SMOKES & DAGGERS
A mischievous mix of (mostly) news
SPOOF website Mallow News offers advice on the fallout from the rugby rape trial: ‘Every hour spent by Paddy Jackson’s legal team reading #SueMePaddy tweets is billable. So go nuts.’
THE BBC is reporting the case of Acomb Parish Church in York, which was presented with signs saying ‘Chris has Risen’ after a printing mix-up. Luckily the mistake was corrected. According to assistant curate Ned Lunn: ‘The pastor at the Baptist Church is actually called Chris and he’s got to get up for a sunrise service at 6.30am on Easter Sunday. His predecessor didn’t manage to get up for the service last year.’
HAVING predicted the return of Charlie O’Connor to the ranks of Fianna Fáil election candidates, Smokes now predicts Conor Lenihan, left, who is around Leinster House a great deal these days, will be next.
SMOKES is delighted to see Dara Calleary was, as he tweeted, ‘hugely greatful’ (sic) to be appointed Fianna Fáil deputy leader by Micheál Martin. He might use a spellcheck in future.
JOURNALIST and lecturer Ken Foxe reveals an interesting response to a Freedom of Information request. The request asked for an interior photograph of the Government jet. The response stated that releasing such a photo would ‘affect adversely the security of the State and/or defence of the State’. But as Ken points out, there was no problem ‘for the Taoiseach to film a video on it though’.
WAS Róisín Dubh truly a song about Ireland or was it about a Franciscan friar’s love for a woman? The question will be raised by former RTÉ DG Cathal Goan in a speech at the Micheál Ó Cléirigh Summer School in Rossnowlagh (May 11-13).
HANDS up who knew the entire Good Friday Late Late Show had been pre-recorded? While it is less and less unusual for segments of the shows to be pre-recorded to suit the schedules of guests visiting from abroad, there used to be a tradition that the longest-running live chat show in the world was actually, er, live. In recent years, this tradition has taken a battering, and now we are told the Good Friday show is regularly pre-recorded on Holy Thursday. According to an RTÉ spokesman this week’s show was prerecorded for ‘logistical reasons’. Was the key logistic that Ryan Tubridy, left, wasn’t in Dublin? Because he wasn’t on the radio on Friday morning, either…