldn't be called a hen on this. Ritual humiliation is so over-rated.

But, as mentioned, a hen night without Willies is taking the mickey. So she was given a special envelope containing pictures of famous Willies to take home and enjoy at her leisure. There were Willies of all shapes and sizes in there ... Willie O'Dea, Willy Wonka, William Shakespeare, Liam Neeson. Just their faces, mind. We wouldn't do that to the girl.

And really, that was enough smut for me. I have to admit I hate the traditional hen night where everyone is expected to act like an extra from a Carry On movie.

Someone hired a stripper for me at an occasion once -- totally, deeply, inappropriately out of context at the time -- and I don't think I've recovered from the trauma yet.

I suffer Memento-style flashbacks whenever Right Said Fred pops up on the radio. For the most part, I seem to have blanked it out. All I really remember is smiling manically at the poor guy and saying, "Er thanks very much, that's grand now, really, that's fine, thanks." It must have been like performing for your nana.

I also take issue with the notion that wearing a plastic booby bib is 'traditional'. And if by chance it is written into the Domesday Book that, lo, a bride-to-be shall drink from a penis-shaped straw on the eve of her nuptials, does that mean it's right?

There used to be a wedding tradition in Anglo-Saxon culture for the bride to pass her shoes to her husband who would then tap her on the head with them. (Short translation: I'm in charge here now, woman.) If we can do without that charming bit of Anglo-Saxon legacy, we can probably do without emulating their ancestors -- a hen party from Newcastle trawling Temple Bar's finest 'nite' spots.

At least the trend for forcing your ladies-in-waiting -- sorry, female friends -- to spend a few hundred euro on a weekend away to celebrate your fantasticness before they 'lose' you to marriage seems to have bitten the bullet. One woman I know was asked to attend a week-long hen party masquerading as a girls-only holiday. There was nothing relaxing about the rigorous schedule of spa appointments, lavish dinners and long-haul travel demanded by the bride-to-be.

By contrast, my friend's sister recently had an afternoon tea party with some close gal pals and relatives. There were cupcakes, there were Rice Crispie buns and there were a whole lot of women breathing a sigh of relief.

Do men have this problem? I've heard a few male friends groan at the prospect of yet another weekend of being shot in the face with paintballs. Enforced fun is no fun at all.

Back to the hen that wasn't a hen. Lack of edible knickers aside, there was another noticeable break with tradition. Everyone seemed to actually like one another. This isn't always a prerequisite for hens. In cases where the poor bridesmaid ends up inviting everyone the bride has ever had contact with, for fear of being glared at on the wedding day by some distant cousin, it can be a dangerous mishmash of personalities.

I had the (mis)fortune to attend one such a gathering a few years back. The work crowd didn't like the old school friends. The rowdy old school friends irritated the relatives. Someone wasn't drinking and sent back the second bottle of red ordered for her end of the table because she decided they'd already had 'enough'. Another insisted that as she didn't have a dessert, she wanted her share of the bill deducted.

There were tears in the Chardonnay and at least two storm-outs before the night was through. At least it bode well for the marriage staying together: I'm not sure the bride would ever want to go through another hen night.

Sing like you mean it

You're either a singsong person or you're not. Most Irish people are singsong merchants. At any given gathering of my extended family, you can't clink a spoon against a glass for fear someone takes it as their cue to tune up.

This ditty diarrhoea is the one cultural presumption that I don't mind people making about the Irish. Failte Ireland should make a merit of it and get the Yanks back in by hinting that we're as likely to burst into a spot of Spancil Hill as look at them.

Who wouldn't come to Ireland on their holidays if they thought it gave them a walk-on part on the set of some real, live Celtic Glee? Clee, if you will.

I even have my suspicions that the Russian spy who was passing himself off as a Murphy in America until recently might have some Irish blood in him after all. Who would have pegged Vladimir Putin as a singsong fan? But he was, in a tightly controlled fashion and for one night only. And when did it happen? When he met up with the 10 Russian spies who were expelled from the States, our man Murphy among them.

Putin later reported that they sang the unofficial KGB anthem What Motherland Begins With "and other songs of that character". I'd bet anything Murphy was at the bottom of this patriotic little concert. What did he sing? Dearg Doom? The Boys Are Back In Town? Rat Trap (And You've Been Caught)?

I can't talk. I spent last Saturday night blowing the earholes off some unfortunate taxi driver duetting on I Know Him So Well with a woman I had met just two hours earlier. I have decided that she is my singsong soulmate. We like the same 80s power ballads. When she started singing Hazel O'Connor, she went high, I went low. We were harmony in motion. We were annoying as hell.

It had began in someone else's kitchen -- where else? -- earlier that evening. There is always one person in any given social group who spends the night itching to start a singsong. You can see them, fidgeting with frustration when people go outside to smoke because their potential audience is dwindling and distracted.

Then the snatches of song start to appear. It's a bit like Hyacinth Bucket singing the shopping list at her neighbours, pining for everyone to just shut the frig up and LISTEN! Eventually they just go for broke and burst into an ABBA medley. I appreciate these people because I'm not brave enough to be one. It's like dancing -- I'd never be first on an empty dancefloor, but as soon as it fills up, I'm out there throwing all sorts of shapes.

Our Saturday night singsong was truncated by some howling dogs. I can't say I blame them. So we never did establish who would take on the traditional sing-a-long roles.

There is always the one who has been breastfed on a diet of X Factor, Pop Idol and Everyone's Got Talent. They will warble their way through some excruciating version of I Will Always Love You because they have been taught that anything is possible if you only Believe In Yourself. Never mind that not even Whitney Houston can hit a Whitney Houston high note these days.

I like listening out for the dark horses. The hairy-knuckled hobbit in the corner who gives a sweet and unaffected rendition of Hallelujah before going back to frowning into his can of Bulmers. The quiet girl who breaks into a rocked-out version of Common People and then runs away in embarrassment.

They just about make up for the ballad purists who insist on all 12 verses of The Raggy Boy, and the armchair republicans -- there's always one where I come from -- who can't get to the chorus of One Flew Over The Wall without breaking down into tears.

If there is a kingdom of heaven, though, blessed are the instrumentalists. Unless you are willing to play until your fingers bleed, don't ever volunteer guitar skills at a party. At first everyone is in awe that you know all the chords to Ride On, all three of them, and the introduction to Blackbird. An hour later and you're nothing but an accompaniment monkey. The minute someone asks for Stairway to Heaven, do the right thing. Go home.

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/nightwatch-sing-like-you-mean-it-2295585.html

Nightwatch: Costume change

My Friday Nightwatch column from the Irish Independent:
Friday July 16 2010

Surely the surprising thing is not that Lindsay Lohan is going to jail on Tuesday -- it's not even that she had 'Fuck U' painted across her fingernails for her probation hearing.

I mean, come on, I've had expletives written on my nails for all my probation hearings, and the judge always finds them hilarious and not at all disrespectful.It's that she changed outfit three times during the hearing.

Had she mistaken her day in court for a presenter gig at the MTV Movie Awards or something? She arrived in the morning in a sombre, all-black trouser suit. At lunch, she decided to accessorise with a blazer and necklace. By the time the judge came to sentence her, she had stuck on a jumpsuit. Which, to be fair, was a good way to acclimatise to what she'll be wearing in prison.

Now, I know it's not the done thing to admire Li-Lo at the moment. She's not really the kind of gal you'd want organising your girls' night out, for example. Not unless you wanted to wake up in an open boxcar on the train to Albuquerque with a blank memory, a raging hangover and the number of some guy called Bubba written on your bra. Or, depending on your definition of what constitutes a good night out, maybe she is.

I do, however, admire her ability to 'pull together' a variety of sartorial options in a moment of crisis.

This is not a simple case of dressing yourself in the morning. I do manage -- most days -- to make it out the door with shoes on both feet and the requisite foundation garments. Sometimes, I even put something on top of those again.

I watch the American version of What Not to Wear, the one with the aggressive Noo Yoicker female presenter and her poor woman's Gok Wan sidekick. I get the basic tenets of dressing appropriately: no belly tops, no stonewashed denim, vertical stripes.

But dressing coherently under pressure? Forget it. This hit home last Thursday evening, the official start of the weekend. (I do wonder if Li-Lo's drinking habits would be considered as dangerous in Ireland as they are in the US.)

It was one of those 12-hour work days caused by doing three hours of graft, and five hours of Facebook and Twitter, the previous day. I was to meet a group of women in a pub to discuss a project we're all working on. I knew some of them by acquaintance; more I didn't know at all. Two words bounced around my brain. No, not Li-Lo's charming fingernail invitation. First. Impressions.

It's a lie to say that women don't dress for men. Clearly, if you're going on a date, you're not going to get out the sackcloth and ashes to make sure it's just your personality he's after. But it's also very true -- much more so, I would argue -- that women dress for other women.

Pathetic as it sounds, there's a lot of judgey-wudgey stuff going on when women are trying to get a handle on each other. A man might look at another man's feet briefly and think: I like/don't like/have no opinion at all on those runners. I look at women who wear heels that are too high for them to walk in and I immediately make a judgment call on what's in their head, as much as what's on their feet. It's not nice, but it's true, and I'm sure it has been done to me many a time.

So I put a small bomb in the base of the wardrobe and stood back to let it do its work. Not really. But the room did look like it had been hit by a few sticks of gelignite after I had spent an hour pulling things off the hangers and upending the laundry basket to see if the perfect outfit might be hiding in there. (Oh admit it -- everyone has sniffed a T-shirt at least once in their life to see if they might get one more wear out of it.)

In desperation, I ended up going out the door -- late, of course -- in purple tights, a denim dress and mustard-coloured wedges. And yes, it did look as odd as it sounds.

And shame on me for my cynicism: none of the women I met batted an eyelid. One actually told me she liked the colour combo of the tights and shoes -- and sounded sincere rather than just kind.

"Oh, these old things?" I said. "I just threw them on before I came out the door."

- Susan Daly

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/night-watch-its-all-change-for-ongoing-costume-drama-2260998.html

Nightwatch: Guilt-stricken by the human sushi bar

My Nightwatch column from last Friday's Day and Night magazine...

GUILT is an unwelcome guest on a night out. It is an emotion best saved for the morning after. It's going to come unannounced anyway, letting itself in with the key you meant to get back from your ex.

It will sneak up the stairs, stand drooling over your pillow for a moment and then yell in your earhole: 'I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST NIGHT!'

Ah yes, guilt. The horrors, the shakes, the frantic scramble for the Solpadeine followed by a grab for the phone to see who was texted, what was texted and what planet of inappropriateness you were on at the time.

It ain't nice, but it's like penance for throwing caution and all three sheets to the wind the previous evening. It helps us to say, hand on heart, 'Never again' and mean it for at least four working days.

What is pointless is feeling guilt before you've actually done something wrong. I get it when I throw up a deadline for a dinner date. It makes the crème brulee stick in the throat. (Ed: What?! You told me you had to rush your pregnant friend to Holles Street that time you were late last week.)

Ahem, I mean, I can imagine that kind of thing might make one feel guilty. Please don't fire me. Then there is the particular type of seasonal guilt that comes into play about the time my hayfever kicks in every year.

The nights, theoretically, are balmier. The risk of developing frostbite or being hailstoned to death is, theoretically, negligible. It's that wonderful time when al fresco drinking becomes de rigueur.

This also means that the chances of being asked for spare change five times in an hour are pretty high.

A friend more cynical than I describes it thus: in summer, in Dublin, each pub has two bars. There is the one inside and the one outside, which my friend calls the sushi bar.

Apparently, you see the exact same people pass in the exact same order at regular 20-minute intervals, asking for change or a cigarette. It's like watching the same bit of tuna go past on loop, and you're trying not to catch the tuna's eye.

As my friend is one of these sad old gits who insists on sticking to the same pub in a city full of watering holes, I'll have to take his kerbside observations as reliable.

My friend is somewhat hardened to these regular appeals to his benevolence. He has decided to give money only to the old lady with the shopping cart and a polite but firm 'No' to the others.

Me on the other hand? I take my gin with a rather large slice of guilt in it. I don't want to be hassled, but then I feel bad for not wanting to be hassled. I can't blame some down-on-their-luck person for noticing how many drinks I have in the space of an hour and how I could well afford to spare them the price of one.

Oh I know, poor me, what a dilemma for the person who does actually have a bed to go home to. Seriously though, what do you do?

I just holidayed in Italy -- again, doesn't your heart bleed for me -- and spent a night in Milan watching the beautiful people at a bar so cool I thought I was going to be thrown out any second for parting my hair on the wrong side.

These hipsters had an 'interesting' way of dealing with unwanted approaches from outside the velvet rope -- scream at them until they went away. Clearly, that's not the way to go.

Nor is staying inside the pub an option. That would just make me feel guiltier still.

I guess the only thing for it is to either give with good grace or stop feeling bad about saying no. Alternatively, I might spend the rest of the summer hiding behind my friend.
FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-guilt-tripped-by-the-human-sushi-bar-2225704.html

Pull up to my bumper, baby

Nightwatch column from Independent's Day and Night mag:

By Susan Daly

Friday May 21 2010

On a night out, it's up there with queuing for the ladies' toilets. The taxi ride home is an unavoidable pain in the ass. But is it getting better? Do you feel the same? I've had an unsettling number of incidents recently where a taxi driver has pressed his little meter gizmo at the end of a trip and said something like, "Seven-forty, love. Ah, let's leave that at seven". All the while, he's beaming at you like an urchin child who has come bearing the gift of a mud pie.

Since when have taxi drivers been rounding down their fares? It doesn't seem that long ago that the done thing was to suggest rounding up the fare to the nearest €2 coin. Hand over the exact change and you'd feel two searing pinpoints of burning rage reflected from the rear-view mirror. The 'stingy-cow' stare for what they perceived was a 'stingy cow' fare.

Have you not been listening? Do you not understand that the country -- the entire country -- has its hand in the taxi driver's pocket, in the pockets of his rickets-ridden children and that of his invalid mother? And the dog needs an operation. You heartless wagon.

There are clearly still some dinosaurs out there in the ranks. The ones who think parking across the entire breadth of O'Connell Street makes them the heirs to Padraig Pearse. The ones who perform a go-slow protest through the city at rush hour in the deluded notion that it will make us punters sympathetic to their cause.

I don't seem to be getting those guys and gals of late. I've been hopping into the nice, clean taxis of nice, polite folks who seem to have worked out what the letters PSV on their taxi licence stand for. So no enforced psychotherapy sessions. ("You know what your problem is? You're stressed out. You'd want to relax." Thanks for that. I feel much better. Keep the change.)

And no sessions with me in the role of the therapist, listening to the blow-by-blow account of the row they had last night with the missus. Yes, you were wrong to tell her what was what and, yes, I do blame you. No, I don't want to go by the quays. Stop picking your nose.

Hand on heart, I can say there was a time when I point-blank refused to use taxis. It came after a series of curious incidents -- all in the night-time -- where the drivers behaved like some shower of marauding pirates.

One had a road-rage tantrum that made Britney's umbrella attack on that paparazzo's SUV look mild by comparison. One referred to a passing taxi being driven by an African gentleman -- that was the presumption; he could have been from Cabra for all we knew -- as a "blacksie".

My personal favourite was the man who told me every reason why "culchies" should not be allowed to own property in Dublin -- and then asked what part of Tipperary I was from.

Sure wasn't his mother from there and wouldn't he recognise the accent anywhere.

There is only so much time in a day you can waste beating a path to the Carriage Office to make complaints. So I gave them up like sweeties at Lent, but with lowered blood pressure as the reward instead of a big chocolate egg.

Recently, though, I've been seduced by the new come-ons from Public Service Vehicles. They seem to want my business. One taxi passed me on Dame Street the other day with the words 'Email me at ... . day or night' written across the side door.

A few have bright flashing 'For hire' signs in the windscreen now, in case you missed the big yellow sign on the roof.

So I've decided to give the relationship another go. It's honeymoon days yet, but the signs have been healthy.

Good manners, nice small talk and, er, clean upholstery.

If things go on like this, you can most certainly pull up to my bumper, sir.

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-pull-up-to-my-bumper-2188512.html

Nice day for a... festival

The day after I had submitted this Nightwatch column for the Indo's Day and Night festival-themed mag, I got a wedding invite for the August Bank Holiday weekend. Mark and Simone, your wedding is OBVIOUSLY excluded from the sentiments expressed here...


By Susan Daly

Friday April 30 2010

Martin King, eat your heart out. I can confidently predict this summer is going to be a scorcher. Of course it will be: it's FIFA World Cup year. Volcanic eruptions, flash floods and freak earthquakes notwithstanding, there are a few laws of nature you can set your clock by.

One is the direct correlation between the number of times Mr King winks at the end of any TV3 weather bulletin and the increased likelihood of rain. (If he winks thrice, it's time to get out the sandbags. This is a scientific fact.)

Another is the absolute guarantee that any year with a World Cup in it is a year with a heatwave. It's like nature's way of punishing anyone who insists on wearing a polyester football shirt and sitting indoors for a month.

This is the same twisted weather system that, less fairly, makes Leaving Cert students swelter inside exam halls for two torturous weeks while the rest of the country basks at the beach.

The point being that I'm convinced it's gonna be a good one -- and I'm putting my money where my meteorological guess is. This, my friends, is going to be a great year for festivals. All I need to figure out is, a) which ones I can afford, b) who I can get to go with me, and c) where I will get the time to go to all the ones I fancy. I'm thinking a spreadsheet might be the way to go.

Spreadsheet, you cry? Doesn't that go against the very spirit of festivals, of free love and living carefree for a weekend? Not in my little handbook of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, it ain't.

I'm the kind of gal who goes to these things with water purification tablets and three different SPF creams. Yes, my rucksack is huge, but I'm also the angel doling out babywipes and aloe vera burn salve to less-prepared friends by day two.

I'm also finally feeling this is the year where I have sorted out exactly which fests I want to throw my lot in with. It has taken years, but I think I have grown a radar to detect the fests being run by badly organised chancers. Not that there are many of those now: the time for thinking a one-sided lorry trailer and a burger stall justified charging folks 50 lids is over.

I don't get festival fatigue. I love having six options on a June bank holiday (not including the offer to help a friend move house -- er, no thanks). My only problem is all the other life stuff that gets in the way of me rocking out in a field.

Things like weddings. How selfish are those people? Would they not get married in February when we are really in need of a good party? The chillier weather would also carry a reduced risk of Uncle Jimmy wanting to take off his shirt to perform the Hucklebuck.

What makes me laugh is the reaction of some people to festivals. "I wouldn't have the stamina," said one. Another thought I was an idiot for paying €300 for a three-day festival.

I don't know if it's rude to point out that you are expected to spend at least that much time and effort on a wedding these days, no matter how far away from the top table you're seated.

Pre-wedding dinners and post-nuptial barbeques seem to be de rigeur. Jebus help you if you suggest you mightn't be able to spare another two days off work on either side of the big day.

Who spends less than a few hundred euro on an out-of-town wedding? Between accommodation in some overpriced B&B in the back end of Westmeath, transport, a wedding outfit and the all-important present -- well, let's just say there's no such thing as a free three-course dinner.

By all means, have your wedding on the August bank holiday. But I'll have to consult my spreadsheet.

First published here: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-why-summer-weddings-dont-rock-my-world-2159016.html

Home Alone

My Nightwatch column from today's Day&Night magazine:

I ain't no Marlene Dietrich but sometimes I vant to be alone. However, the deal with living in a city is you've got to really believe that hell isn't other people. You've got to love the buzz and the bustle.

It is okay, though, to occasionaly admit that the packed top deck of the 46a can be purgatory. It's alright to never really mean it when you smile apologetically at chuggers as they try to mug you for a charity direct debit on the street.

Why do we bang on about the Phoenix Park being the jewel of the city when most of it resembles a giant dog run? Let's be honest, from time to time, we all want to stand in a big field and say nothing to no-one.

Alternatively, to get some quality 'me' time, you could touch something gross, pick up a nasty virus and have your doctor put you in quarantine.

That's what I did. I'm not sure what it was (or who it was -- there's a thought) that I got into grubby contact with. All I know is that I woke up one morning feeling like I was hosting the remake of The Clash of the Titans in my stomach.

Fearing the distance between my doctor's office and my bathroom was a marathon too far, I rang in with my symptoms. It was serious, I was told, but not so serious that I would die. Which was reassuring.

Stay away from other people for a few days and drink lots of fluid. The Fella's innate sense of timing meant he was heading to Norway -- don't ask -- for a few days, so he kindly dropped off a crate of bottled water, soup, yoghurt and ... er, toilet rolls on his way to the airport. "Kisses!" he waved from a distance, as he performed a swift drive-by groceries manoeuvre.

In the past, when I've been working too hard, I've fantasised about being made to go sit in solitary confinement and do nothing, like in one of those Outbreak-style films. Just as a precautionary measure, naturally. I wouldn't actually want to be diagnosed with the Ebola virus and have blood come out of my eye sockets.

In reality, being forced to stay home alone is more like, well, the Home Alone films. The tablets start to kick in. Suddenly you're feeling well enough to do all the things you wouldn't do if someone was there to see you. Watching Jeremy Kyle until you feel like you have to shower. Air-guitaring invisible power chords to naff 80s compilations. Buying whistling keyfinder gadgets from iwantoneofthose.com. Spying on the neighbours.

It turns out that the only neighbours of mine who are at home during the day are elderly and rather feeble. At 10 minutes past midday every single afternoon, a minibus from a day centre stops outside their flats and the driver beeps incessantly until the poor old folk emerge like slightly blind badgers, raincoats in a flap.

I decided we didn't like that driver. (You know you've been on your own too long when you start referring to yourself in the third person).

After two days, depression takes hold. Like Kevin in Home Alone, you want your mummy. So you ring her and she lets you moan on until such time as the second half of Coronation Street comes on the telly. "Okay darling, mind yourself, love you!"

But this too shall pass. By the time I got the green light from the doc to head outside into the real world again, I had reverted to acting like an adult. In my last day of quarantine, I tidied up the gaff, put my books in alphabetical order (by author), did three laundry washes and downloaded all the photos trapped in my digital camera for the first time in months.

The following morning, I hummed all the way to the shops and smiled broadly at everyone until someone asked me what my problem was. Ah Dublin, I missed you.

FIRST PUBLISHED HERE: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-on-being-home-alone-2131213.html

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.

I'm getting too old for this...

My Nightwatch col from yesterday's Day and Night magazine. The headline as published in the magazine was 'Sleep is for wimps'.
Check out the headline as it appeared in the online link for a good laugh -
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1964095.html


Vampires and zombies are so hot right now. And rightly so -- they're the trademark bookends of an excellent night out. You start the evening, all smoky-eye make-up and trailing an aura of mystique. If you're lucky, you get to sink your fangs into someone.

By the wee hours, though, you've shapeshifted into the other; drooling, mascara on a downward slide, arms stretched out ahead trying to feel your way home. Very few people know this next bit is a scientific fact. After 3am, if you close your eyes while walking, your internal GPS will kick in and bring you the most direct route to your bed. That route will also magically take in a chipper. It's biological genius.

What is not so genius is timing your arrival home after your first all-night party in ages -- ages, I tell you! -- with the departure of the new neighbour for work. Three words to strike dread into the heart: Walk Of Shame (WOS).

He's all "Oh, good night was it?", wink, wink. You're all mortified, fumbling with a key that turns out to be the one to your gym locker. It's all well and good to watch the sun rise on a beach in Barcelona. It's another to have to walk against a tide of office workers in one shoe.

That's why this is the perfect time of year to pull an all-nighter. As long as you make it home by 8am, you can do the WOS under cover of darkness. The temptation might be to put the head under the duvet and sleep until spring. But hibernation is death my friends. (Not literally. Unless you're a tortoise. If they're not fat enough when they go to sleep, they never wake up. Sad, no?)

This is the kind of reasoning that kept me from giving into my wintertime circadian rhythms last Friday night. When the clock struck three, I decided I could go home or I could stay and see what cocktails were to be constructed from Kahlua, gin and red lemonade. Naturally, the Portobello Power Punch(™) won out.

The house party is the best place to pull an all-nighter. It gets an injection of energy when a wave of people arrive as the pubs close. Three o'clock is the new midnight. Six is the new three. Seven is ... time to start clearing up and making tea.

You're among friends, or at least like-minded lushes. Chances are there is always someone who wants to be the last one standing. As long as that's not you, it's quite easy to not feel like a complete saddo for re-enacting Billie Jean on someone's kitchen tiles at half past five in the morning. Billie Jean will always be cool. Another scientific fact.

Also, the universe has been sending me signs recently that staying up is the right thing to do. A friend has acquired a turf-burning brazier. This means we can clink beers in the back garden without the earth-destroying guilt that goes with sitting under a patio heater for the night. The downside of this is that I woke up on Saturday wondering what was burning. It was the smell of a night of smoky peat in my hair.

There is also the curious case of 'little helpers' for the sleep-deprived (legal, I assure you) that seem to be popping up all over the place. I asked the guy in Spar if he'd tried the new Red Bull shot capsules. No, he said, but he'd heard they were "rocket fuel". I might save it for emergencies.

Then the local coffee shop started offering something called an 'intense' americano. I'll be having one of those, thank you, I told the girl behind the counter. She looked around her as if to check for the caffeine cops, leaned in and said: You know there are four shots of espresso in that?

"I can handle it, baby!" I said before going outside and gagging like a contestant in a bushtucker trial. If all this sounds like an endurance test, then I guess it is. But like the best tests of mettle -- climbing Everest, watching the Late Late Toy Show -- it's a bonding experience. You'll never have a friend like the one that sits up playing the ukulele with you till dawn.

- Susan Daly

How to be a smart arts

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1935912.html



By Susan Daly

My Nightwatch column from Friday's Day and Night magazine in the Indo...

THERE is an assumption that journalists have a glamorous life, swanning from premiere to launch, night after night, floating along on a river of free champagne and wine spritzers.

Maybe that was the case once upon a Tiger time (and if so, my gilt-edged invitations must have got lost in the post). But it's a whole new discoball game these days. A girl's got to resort to some serious bluffing to get a free drink in this town. In fact, she's got to be a right smart arts.

A more culturally aware friend than I has taken to grooming me in the manner of Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady. I'm her Eliza Doolittle, screaming "What the frig is that meant to be?" across a hushed art gallery as others stroke their chins meaningfully at a black cube suspended in purple jelly.

I have learned something, though. I've learned that exhibition openings tend to be generously lubricated by free wine. No matter the standard of the art, its quality always improves in direct proportion to the number of glasses you have. Everyone's a winner.

There is the risk however that you will be identified for the philistine you are. An added consideration is not to insult the artist or curator of the exhibition by making it obvious that the installation you are most interested in is the man at the trestle table saying "Red or white, madam?" It's only polite and right to return the hospitality by at least looking as interested in what's on the walls as what's in your glass.

There's a great art to this. If you watch someone who looks like they know what they're looking at in a gallery, they always stand back a bit to take in the bigger picture. (Not that arty types use the word 'picture'. It's a 'piece', goddammit!) Peering suspiciously and leaning in for a close-up makes you look like a toddler trying to lick a TV screen.

Neither is it cool to touch anything which is tempting. I know this from when I was faced with a skull made of marshmallow and was feeling peckish. I think the general rule is to never eat the artwork -- unless invited to.

I read once about a German artist who exhibited a series of glass frames on a wall, each filled with a different-coloured cocktail, for all the world like an optics line-up in a bar. There was a little tap at the bottom of each frame and he encouraged visitors to the gallery to fill their glass from it. That's my kind of interactive art.

The punchline was that each cocktail drained away to slowly reveal a picture of a ... pink elephant. Nope, me neither.

This is the only possibly hiccup to hanging out at art exhibitions when you're not in the know: admitting that you just don't get it. The last piece of art I made was an ashtray out of Plasticine -- God bless the 80s when the fashioning of smoking paraphernalia was considered an appropriate crafts project for children. Badly educated as I am, the temptation can be overpowering to blurt out: "Seriously, what's it meant to be?"

It's the same if you're at the theatre with people who don't just go to plays when someone famous off the telly is in them. You mention you nodded off in the second half and they look at you like you've just gatecrashed their dinner party in a PVC gimp mask.

Kindly folk who want the arts to be more accessible and less intimidating to the general public say that there is no right or wrong way to interpret a piece of work. Well, there is. Observations such as, "Hey, my kid could do that!" or "It costs how much?!" are never welcome. If you can't see anything at all, then murmur something about negative space and how the piece is obviously about what's NOT there rather than what is. People will nod approvingly and you can wander off to top up your glass.

The more of these openings I go to though, the less worried I get about spoofing. I tagged along to the opening of a big photographic exhibition recently and it soon became clear that most people there were only interested in celebrity spotting. I suspect that some galleries are just happy to fill the room on opening night and create a bit of a buzz about an artist's name. And if that makes me a patron of the arts, then let's call me Mrs Saatchi and get it over with.

Where it's always Arthur's Day

All Back To The Local - as printed in Day and Night magazine last Friday...

SOMETIMES you know something has happened before you see it. There’s a thump, a stifled giggle and a frisson of energy from a corner of the pub.
This forewarning never fully prepares you for the sight of a fully-grown man upside down with his head trapped between the wood panelling of the bar and the copper foot rail running around the bottom.
The soles of his shoes pedalling furiously in mid-air. His face turning purple with impotent fury and the rush of blood to the head. His friends alternating between collapsing in hysterics and trying to extricate him.
The barman intervenes with a weary ‘Fer Chrissakes, lads, take him home’. The rest of us turn back to our drinks. Just another Saturday afternoon in the local.
Only a certain class of pub can breed those little moments of weirdness. It needs staff who are intimate with the eccentricities of their regulars, and regulars who appreciate that sometimes a man will end up on his head because he’s too tired and emotional to stand on his feet. We’ve all been there. (Haven’t we?)
The upside-down man was one of a group of early-shift workers whose day finished at noon. They were always to be found at one end of my old local on a Saturday, easing their transition from work to the weekend with a few pints. He was the new guy and had yet to perfect the art of daytime drinking.
He was back the following week, pacing himself a little more carefully and looking sheepish. The barman never said a word, just laid his pint on the counter.
That’s the kind of unspoken tolerance that cultivates loyalty. At the risk of sounding like Dara O’Briain in those Vintners’ Federation ads, there’s nowhere like your local.
I wonder if many of us will start rediscovering ours now that the era of the superpub appears to be over. The financial death grip of the past year has closed several of them. Others remain on life support, looking for help from the courts to stay open.
It has been difficult for small pubs too – I guess more people are staying at home with cheap slabs of beer from Lidl. But if it came to the crunch and we were all required to go to the pub at least once a week (come on Guinness, surely a better marketing wheeze than Martha’s Day) I know which till I would rather put my money in.
If it doesn’t sound too pathetic to say out loud, I felt bereft when I moved to a different part of the city some years back and had to leave behind my old home-from-home, Slatterys of Rathmines. It was the place to call into on the way in or out of town on a weekend afternoon.
There would always be one or two of a bunch of Cork lads at the table by the side door ready to pass on a racing tip or the bits of the newspapers they didn’t want (everything but the sports section). Table service came later, but in my time the three laconic barmen could interpret an order from a raised eyebrow.
Maybe it’s an expat culchie thing but the sense of community is seductive. To know that when the elderly blind man comes in to the front bar for his nightly tipple, whoever is sitting in his habitual seat will stand up without being asked.
To know that conversation is king and the telly only comes on for big matches. To know that only a privileged few on the high stools get control of the remote.
Locals have snugs and diamond-patterned banquettes. The floor will have a bit of an ancient slope on it and a quartered beermat will be needed to steady the legs of the table.
Toasted sandwiches may well be served, but they must be inserted in magic plastic wrappers and rotated through the kind of giant open toasters that Buck Rogers thought would be the future of cooking.
I know I’m not the only ‘old man pub’ enthusiast. My Donegal friend spent so much of his spare time in The Stag’s Head that he ended up working there for a while. Another one is practically bolted to a chair outside Grogan’s every Thursday night.
Babies and spouses who insist that King crisps are not a fully-rounded diet eventually play havoc with the devotion required to make your pub a local. But until then, may I recommend a little place on Haddington Road…
- By SUSAN DALY

The to-do list

My Nightwatch column in today's Day and Night magazine - it's based on my trip earlier this month to the Flat Lake festival outside Clones, Co Monaghan - the most unusual boutique festival in Ireland. (Check it out at www.theflatlakefestival.com)

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1871947.html

By Susan Daly

Friday August 28 2009

I never thought it would happen to me. Isn't that what Lotto winners say? Or people who have had the roof ripped off their kitchen by a freak tornado in Mayo?

Well it did. Happen to me. In a tent in a field in Monaghan. Against that unlikely backdrop, I came face to face with my two 'free pass' celebs.

For those of you not familiar with the 'free pass' game, the idea is that you have a list of famous people with whom you are allowed to have your wicked way should the opportunity arise. It doesn't matter if you are dating someone else, engaged to your school sweetheart or married to Christ. If your star crush somehow comes into your earthly orbit, you have a get-out-of-jail-free card for the night.

It's kind of like the plotline for Indecent Proposal except the celeb is unlikely to also pay you $1m. You might have to pay them, though.

Most people play it with a group of pals. If you are slightly dysfunctional, you play it with your partner.

Naturally, The Fella and I have done so.

His choice is Penelope Cruz, which I applaud because: A. She is super hot, and B. He's about as likely to bump into her in Hogan's bar as I am to screen test for Pedro Almodóvar.

Saying that, he did once meet Michelle Pfeiffer and Salma Hayek on the same day. He shared an elevator with La Pfeiffer ("very quiet") and held the door open for Hayek (she doesn't enter rooms, apparently, she "explodes" into them).

Salma -- not a bad substitute for Penelope if one was stuck -- thanked him for his chivalry, but, alas for him, it went no further.

Mind you, this all happened at a large international film festival. The odds of getting within slobbering distance of the A-list actor of your dreams are rather better there than, say, at the penguin enclosure at Dublin Zoo.

Or indeed at a small arts festival at some country pile outside Clones. I'm a big fan of the Flat Lake Fest, hosted by the inimitable Pat 'The Butcher Boy' McCabe and Keith 'Lily's dad' Allen and his brother, Kevin 'Lily's uncle' Allen. It's got brass bands, death metallers, a tug-of-war, poet deathmatches and Shane Macgowan's best suit for auction.

And now, the stuff of The Fella's nightmares. Our first call this year was to the theatre tent for a tribute to playwright Harold Pinter. Oh I know, my life is a whiteknuckle ride. It gets better.

On stage was Dominic West; in the audience was Cillian Murphy. The two celebs on my 'to do' list.

If I have to explain who Dominic West or The Wire is to you then, excellent. I will not have to fight you for him.

Back to this sweltering tent in Monaghan: I nearly went cross-eyed trying to keep a lascivious eye on them both. Dominic -- I think he would like it if I called him that -- had dropped his Baltimore drawl from The Wire to read Pinter in his native, crystal-cut English accent and he had shaved his head. But the minute he smirked at the audience, he was pure McNulty. Swoon.

To my disappointment, Cillian slipped out of the tent after a few minutes.

"He came back in," said The Fella. "He was standing beside me for the rest of it." Right beside The Fella meant right behind me.

"Why didn't you give me a nudge?" I moaned. The Fella arched an eyebrow. I got the point. He might be game to go along with my free pass windfall -- but he sure as hell wasn't going to be the facilitator.

Of course the problem with being within 10ft of your celeb crushes is that it makes them real.

And you can't be silly about real people.

Dominic was queuing for organic sausage sandwiches with his pretty wife and tiny baby when I next saw him. They seemed very happy together, dammit.

Cillian looked decidedly normal cracking open a can of Heineken and playing tunes from his iMac for a crowded barn dance. He had nice hair and a Cork accent that would turn the Liffey red and white.

In the end, neither of them kept me in chocolate brownies and beer all weekend. Neither of them passed me spare baby wipes over the door of the eco-loo. Dear reader, I went home with The Fella.

Girls' night out, the Boo Hoo Factor and M3 tolls

I've been a bit neglectful of posting my stuff for the last week, so here are three bitteens you may have missed...

From last Friday's Day and Night magazine:
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1853921.html

GIRLS' NIGHT OUT IS OVER


By Susan Daly

Friday August 07 2009

By the power of Jimmy Choo, I despise all those "girls' night out" ads. That includes the one for a brand of sparkling wine that has the unmistakeable bang of a gone-off Sex and The City plotline about it.

Two girls sit in a bar, one with a face on her like a rabid wasp, the other waving her hands and looking a bit mad because she's telling the Most Hilarious Joke Ever. Then their third gal pal arrives, breathless, just in time to clink glasses.

Ah! There's the punchline! She's the One Who's Always Late; the crazy hand-waver is the group's Joker and the humourless cow is the Organiser who is a stickler for punctuality.

And all are absolute tools.

It's the laziest type of marketing for women: Girls! Which one of these lady stereotypes do you conform to?

We had it with the Spice Girls and we had it with Sex in the bloody City and their personality-by-hair diktat. (The red one was angry, the brunette straight-laced, the curly one a bit quirky, and the blonde a slapper.)

But -- whisper it -- I suspect the Girls' Night Out is over. I came to this conclusion at dinner with my two best female friends last week. That might sound like a contradiction, but it's not.

We did not start the night trying on each other's bras or whatever the male advertising exec fantasises about. We didn't ban boys; they just weren't around. We were three friends catching up over a meal, and we just happened to be women.

"Do you think we're the odd ones out in this room?" I asked, looking around.

"You're the oddest person in most rooms," said my pregnant friend.

The pregnant bit is important: she gets away with cracks like that, and she is allowed two-thirds of the communal dish of fries. If we were really on a Girls' Night Out, I would have rushed to the bathroom to sob because that's what the hormonal imbalance of a room full of girl drama does to you.

What I meant was we were the only table of women in the restaurant on a Saturday night in Dublin. Time was when, to paraphrase Joyce, you couldn't draw a line across Dublin city without hitting a bistro stuffed with gaggles of ladies who dine. The one we were eating in would have been attractive to girl-girl-girl-girl seating arrangements: soft lighting, cute waiters, scrumptious chocolate desserts.

On that night we were surrounded by families, tourists, male-female twosomes and a gay couple who were feeding each other. Oestrogen and testosterone were both equally on the menu.

And -- now that we thought about it -- this was our first dinner out together in months. We had seen plenty of each other, but nothing that required a taxi into town.

I'm not sure anyone I know is going out as frequently as they did two years ago. There's less of this 'oh, it's cocktails with the girls tonight, romantic dinner a deux tomorrow, his pub night with the lads on Sunday'. You might pick one blow-out night -- and you have to be open to catch up with everyone.

It happened seamlessly last Saturday. After Ms Expectancy had waved regally out the back window of her taxi home, my other friend and I went off for a post-prandial snifter. The Fella rang to see if we were around, and he and his mates joined us. (They had been watching a match and eating curry, so I guess some gender stereotypes remain intact.)

Even if I'm wrong and the whole world but me is on a never-ending pink-cowboy-hatted hen night, would it be a bad thing if the term Girls' Night Out got the bullet?

To me, it denotes Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan losing their knick-knacks somewhere between their house and getting out of their limo. It's Carrie Bradshaw, the single most irritating fictional character ever created, self-obsessedly moaning to her friends while they knock back Cosmopolitans to numb the whine of her voice.

It's not about sisters doing it for themselves and being freer in each other's company. Girls' Night Out is fun facism: if you're not bankrupting yourself on Mojitos, a new dress, stilettos and fake eyelashes in BTs, then apparently you're not putting in the effort.

In any case, I like talking to men and women. I like the vibe when you have a room full of interesting, friendly people who don't discriminate by naughty bits. So shoot me. Or buy me a pint.

From last Saturday's Review section in the Indo...
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/tv-radio/the-boo-hoo-factor-1854908.html

The boo hoo factor
The X Factor publicity machine knows the sweetest tune to our ears is the one that plays on our heartstrings.



By SUSAN DALY

Saturday August 08 2009

The producers of the ITV phenomenon The X Factor have noses like bloodhounds. If there is a sob story lurking in the swarms of hopefuls who audition for the hit show, they will hunt it down.

As this year's show launch date of August 22 edged closer this week, the publicity machine cranked up a notch. Judge Dannii Minogue let slip the "amazing" backstory of one of the latest batch of contestants, a 21-year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer who had hidden himself away in his bedroom for years.

Scott James managed to make it to the X Factor auditions in Manchester however -- and blew the judges away with his performance of that reliable tear-jerker 'You Raise Me Up'.

"He told us that because of his Asperger's Syndrome and the fact that he'd been picked on, he hadn't left the house in seven years," Minogue relayed breathlessly to an interviewer this week. "Then he started singing. You will not believe his performance when you see it."

Whatever about his voice, Scott's life story has the X Factor. The show thrives on its image as a second chance for the underdog who fights through the tough times on sheer talent. It's a sort of Rocky for pop music.

The show's canny producers -- of which chief judge Simon Cowell is the masterminding force -- know that there is no tune more seductive than the one plucked out on our heartstrings. Scott James is blessed with a two-pronged attraction. The hardships he has had to overcome have been great, and he has raw talent.

This potent combination is what transformed Susan Boyle from quiet-living Scottish spinster to SuBo, unlikely star of Britain's Got Talent (a show which is also a Cowell creation). She too had suffered bullying and social difficulties.

She was frumpy and frizzy-haired. Then she opened her mouth and silenced the sneering judges and audience with her soaring vocals.

That magical moment of discovery, an instant YouTube hit, is known in TV circles as "the reveal". Boyle would have had to perform several times for producers to get to the filmed audition. From the pantomime jeers to the perfect 'O' of surprise which took shape in Amanda Holden's mouth, a talented choreographer had been hard at work.

But that would be the view of a cynic and The X Factor's success relies on its fans to be the least cynical of all TV audiences. The desperate, the destitute and the plain pathetic all have a place in our hearts -- and the show has an unerring talent in rooting them out.

The stories swing from the trite to the traumatic. A female auditionee told how she had fallen down a staircase and was almost paralysed; a soldier elaborated on his memories of serving in Iraq and witnessing the deaths of two friends.

There is some authenticity -- after all, a person putting themselves through such a public ordeal as The X Factor must be seriously motivated to change their circumstances. (Even so, there appear to be a disproportionate number of agoraphobics who manage to cope admirably to achieve a lifelong dream to top the charts).

The talented Shayne Ward won X Factor 2006 but the runner-up, bin man Andy Abraham (42) had his blue-collar struggle remembered when he was chosen to represent the UK in last year's Eurovision. He came last.

Ward, initially a chart-topper and tipped for American stardom, has largely disappeared, showing that an X Factor win on any basis is not a guarantee of career longevity unless you are Leona Lewis. Last year's winner Alexandra Burke went double platinum with 'Hallelujah' but where is she now?

Like Abraham, former Happy Mondays backing singer Rowetta Satchell attracted attention for her visit to last-chance saloon in the 2005 series. She didn't take the charts by storm but continues to perform, and revealed her alcoholism on reality show Rehab last year.

At the other end of the age spectrum came 15-year-old Eoghan Quigg from Co Derry, his baby face and fluffy mop of hair charming audiences into voting him into the final three of last year's X Factor. His debut album was greeted with dire reviews in April but he's been touring with Boyzone this summer and, sure, hasn't he his whole life ahead of him?

More rivetting still are the contestants haunted by past traumas and the beloved departed. Natasha Benjamin's life with a violent partner was aired in her first audition for the 2007 show. Her seven-year-old daughter Jazmine was sent to stand at the table with the judges while mum performed her heart out.

That year's show also featured Niki Evans who had a poignant reason for auditioning: she found an application for X Factor in her late father's personal belongings.

Judge Louis Walsh said at the end of X Factor 2007 that "there were far too many sob stories and far too much crying in this series. This is supposed to be a talent show, not Jeremy Kyle".

Nonetheless, with 2008 came the pinnacle in the Boo Hoo Factor. Daniel Evans was targeted for interview by X Factor presenter Dermot O'Leary at general auditions as he sat cuddling his cute blonde toddler daughter. By the time he stood nervously before the judges we knew this was going to be a masterclass in pathos.

"Why are you here today?" asks Louis, evidently no longer jaded by contestants' motivations. Daniel dropped the bombshell. His wife had died in childbirth. He was a swimming pool cleaner struggling to raise three children.

As doe-eyed Cheryl Cole dabbed away tears, sad music swelled in the background -- the cue for the rest of us to take Daniel and his dead wife to our hearts.

Evans later declared: "I want the X Factor to be about me and my singing. I don't want to be seen as the sob story guy."

Also featured last year was Rachel Hylton, a former drug addict who had three of her children taken into care by the age of 26. Hylton didn't play up the 'second chance' card herself -- but the programme made such frequent reference to it that Hylton later said she felt "exploited".

Contestant Andy Turner's hopes also went under in 2008 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His appeal for his real parents to come forward and get to know him was rubbished by his birth father who said he had recently spoken to him by phone.

The hype has been cleverly constructed to the point that everyone has an opinion on The X Factor -- even Oasis's Noel Gallagher. "It's a bit s***e really, to be honest," he said last December. "'Oh, my f*****g god, my cat died, and his outstretched paw was pointing to an X, so I'm going to sing 'What's New Pussycat'!"

Now that's publicity you just can't buy.

From yesterday's Herald... (and er, no, that's not me biting the steering wheel...)

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/hidden-toll-idea-gives-me--road-rage-1858988.html



By Susan Daly

Thursday August 13 2009

With all these business big wigs going bust, it must surely be a good time to get a helicopter on the cheap.

God knows, commuters are going to need some alternative to travelling the new tolled M3.

Commandeering a chopper may well work out as economic as stumping up nearly €12 a day to pay the tolls on a return trip from Kells to Dublin.

That's the equivalent of throwing a 10-cent piece out the window of your car every single kilometre of that 120km total drive. (Or €2,600 a year for a Monday-to-Friday commute, if you prefer the bigger picture).

There is always the new train to Navan of course -- as long as you don't live north of that town and can wait until 2015.

But even the helicopter plan has a catch (Just the one, you ask?). Even if you manage to persuade some snivelling developer to part with his old Bell chopper for a knockdown price, you might end up paying the M3 road toll anyway.

The bright sparks in charge of negotiating the Government's deal with the private company who will manage the M3 tolls have allowed them to insert a "minimum traffic" agreement into the contract.

That means that the company, Eurolink, will be compensated by the Government if the number of motorists using the M3 falls below target. Not that we know what that target is. Nobody in the National Roads Authority wants us to know.

Suffice to say that if we motorists don't stump up and use the road to the level envisaged by Eurolink, then they will be looking for the Government to make up the difference.

And by the Government, of course, that doesn't mean Brian Cowen will have to personally shoulder the burden.

It means every taxpayer will take the hit, even the ones who chose not to use the overpriced piece of tarmac in the first place.

Seriously, what kind of buffoon signs off on a contract like that?

There cannot be another business in this country that is guaranteed to be kept afloat by the Government in the middle of a recession, which is essentially what they are promising in this case (I would mention NAMA here if I wasn't in danger of exploding into angry boils).

People don't like your product? Don't worry, we'll bridge the gap for you until they buy into it.

The advice generally given to anyone opening even a sweet shop is to get yourself on to a FAS small business course double quick.

Learn the essentials before you put so much as a price tag on a Curly Wurly.

They're not the only ones who could do with a crash course in the fundamentals of enterprise.

The problem with the Department of Transport, the NRA, and pretty much every section of Government that has its fingers in our collective till is that they haven't a scrap of business nous between them.

Remember how delighted people were to give George Lee a vote because he is an actual qualified economist? And he's stuck on the Opposition bench!

But it doesn't even take a genius business mind to have some common sense.

If anyone in Leinster House had their eyes open, they would see the large 'Sale' signs in shop windows all over the city.

The revolutionary idea is this: If custom is falling, you find other ways of getting punters in. You slash prices, come up with special offers, find a way to tempt them through the door.

If the M3 is short of traffic, it will be because drivers would rather find the longest, windiest back road to Dublin than pay a ludicrous toll fee.

Why the NRA feels the need to back up such greed instead of ordering a toll price cut is beyond me.

Party envy

My Nightwatch col for today's Day and Night mag... Wish I'd brought some mint sauce for that lamb... yum.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1791566.html

By Susan Daly

Friday June 26 2009

Why have a disposable barbecue when you can roast an entire lamb over a homemade spit on the beach? That is not a question I often ask myself -- and that's why I am not the queen of parties. I could only stand, open-mouthed, as two newly hatched 30-year-olds of my acquaintance organised the best open-air party I have ever been to. On a beach. In Sligo. With frig-all money.

In those conditions, the best I could have procured would have been a ham sandwich -- more sand than ham -- and a lukewarm bottle of pear cider. (Now hush up, cider purists; how can something be wrong when it tastes so right?) My dynamic duo managed to source a lamb carcass from somewhere outside Strandhill, heft it onto a spit welded by an engineer friend and rig the whole medieval enterprise up in a natural amphitheatre carved out in some giant sand-dunes. Someone strung Chinese lanterns across a hastily assembled washing line; another brought garden torches to flicker brightly beside the sacrificial lamb. And apologies to vegetarians, but that was one damn tasty baby animal.

Acoustic music for what was quickly dubbed 30Fest -- I've never been to a party that is so rocking people want to give it an official name -- was provided by members of a band one of the girls play in. A French dude who happened to be wandering in the area dropped by to sound a mournful trumpet in the background. Just as festivities were beginning to die down at around 3am, a woman stood up and belted out a note-perfect jazzy rendition of Summertime. One of the more hunter-gatherer types came back from the beach with a new batch of driftwood to keep the bonfire burning.

As the sun rose, everyone sobered up enough to channel Bosco and pack up a bag of rubbish each until the dunes were left spotless. The spit was dismantled and the remains of the lamb spirited to the nearby house of a local surf champion, who made up a giant lamb curry in his kitchen at six in the morning. I went back to my tent to stare at the canvas ceiling and wonder: where did it all go so right?

It's a terrible affliction, to have the time of your life but still be dogged by the nagging feeling that I Could Never Have Organised That. My own 30th was the usual unholy trinity of pub-DJ-cocktail sausages. I had a great time -- but only after days spent worrying that nobody would turn up. I'm not a particularly angsty individual, but being responsible for other people having a good time makes the nerve ending in my left eyelid twitch like crazy. Fun is an ephemeral and fickle concept. One woman's tent-surf-roast lamb extravaganza could be the stiletto-loving woman's hell.

Layered on the party angst, of course, is party envy. How did those girls pull off something so simple, but so magical? The June bank holiday heatwave helped, I guess, but still: Why can't I be that original, that laidback, that ... cool! This is the point at which you need someone to step in and slap you with a wet towel for being childish. It shouldn't matter who has the bouncy castle at their party, as long as we all get a go.

I know I'm not alone with the party envy. Remember all the fuss over Millennium New Year's Eve; everyone scrutinising where you were going to spend it, how you were going to mark the moment; who was going to be there with you. People spent a fortune to hire yachts to sit on the cusp of a time zone so they could say they rang the Millennium in twice. I was in the back garden of a house in Terenure, trying to ignite a damp firework, wondering if my ex was having a better time somewhere else. My sister, if I remember rightly, rang at half-eleven to say she was tired and going to bed early. Sensible girl.

The trick, it seems, is to stop worrying. Do what you enjoy and like-minded people will follow. As I lay in that tent in Sligo, the rising sun spreading a comforting glow over my toes, I gave up the ghost of parties past. Parties don't run on good hosts alone -- they need gracious guests too. All invites gratefully accepted.

Looky-likeys and cheap thrills

While I've been away for half a week, these few nuggets of mine were published:
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/columnists/nightwatch-susan-daly-1739918.html

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/rust-in-peace--farewell-to-our-most-hated-public-work-of-art-1741708.html

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/i-love-to-see-the-prices-coming-down-but-doesnt-it-just-mean-we-were-ripped-off-for-years-1743022.html

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/surviving-the-recession/dance-lessons-polish-cheesecake-and-gospel-choirs--and-it-was-all-free-1739802.html

That last one has a pretty cringeworthy pic attached if you click through to the link. In my defence, white Irish girls are to hip-hop as Michael Jackson is to sunlight.
Right - off again to the airport. I don't believe the term 'jet-set' can be employed when flying Ryanair. Adios Espana, hi there Orlando!