celticman's blog

I watched the first ten minutes of this last week. I didn’t even get to the first ad- break, because I know how the story goes. It’s a Shameless and Marv the junkie and Bullet the dog package that shows things might be bad with unemployment, poverty, crime and neglect, but that’s just my story, at least I’m not on television making-do. So here we had the junkie ‘shoppers’, nicking things for Dean Bell his wife and extended family of children and...

I watched this with interest. Benefica were in Celitc’s Champion’s league section. We drew 0-0 with them at Parkhead in the first game. It was neither a bad or good result. I felt if we went at them we could have won. They beat us easily in Lisbon. Because Chelsea won the European cup last year and because they are one of England’s premier teams I thought they’d win. I was right and wrong. Benefica were the better team and in the first half in...

The Fall, a contemporary thriller set in Belfast Northern Ireland, is shown on RTE and on BBC 2. Alan Cubbit is credited as creating the four part series. I’m not really sure what creating it means. Is he, for example, the writer or producer, does he own his own production company that sold the storyline or did he make the drama himself and sell it to RTE and BBC? Whatever he did, it’s quite gripping. With Belfast as a backdrop you expect...

Released 1993, written by Chazz Palmaterri directed by Robert De Niro and starring Robert De Niro and Chazz Palmaterrri. It’s 1960 in the Bronx and everything is Italian. Lorenzo Anello (Robert De Niro) drives a city bus for a living. His son Calogero (Francis Capro, aged 9) sometimes jumps on and accompanies him, to chat about baseball and be with his dad. But he’s a smart kid. When his dad drops him off and waits until he goes upstairs to the...

I got up late. Laughing Boy phoned and asked if I was going out to watch the football. Usually that would be a given. Celtic’s last league game at Parkhead this season. It’s on Sky. The pubs are open and I could expect to be steamin-drunk by half-time since I’m a bit of a lightweight and that’s 45 minutes of valuable drinking time. But I couldn’t be arsed, which is the Celtic equivalent of a mortal sin and despite ten minutes of badgering I...

This is the first of three parts. ‘Fixing the System’ focussed on the fallout from the London Interbank Offer Rate (Libor) Scandal and in particular it focussed on Bob Diamond at Barclays, an unapologetic banker’s banker. In old- fashioned times a promissory note could be exchanged for an equal amount of gold coins, money was issued by the mint. Money was something you could get your hands on. Shaving a bit off Her Majesty’s currency was liable...

The trick was I watched this at 10pm after watching The Genius of Marie Curie. We all know that she won the Nobel for Physics and later the Nobel for Chemistry, and the half-life of uranium is 16 000 years. What is the half- life of TV fame? Ben Earl’s TV stunts are undoubtedly brilliant. I can’t explain them, but I can’t explain a lot of things. I can’t explain, for example, why Kylie is so cute, but her sister isn’t. I can’t explain what I...

I read this on Kindle. I prefer paper but it was kinda apt reading it electronically as I'd already read most of it on abc tales. It's a short book; a few hours reading. But since I love books that's not a chore and this is a love story. It's a page turner in a book without pages. Young Joe, aged 14, got a part-time job as a butcher's boy. His gaffer was Roy and he showed him all the world had to offer- and it was there for the taking -for those...

Malcolm Bradbury ‘The History Man’ and creative writing tutor to a shedload of novelists, suggests that if you get to page 25, or thereabouts, you’ve made a commitment to a book and are likely to finish it. I used to be like that, feeling guilty if I started a book and never finished it. I started Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved, three times, but never got beyond the first two pages, now I know it’s good, very good indeed and I’d have berated myself...

I used to watch Dave Allen at Large with my family. It was one of the few shows my Da liked. There was a checklist of things he liked. One of them was being Irish. Check. One of them was being Catholic. Check. Another of them was being Irish and Catholic. Check-check. It also helped that Dave Allen looked a bit like his best mate McBride with the coal-black hair and a subversive attitude to authority. It was all well and good to mock the church...