The Chancer comes back from its walk to clarify matters a bit.

I am happy to accept that I may have jumped the gun on that. If I was a doctor the morgues would be stuffed with people wondering why they’ve been sent there.

Press release arrives in. Read it here today, and in your papers tomorrow:

APRIL FOOLS NOT SO FUNNY FOR EMPLOYERS, AS 7 IN 10 IRISH EMPLOYERS ARE BANNING APRIL FOOL PRANKS THIS YEAR

Please find research released by ***** *******, the employment law firm that shows that almost 7 in 10 Irish employers are considering banning April 1st pranks in fear of litigation, additionally, 5 in 10 employers report complaints made by disgruntled employees because workers have complained about April Fool pranks in the past… (more…)

IF YOU picked up a copy of Metro or Herald AM on your way to work on Wednesday morning, you would have learned this stunning statistic: almost half of women love doing the washing-up.

What’s more, 70 per cent dream of a pampering experience, such as a spa break or a manicure, as they are doing the washing-up.

And who brought you this vital research? Fairy washing-up liquid.

Surely this was done as a bet by a marketing man, insisting to his naive colleagues that no matter how ridiculous, how un-newsworthy, how skewed, how obviously a survey is an advert disguised as “news”, that he would be able to get it into the papers? But there it was, accompanied in Metro by a big picture of Fairy’s new “hands” model.

So what, you might think. It was a jokey survey in a tabloid freesheet.

Yes, but the brand got itself a cheap ad, potentially seen by millions of commuters across Ireland and Britain. It’s good going for a washing-up liquid, and sets the bar a little higher for those PR companies who use surveys to get column inches. And that’s pretty high, because the bar has been going up a notch almost every day since the mid-1990s. (more…)

The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss. Every night to my two year old.

Next up: Green Eggs and Ham.

It’s been an enjoyable corner of the web for the few months it’s been around, but it appears that The Chancer is no more. It has left a note.

That’s right, kids, The Chancer is taking a long-overdue break from all this interweb nonsense. We need to take a long walk. Explore our options. Stop and smell the roses. Wake up and inhale the coffee. Go read a good book. Watch a sunset. Do our taxes. Have a big stretch. Dust those mental cobwebs. And finally cop on to oneself. We suggest you do likewise. Please stay in touch. It’s been real. Really. Later…

Like Blogorrah, it always had ambitions to turn blogging into a business, and the question could be asked if that proved to be too lofty a target.

Whatever the reason, best of luck to all involved (especially Derek).

One celebrity. One host. One bath.

First guest on internet chat show Bathing With Bierko is John Malkovich, who has clearly decided that his career now involves only sending himself up.

(How much more or less would you be likely to watch the Late Late Show if this was how it conducted its chats?)

Be warned: this contains graphic scenes of a chat show host scrubbing Malkovich’s scalp. Now watch it here.

(Due to technical difficulties, this didn’t appear on Saturday.)

*

ON WEDNESDAY night, RTÉ1 broadcast a new series, Not Enough Hours, in which a man with a clipboard and a camera crew came to the aid of a workaholic.

At the start, the workaholic was filmed slogging all the hours he could.

After half an hour, he had transformed into a contender for Dad of the Year. This is the miracle of television. A man with a clipboard and a camera crew can improve a life in less time than it takes you to realise that there are not enough hours in the day to waste on watching Not Enough Hours. (more…)

In 2003, a Danish film-maker identified a Co Mayo village as one of the three places in Europe farthest from an airport, and made a film about it and the two others towns (in Serbia and Sweden).

All sounds good, until you realise that he doesn’t seem to have counted Knock International Airport as an airport. Whoops. Didn’t he realise that the Virgin Mary wouldn’t put in a promotional appearance for nothing?

Anyway, the resulting film - a gentle affair - has popped up on YouTube. Warning: this film features occasional clichés.

(more…)

A selection of surveys getting a mention in this morning’s Metro:

99% urge cut in drink-drive limit … Last month, advocacy group Parc (Public Against Road Carnage) surveyed more than 3,260 people in Cork, Donegal, Dublin Leitrim, Sligo, Wexford and Wicklow about attitudes towards alcohol consumption and driving

Advocacy group releases survey results which back up its position

Cheryl Cole is celebrity men least want to marry, a new poll reveals

Who commissioned this vital survey is not revealed.

Almost half of women feel good doing the washing up, according to a new survey

…carried out by those impartial people at Fairy liquid. Great big pic of their new hand model accompanies piece. (more…)

Always look forward to getting my copy of The Atlantic Monthly, which I still have a subscription too despite it dropping it’s website paywall. Thanks to the vagaries of the postal system, it’s always a surprise when it lands - two might arrive together, one might land before it’s even been printed, that sort of thing.

Anyway, this month’s issue has a good piece on the paparazzi’s hunting of Britney Spears. It focuses largely on one agency, X17, and the way the business has:

Nearly every famous picture of the world’s most famous imploding pop star—Britney driving with her son on her lap, Britney in rehab, Britney without underwear, Britney shaving her head—was taken by X17’s “shooters,” or “paps,” who work in teams under the direction of X17’s owner, François Navarre, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, who moved to Los Angeles in 1992 and covered the L.A. riots for Le Monde before embracing his destiny as a freelance celebrity photographer. Navarre operates under his middle name, Regis. He is roundly despised by more traditional Hollywood paparazzi, who accuse him of having destroyed their highly individualistic business by hiring gangs of immigrant kids with digital cameras purchased on credit from Best Buy to do the work of the heroic lone photographers who once lay in wait with telephoto lenses, stalking Jackie O.

Most of X17’s paps, who number between 60 and 70, depending on the day and who quits or gets fired, are paid a stipend of $800 to $3,000 a week plus the occasional four- or low-five-figure bonus in exchange for global rights to their images, which Regis owns lock, stock, and barrel. X17 also pays weekly stipends to a dozen dedicated tipsters and occasional fees to 500 or 600 parking-lot attendants, club kids, and shop girls in and around L.A.

The site also has a separate article in which the guys from X17 give a commentary to some of their pics of various celebs:

I think the one with the best chance to rebound and become interesting for the camera again is Britney. She’s down right now, but that’s because she’s on such hard medication. I’ve never seen her drugged as much as now . She reminds me of my grandmother in France who had Alzheimer’s. She can barely walk. She walked straight into a pole the other day.

I was present at last year’s Independence auction at Adam’s auctioneers on St Stephen’s Green, when chunks of Irish history were sold at truly whopping amounts. In a packed room, some people were clearly determined to spend their money, while the museums had representatives present in an effort to grab what they could.

The build up had been dominated by a row over whether it had the right to sell on privately a letter from Pearse with his final requests before his execution. Eventually, a deal was done which allowed the letter be bought for the National Museum, and among the items sold at the auction were an original proclamation (€240,000), a Citizen Army mobilisation order personally signed by James Connolly (€80,000), five letters by Patrick Pearse (€37,000) or the flag above - believed to have been flown by Volunteers during the Easter Rising, fetched €20,000. You can see the full sale prices here.

It was thrilling in one respect to see how much this period of our history remains so vital to us today. I had already had first-hand evidence of this when a 1916 Rising supplement I helped write gave that day’s paper the highest daily sale in the history of the Irish Times - 90 years after the event. (more…)

On Saturday, The Guardian ran an extract from Phillip Pullman’s new story Once Upon A Time in the North, which will be published next month. As with Lyra’s Oxford, it will be a small book, separate but connected with His Dark Materials. The story involves a young Lee Scoresby and his first encounter with the bear Iorek Byrnison. The extract is very much a taster - expect no big revelations.

“No anatomical reference to a man, except were Dick is used as a man’s proper name…”

Bell X1 played David Letterman’s show on Patrick’s Night. On the eve of it, they entertained an audience by reading out the list they’d been given instructing them on what profanities are not allowed on the air.

Warning: This video is not suitable in an office environment. Although that depends on what kind of office you work in, I suppose.

(Thanks to Fiona for the tip off)

We had some good times together. The rainswept night at Lansdowne when we destroyed the Australians. Winning the first of our recent Triple Crowns (don’t say it didn’t mean something to you). Beating England four times on the bounce.

But it’s over now. It had been drifting for some time now, we both knew that. It had become stale, familiar. The seven-year itch was kicking in. We had hoped for so much more, but perhaps we expected too much. We had some fun, but it was never going to last. It’s time to move on, to get on with our lives. For the sake of the kids.

As a mark of respect, we shall be wearing our collars at half-mast today.

What was the story with the Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan interview on Tubridy Tonight? It was, to say the least, a little frosty. Mathews, in particular, looked as if he’d rather have been anywhere else. Like Abu Ghraib.

Watch it here.

(Thanks to Nat for reminding me of this)

If you decide to have a “Lost” blogger - you know, someone who can marvel over and tease out the myriad clues and red herrings and revelations - then it’s probably not great to ask someone who opens by admitting:

As this week’s ‘island’ blogger I first of all have to admit that I’m not the biggest ‘Lost’ buff in the world.

In the past decade or so there has been a proliferation of journalism courses. They are everywhere, ubiquitous, viral. As noted some time ago, the Irish Academy of Public Relations started one, meaning that the alien had finally burst from the chest of journalism.

But here’s the thing: with so many graduates being pumped out of so many courses, has the standard of journalism improved? Are there better writers in Irish newspapers or magazines? Are the unqualified dinosaurs being put to shame by these hordes of Woodward and Bernsteins?

For those interested in broadcast journalism, a course must be of some use in grappling with the technical demands and perhaps learning how to be comfortable on air. Although, here too the standard doesn’t seem to have improved noticeably. There are still too many moments when you turn on RTÉ radio or television and wonder if a transition-year student has been accidentally given a chief reporter’s job.

Courses are helpful for an introduction to the law, to shorthand, to subbing, to deciding what end of the business a person wants to go into. And they definitely helpful in getting a foot in the door for those looking for sub-editing shifts in newspapers, or researcher jobs on radio or television, although experience quickly becomes an asset that outweighs the qualification.

But, in my experience, good journalists are often the ones who have had a different life other journalism, who bring something unconventional to their writing, who learned their trade on the job, and by reading (and learning from) a lot of others writers.

I’m not saying that talented journalists don’t come out of the colleges, but I’d be willing to bet that they were talented when they first went in. When students come into the office on work experience, you can almost always spot the smart ones immediately, and they always have qualities which they clearly didn’t learn in a lecture hall.

Decent news reporters tend to have an intuition for a story and a strong work ethic. All good writers - news and features - have an innate skill with the language. They know how to inject personality in their writing; to act as a prism for a story; to entertain and inform. Can you really teach all of this? I don’t know. But I haven’t seen it yet.

That its customer services phoneline is open only between 9am-5pm.

Because who, in their right mind, would be using the trains at the times before and after this? No-one, I’d bet. They’re probably ghost trains at those times.

Who would, say, be wondering about cancelled trains, or why the radio says one thing and the Irish Rail website says another, or looking for some bloody information, at any other time? Only crazy, frustrated, angry customers, that’s who. And why would anyone want to deal with them?

During a four-year spell as this newspaper’s TV reviewer, I would get an occasional, but forceful, sense of a subject’s displeasure.

I was once called a cretin on live radio.

A passing remark about a particularly ubiquitous Northern Irish entertainer was followed by a letter accusing me of having an anti-Northern bias. I didn’t, but I had developed an anti-ubiquitous Northern Irish entertainer bias. (more…)

Local parade grand marshal came fourth in 2005’s You’re A Star: (spotted: __.__)

Local dance club teens randomly grunt and thrust their way up the main street to Rihanna’s ‘Don’t Stop the Music’: (__.__)

Clown on stilts frightens the life out of a child: (__.__)

American tourists attempt flag-waving cheeriness while sheltering from squall: (__.__)

Local councillor’s chains of office get caught in his belt buckle: (__.__)

Some very big tractors feature: (__.__)

Teenager in Celtic shirt pukes on car bonnet: (__.__)

On the TV round-up, reporter says, “And the man himself was there”, over shot of break-dancing St Patrick doing a headspin: (__.__)

Newsreader sports spray of shamrock bigger than their own head: (__.__)

Marty Morrissey reports from club finals while two dozen children, and one middle-aged man, jostle to get in the shot: (__.__)

This is doing the rounds. It should wake you up.

During the discussion on yesterday’s post, occasional fly in the ointment AE Mouse interrupted our “what it means to be irish fun” to if we are more obssessed with being Irish than other nationalities.

None of the traits mentioned here apply to me or anyone I know. Does that mean I am not Irish?

Or maybe it just means I don’t like to define myself as part of the national collective.

(more…)

Given the week that’s in it, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be Irish. Here are some of the things I identified.

Being Irish means…

1) Knowing, within two minutes of meeting someone, where they are from, where they are going, who they went to school with and at least one person you have in common.

2) Never resigning. Ever. No matter how much you screwed up.

3) Thinking we have the best crisps in the world.

4) And the best biscuits.

5) Never, ever talking about what you earn.

6) Always, but always, buying your round. Even if there are 43 people in it and you’re tens of thousands of euro in debt. And your doctor has told you that one more drink will kill you. (more…)

Here’s a clip from a few years ago in which a New York news anchor and the on-the-spot reporter have something of a disagreement live on air.

Mint Productions (run by Miriam O’Callaghan and Steve Carson) is giving Bertie Ahern the major documentary series treatment, for RTÉ1’s Autumn schedule. Mint previously made the Haughey biography and Fine Gael: A Family at War.

It is, arguably, one of the best production companies at the moment, and the three-part series is unlikely to be a souped-up version of the pre-election broadcast in which his very best friends lined up to tell us that we should thank the heavens he saved the North.

Given that Mint has been interviewing various ministers, including, apparently, Willie O’Dea and Dermot Ahern, it clearly has the dear leader’s approval (Brian Cowen is reported not to be taking part). And he’ll no doubt have been encouraged not only by Mint’s track record, but also the BBC series on Tony Blair as he was on his way out.

But would it be better to wait until Ahern’s out of power a couple of years, when the developments at Dublin Castle can be sifted through and understood? Clearly, the man himself feels that it’s better to do it now. And he’d probably be right.

1) Boy, did the novelty of Croke Park wear off quick. The Moon has had more atmosphere over the past few weeks.

2) If they must insist on the irritating practise of playing music at crucial moments - Carmina Burana when the team runs out; a bit of racy diddly-eye when Ireland scores - then they should carry through the idea fully. Some Russian funeral music when we concede; Beck’s Loser when we traipse off defeated; the Laurel and Hardy theme tune whenever Bernard Jackman lumbers on the pitch.

3) It was €70 for a ticket. The match in Paris cost €32 for an almost identical view as the one I had at Croke Park this season. Presumably, when the IRFU gets its own stadium back and doesn’t have to do the lodger thing anymore, the ticket prices will come down. Yes … and they’ll have marshmallow cushions and free massages too.

4) One good result: they’ve been working hard to get the time down between the teams running on the pitch and the match starting. They shaved a full minute off it on Saturday, cutting the preamble to only 14 mins. It’s hard to identify where the time was made up, but it’s possible that Mary McAleese has been working hard on the Stairmaster.

Taxes, you will not be amazed to hear, are not popular. Politicians spend their careers promising to cut them. People spend their days whingeing about them.

When it comes to the television licence fee, some spend their lives dodging them. About 15 per cent of households don’t have one, RTÉ recently complained. Although, given the attitude of the licence fee ads - condescending, scornful - even the most conscientious citizen must feel like rebelling. (more…)

“I suspect the guillotine is hanging over my head.”

Samantha Power’s interview on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with Pat Kenny would have been interesting anyway, but given that it was perhaps her last public comments before being axed from the Obama camp for calling Hillary Clinton a “monster”, it has an added pathos now (although that depends on your political viewpoint).

You can listen to that interview here. You’ll find her comments on the “monster” controversy from 52:30 minutes on.

As a journalist it raises the important question of what is off the record and what is not; and is it unfair to quote her as saying that Clinton “is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything”?

If journalists printed everything that they were told was off the record, newspapers would be far more exciting places. But they don’t, often to maintain relationships with sources, out of respect for interviewees, and because of the unwritten code introduced by the mere mention of teh words “this is off the record”. They are supposed to act as invisibility dust, hiding the remarks from the record. But not this time.

This week, I posted about TED.com and I posted about Lost. So here’s JJ Abrams, creator of Lost, giving a lecture to TED. (It’s called synergy, folks.)

He talks about why he loves mystery, how much easier it now is to throw someone into an airplane jet engine, and why the best scene in Jaws doesn’t have a shark in it.

On a previous World Book Day a radio show asked me what one book I would recommend that everyone read.

It is, in a way, an impossible question. A book for everyone? But it was a bit of a challenge. I first thought of suggesting The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy simply because it’s the most cheerfully funny book I’ve ever read, and everyone deserves a laugh. But, thinking that it might put off those who really just don’t get science-fiction (as well as those too young to get some of the references) I chickened out and went instead for Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad which is an epic vision of hell, of a country making appalling decisions to save itself, and, most importantly, of the people at the centre of it all. It’s a history book, but really it’s about humanity.

You will no doubt disagree. But, please tell me what one book would you recommend everyone read?

A follow up to yesterday’s post about the delightful Just Nuts About blog/industrial-military-PR-complex. As some of you have already spotted, its comments thread has become a touch surreal. The entire book of Genesis has been posted by God, as has Exodus, the Communist Manifesto and Lenin’s The State and Revolution.

We’re just nuts about posting ingenious spamming. (Although Onefortheroad’s comment there is probably the funniest of the lot.)

Someone out there in PR-land is having a bad day. But it seems to be fun for everyone else.

So, you’re a processed foods company with a new range of nuts to promote. But you want to go all guerrilla about it. So, noting how popular these new-fangled blog things are, you decide to launch a “quirky” site Just Nuts About, an “unofficial fanclub that celebrates ‘the cult of Irish celebrity’.”

Somehow, Glenda Gilson seems an appropriate start, so you send out a press release in which you say that your bloggers are “…clearly nutty about the Irish TV Presenter & Model”. You make “limited edition Gilson fan packs”, which include t-shirts (”Just been on a benda with Glenda”) and rabbit on about your salty snacks while you’re at it. On the blog you put a gallery of things they’re “just nuts about”, featuring only pictures of their salty snacks (which, I’m guessing, are pretty much like any salty snack on the market).

However, not everything goes to plan. Comments come in telling you it’s not a real blog, and wondering if Glenda Gilson deserves any more publicity. They go up, but they’re taken down again.

But - and here’s the genius - to ensure top blog-love, you link to some of the silverbacks of Irish blogging, including Twenty, Una, The Chancer, Fatmammycat, Green Ink and, as a catch-all, the Irish Blog Awards.

Isn’t it subtle…

UPDATE: You can read the full press release here: (more…)

A leaflet arrives in the house:

Women Empowering Women!

Book now to secure your place on this empowering event created by women for women. Why? Because you are worth it!

Women Empowering Women is a unique & inspiring event, packed full of everything women want, from make-up and fashion, to relaxation techniques, and much, much more.

Those extras presumably include a Sex and the City marathon followed by a pyjama party. This reminds me of that Onion piece which proclaims “Women now empowered by everything a woman does”. Let’s try some role reversal here: (more…)

My train journeys have been made more bearable this week by bringing along some of the lectures available on Ted.com. There’s nothing like having your mind expanded, even while you’re being crushed against a door.

Of the many highlights, may I recommend physicist David Deutsch on What Is Our Place In The Cosmos, the aptly-named Michael Pollan on what the world looks like if we assume that plants are in charge and Deborah Gordon getting down with the ants.

In the meantime, for those of you who have enjoyed David Attenborough’s breathtaking Life In Cold Blood, here’s a short video in which octopuses do remarkable things. Seriously.

The one thing that can be said for the epic saga of the Tribunals is that it’s filling YouTube with content (well, 0.0034% of YouTube anyway).

Because satire is dead on Irish television and radio, here’s the latest online attempt at summing it all up in a snappy tune.

Five episodes into the fourth series - and heading towards a mid-season crescendo foisted on it by the writers’ strike - Lost has hit the accelerator. Compared, anyway, to the glacial speed at which it has previously teased out the overarching plot.

Monday’s episode (from RTÉ2 viewers’ perspectives), The Constant featured further confirmation that there’s a big time-travel element involved. I could go into the details of plot links, twists, connections, red herrings, and all that, but it would be at the severe risk of losing whatever non-Lost-watching reader has already got this far in the post.

Lost is not a programme you pick up five episodes into the fourth series. It’s not something that you suddenly decide you’ll sit down to watch, presuming you’ll pick it up along the way.

It has, according to its makers, six series in total, and following its slow reveal of the last season especially, it has finally decided to deliver some answers. Which is where its problems may begin. (more…)

I want to thank all of you who have read, commented, contributed, and linked to this blog since it started last year. I’m really flattered to have taken home a prize at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday night, but it wouldn’t have happened without your help. Cheers.

For an industry that is hell-bent on entertaining the public, Hollywood has yet to figure out how to put on a decent Oscars show. Poorly produced, overly-scripted and with its set cobbled together from the uncharred bits of the Towering Inferno , this year’s telecast dragged on for 200 minutes - longer than most trilogies.

Even the highlights package on RTÉ the next night seemed to run longer than a cricket test match. And yet, it still left out the event’s one true highlight: Marketa Irglova’s speech. (more…)