That’s Ireland

Can you recognise who this are? It’s a half-way image of a morph between two very serious Irish statesmen having a bit of an old laugh. I really like this one.

Here’s the answer, and an animated version of the morph. >>> (more…)

I was tidying up my bookshelves today, leaving them considerably more messy than when I started, when I came upon an intellectual blockbuster of a publication from the early nineties. 67 Reasons Why Condoms Spread AIDS is an expensively produced propaganda booklet by the self-styled Childrens Protection Society, and it is one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life. Here are my favourite leaps of logic from the people whose next publication should have been 67 Reasons Why Crash Helmets Spread Motorbike Accidents: >>> (more…)

I was at the Mahon Tribunal yesterday, listening to the latest fantastic twists in the fable of Bertie Ahern and the Magic Briefcase, and I have designed these two posters making public appeals that could solve all of the mysteries.

And here is the second poster, which deals with Ahern’s latest story - that he believes that he gave somebody £30,000 to buy sterling with, but he can’t remember who he gave it to. >>> (more…)

I’ve just been to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and I spent most of the film trying to think who Kreacher reminded me of.

Then it dawned on me! Have a guess before you look… >>> (more…)

This is my video tribute to John O’Donoghue’s entertaining temper tantrum on his first day as chairman of the new Dáil, and in its first week it was YouTube’s 15th most viewed video in Ireland. It’s going to be a fun five years!

This is the first in a series of posts about how happy the Irish are.

Ireland is the eighth-happiest nation in the world over the ten years from 1995 to 2005, according to researchers at the World Database of Happiness in Rotterdam. Denmark is the happiest, and Tanzania the least happy, of the ninety-four nations that were regularly surveyed. Here are the top 25. >>> (more…)

One of the best pranks from RTE’s hidden camera series Naked Camera. Musician Don Baker hires a taxi, which is driven by the very funny PJ Gallagher.

I’ve just spent an hour on Twenty Major’s blog. Some of it made me wince, as he intended, and much more made me laugh out loud. Twenty Major is a provocative mix of Father Jack on steroids, Chris Morris (the satirist, not the footballer) and a politically-aware version of Viz, so you could see it as inspired genius or juvenile puerility. I’m going mostly with inspired genius. >>> (more…)

Well, it’s Book Club Day again for fans of the Bible, who gather every week to hear more of the adventures of their favourite characters. But next Sunday in the Gate Theatre they can hear a real debate, between Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great - the Case against Religion and John Waters, author of Lapsed Agnostic and They Can’t Stop the Spring. >>> (more…)

If you want to explore the more bizarre corners of the Internet as filtered through the mind that co-created Father Ted and Black Books, and more recently brought us The IT Crowd, then check out Why, That’s Delightful!, Graham Linehan’s irresistable Hompendium of Dorithies. Be warned, you may be there for a while.

You may have seen this before, but it’s so funny it’s worth looking at again. The Sorted Party canvass for votes, from Paul Tylak’s YouTube channel.

We’ve come a long way from ‘Brits out!’ in 1918. Here are the winning and losing campaign themes of the last fifty years of Irish General Elections, as described in Party Nation by Damian Corless, the funniest, scariest and most comprehensively researched book on Irish politics that I have ever read. >>> (more…)

Yesterday the Pope magicked four new ‘saints’ into being, one of them based on a 19th century Dutch priest who lived in Dublin. The Irish President and Garda Commissioner attended the show, which the media reported as if something real had actually happened. Perhaps even as real as the scandal that caused the Church to transfer Fr Charles from Ireland to England in 1866. >>> (more…)

In 1982 Fianna Fáil ran a pirate radio station, broadcasting illegally from their General Election HQ in Dublin. Check out the video below. They won the Election, then refused to legalise pirate radio. And when Taoiseach CJ Haughey was asked in the Dáil why his Ministers were regularly appearing on pirate radio, he replied simply: ‘I don’t know how it is possible to appear on radio’.

Thanks to FreeDigitalPhotos.net for some of the pics in the video.

Nostalgia quiz! How many of the cast of Wanderly Wagon can you remember? Who played O’Brien, Godmother, Rory, Forty-Coats and Dr. Astro? And what were the names of the horse, O’Brien’s dog, the cuckoo-clock crow, the fox and the snake? Answers just a click away. >>> (more…)

Bono finds God living in a cardboard box. But what on earth is God doing there? Listen to Bono make an impassioned sermon that unintentionally makes a strong argument for atheism.