Search Results for 'journalist and commentator'

What dominated our news and much of our conversations during the 1970s (at least in the early years), was the deteriorating crisis in Northern Ireland. When I think of that decade I remember the initial hope that something would be settled quickly rather than letting it drag on fuelled by appallingly bad political decisions, thuggery, and deeply imbedded hatred. Seamus Heaney remarked that in the early 1970s ‘there was a promise in the air as well as fury and danger’. But in Northern Ireland any nervous sense of hopeful expectation quickly soured; as Heaney recalled: ‘Soon enough it all went rancid.’ In John Montague’s poem The Rough Field, he observes: ‘In the dark streets, firing starts.’

EAMON CARR, the music journalist, poet, and former Horslips drummer, will read at the North Beach Poetry Nights in The Crane Bar, Sea Road, on Monday at 9pm.

One of the many voices in our kitchen when I was growing up was Michael O’Hehir and the Sunday afternoon game. The GAA (Chumann Lúthchleas Gael) has been blessed with its RTE broadcasters. I don’t think anyone can equal the inimitable Míchéal Ó Muircheartaigh, whose all inclusive broadcasts today are a performance in themselves. I think I am the same as most people to say that I turn down the sound on the TV, and turn up the volume on the radio when Ó Muircheartaigh takes flight.

I was surprised to learn recently that I shared a theatrical experience with the journalist and commentator Fintan O’Toole. Years ago Fintan went to the toilet during one of the many intervals in John Arden’s The Non-Stop Connolly Show (it was non-stop for an amazing 24-hours). The toilet was just behind the stage. When Fintan came out, the performance had restarted, and he was on stage. The audience applauded the embarrassed young Fintan.