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aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_sport"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/gaelic-games" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaelic Games</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/rugby" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Rugby</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/soccer" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Soccer</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/golf" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Golf</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/racing" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Racing</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/athletics" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Athletics</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/boxing" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Boxing</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/cycling" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Cycling</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/hockey" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Hockey</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/sport/tennis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Tennis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/your-money" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Money</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_your-money" aria-label="Show Your Money sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_your-money"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/pricewatch" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Pricewatch</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/budget/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Budget 2025</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/crime-law" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Crime & Law</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_crime-law" aria-label="Show Crime & Law sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_crime-law"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/crime-law/courts" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Courts</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Property</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_property" aria-label="Show Property sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_property"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/residential" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Residential</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/commercial-property" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Commercial Property</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/property/interiors" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Interiors</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/food" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Food</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_food" aria-label="Show Food sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_food"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/drink" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Drink</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/recipes" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Recipes</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/food/restaurants" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Restaurants</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/health" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Health</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_health" aria-label="Show Health sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_health"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-family" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Family</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Fitness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-wellness" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Your Wellness</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/health/your-fitness/get-running" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Get Running</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Life & Style</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_life-style" aria-label="Show Life & Style sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_life-style"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fashion" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fashion</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/tags/beauty/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Beauty</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/fine-art-antiques" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Fine Art & Antiques</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/gardening" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gardening</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">People</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/travel" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Travel</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/culture" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Culture</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_culture" aria-label="Show Culture sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_culture"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/art" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Art</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/books" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Books</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/film" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Film</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/music" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Music</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/stage" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Stage</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/culture/tv-radio" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">TV & Radio</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/environment" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Environment</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_environment" aria-label="Show Environment sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_environment"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/environment/climate-crisis" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Climate Crisis</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/technology" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Technology</a><button aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="header_sub_section_technology" aria-label="Show Technology sub sections" class="c-button c-button--medium c-button--default submenu-caret" type="button"><span><svg class="c-icon" width="20" height="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" fill="currentColor" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><path d="M256 416C247.812 416 239.62 412.875 233.38 406.625L41.38 214.625C28.88 202.125 28.88 181.875 41.38 169.375C53.88 156.875 74.13 156.875 86.63 169.375L256 338.8L425.4 169.4C437.9 156.9 458.15 156.9 470.65 169.4C483.15 181.9 483.15 202.15 470.65 214.65L278.65 406.65C272.4 412.9 264.2 416 256 416Z"></path></svg></span></button></div><div class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-container "><ul class="b-header-nav-chain__subsection-menu" id="header_sub_section_technology"><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/big-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Big Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/consumer-tech" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Consumer Tech</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/data-security" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Data & Security</a></li><li class="subsection-item" data-testid="nav-chain-subsection-item"><a class="c-link" href="/technology/gaming" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Gaming</a></li></ul></div></li><li class="section-item" data-testid="nav-chain-section-item"><div data-testid="nav-chain-section-item-subsection" class="c-stack b-header-nav-chain__subsection-anchor subsection-anchor " data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><a class="c-link" href="/science" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1">Science</a><button 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class="b-it-headline align-center">I’m glad I never got the things my younger self thought I wanted</h1></div></div></div></div><h2 class="b-it-subheadline align-center ">It’s rarely a good idea to get what your young heart desires. I would have been negative craic with terrible tattoos and a vacuous existence</h2></div><div class="c-grid b-it-right-rail-advanced__rail-container"><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-interior-item " data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-stack b-it-right-rail-advanced__main-interior-item-1" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="c-grid b-it-lead-art__wrapper"><figure class="c-media-item b-it-lead-art"><div class="b-it-lead-art__image-wrapper" style="aspect-ratio:1024 / 683"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="'I would have been a minor Home and Away character with none of the depth or plot lines.' Photograph: iStock" class="c-image b-it-lead-art__btn-full-screen-open" loading="eager" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/KQU4QDZMP5CVJDV5WQ2EM5SW5A.jpg?auth=ad3fca2b5d529bfb5624a57e3e45a162abb4e6714638d563c8eb55704314ebb6&smart=true&width=1024&height=683" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/KQU4QDZMP5CVJDV5WQ2EM5SW5A.jpg?auth=ad3fca2b5d529bfb5624a57e3e45a162abb4e6714638d563c8eb55704314ebb6&smart=true&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/KQU4QDZMP5CVJDV5WQ2EM5SW5A.jpg?auth=ad3fca2b5d529bfb5624a57e3e45a162abb4e6714638d563c8eb55704314ebb6&smart=true&width=440&height=293 440w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/KQU4QDZMP5CVJDV5WQ2EM5SW5A.jpg?auth=ad3fca2b5d529bfb5624a57e3e45a162abb4e6714638d563c8eb55704314ebb6&smart=true&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/KQU4QDZMP5CVJDV5WQ2EM5SW5A.jpg?auth=ad3fca2b5d529bfb5624a57e3e45a162abb4e6714638d563c8eb55704314ebb6&smart=true&width=1024&height=683 1024w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/KQU4QDZMP5CVJDV5WQ2EM5SW5A.jpg?auth=ad3fca2b5d529bfb5624a57e3e45a162abb4e6714638d563c8eb55704314ebb6&smart=true&width=1440&height=960 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 400px, (max-width: 440px) 440px, (max-width: 800px) 800px, (max-width: 1024px) 1024px, (min-width: 1025px) 1440px" width="1024" height="683"/></div><figcaption class="c-media-item__fig-caption"><span class="c-media-item__caption">'I would have been a minor Home and Away character with none of the depth or plot lines.' Photograph: iStock </span></figcaption></figure></div><div class="c-stack b-it-byline-block" data-style-direction="horizontal" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="center" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><div class="b-it-byline-block__author-image"><div style="aspect-ratio:118 / 118;background-color:var(--global-neutral-1)" class="c-it-placeholder"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Brianna Parkins's picture " class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2F6a108ce7-2574-41ad-82e4-17dd97e07b39.png?auth=58fd463dc37b94f0da2071e865bdc39660873bcc27c465488b68b553b0e2a3b9&width=118" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Farc-authors%2Firishtimes%2F6a108ce7-2574-41ad-82e4-17dd97e07b39.png?auth=58fd463dc37b94f0da2071e865bdc39660873bcc27c465488b68b553b0e2a3b9&width=78 78w, 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32-14.33 32-32v-96h48c8.84 0 16-7.16 16-16V256c0-35.35-28.65-64-64-64zm-64 256H128v-96h256v96zm0-224H128V64h192v48c0 8.84 7.16 16 16 16h48v96zm48 72c-13.25 0-24-10.75-24-24 0-13.26 10.75-24 24-24s24 10.74 24 24c0 13.25-10.75 24-24 24z"></path></svg></a></li></ul></div></div></li></ul></div></div><article class="b-it-article-body article-body-wrapper article-sub-wrapper"><p class="c-paragraph">At the risk of sounding like an inspirational quote your recently divorced auntie posts at 3am on Facebook alongside a stock photo of a rainbow, I am glad I never got what I thought I wanted.</p><p class="c-paragraph paywall">There’s nothing like returning to the place where you spent your formative years to realise your hopes and dreams have been crushed by the passing of time. Thanks be to God. Because you had some truly shite hopes and dreams.</p><p class="c-paragraph paywall">If I had #livedmybestlife as designed by my box-fresh 18-year-old self, I would now be reading the news on telly with two full-sleeve tattoos of clocks, owls, lions and other horrendous 2010, millennial-core cliches with no actual meaning or relevance to my life. I would have some sort of accidental insult to Japanese traditional-style tattoo on my body, even though I have never been to Japan, can’t speak the language and have chicken avocado as my sushi order. Just thinking about it makes me cringe intensely. Taylor Swift might have told us that cringe is an important harbinger of personal growth and “cringe is unavoidable” but culturally appropriating tattoos of dreamcatchers are very avoidable.</p><p class="c-paragraph paywall">When I was last in this town that pretends it’s a city, I didn’t back myself. I didn’t apply to do journalism at uni because it required a writing sample, something I reckoned I was not very good at. If I had got what I wanted at 19, I would be walking about a carpeted office doing something in politics or the public service. I would have to know how to use Excel with proper shortcuts, instead of just lying on my CV that I was “proficient” without being challenged as the good Lord himself intended my path to be.</p><div id="fusion-static-enter:html-block-f0frCB4hReP77YJ-3-4-0" style="display:none" data-fusion-component="html-block-f0frCB4hReP77YJ-3-4-0"></div><div><div style="border-block-start: 4px solid var(--global-neutral-2);font-family:var(--font-family-secondary);font-weight: var(--c-heading-font-weight);font-size:1.1rem; padding-top:0.8rem;margin-top:2rem;">READ MORE</div></div><div id="fusion-static-exit:html-block-f0frCB4hReP77YJ-3-4-0" style="display:none" data-fusion-component="html-block-f0frCB4hReP77YJ-3-4-0"></div><div class="c-grid b-top-table-list"><div class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small-container b-top-table-list-small-container--2"><article class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small b-top-table-list-small--right"><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2024/12/06/it-blows-my-mind-that-people-wont-get-off-their-sofa-to-vote/">My list of people who annoy me gets longer every day</a></h2><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2024/12/06/it-blows-my-mind-that-people-wont-get-off-their-sofa-to-vote/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><figure class="c-media-item"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="My list of people who annoy me gets longer every day" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/UDTWOFAE22VKW46CPK3SAYATWA.jpg?smart=true&auth=b2a555dcc8e1fb014533f1da50d40e16aba9015796ff80fdccbdf907ab09c5fb&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/UDTWOFAE22VKW46CPK3SAYATWA.jpg?smart=true&auth=b2a555dcc8e1fb014533f1da50d40e16aba9015796ff80fdccbdf907ab09c5fb&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/UDTWOFAE22VKW46CPK3SAYATWA.jpg?smart=true&auth=b2a555dcc8e1fb014533f1da50d40e16aba9015796ff80fdccbdf907ab09c5fb&width=600&height=399 600w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/UDTWOFAE22VKW46CPK3SAYATWA.jpg?smart=true&auth=b2a555dcc8e1fb014533f1da50d40e16aba9015796ff80fdccbdf907ab09c5fb&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/UDTWOFAE22VKW46CPK3SAYATWA.jpg?smart=true&auth=b2a555dcc8e1fb014533f1da50d40e16aba9015796ff80fdccbdf907ab09c5fb&width=1200&height=799 1200w" width="800" height="533"/></figure></a><hr class="c-divider"/></article><article class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small b-top-table-list-small--right"><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2024/11/29/brianna-parkins-dee-devlin-is-not-conor-mcgregors-moral-keeper-thats-his-responsibility-alone/">Dee Devlin is not Conor McGregor’s moral keeper. That’s his responsibility alone</a></h2><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2024/11/29/brianna-parkins-dee-devlin-is-not-conor-mcgregors-moral-keeper-thats-his-responsibility-alone/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><figure class="c-media-item"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Dee Devlin is not Conor McGregor’s moral keeper. That’s his responsibility alone" class="c-image" loading="lazy" src="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/6PLJY4PCXIRAP3EKSITV7XQ5MI.jpg?focal=1460%2C670&auth=80ac2a2c46fcfdaf4e5ed2f8a30d98c5f51eee24332b6b85283c96819f57cbda&width=800&height=533" srcSet="https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/6PLJY4PCXIRAP3EKSITV7XQ5MI.jpg?focal=1460%2C670&auth=80ac2a2c46fcfdaf4e5ed2f8a30d98c5f51eee24332b6b85283c96819f57cbda&width=400&height=266 400w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/6PLJY4PCXIRAP3EKSITV7XQ5MI.jpg?focal=1460%2C670&auth=80ac2a2c46fcfdaf4e5ed2f8a30d98c5f51eee24332b6b85283c96819f57cbda&width=600&height=399 600w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/6PLJY4PCXIRAP3EKSITV7XQ5MI.jpg?focal=1460%2C670&auth=80ac2a2c46fcfdaf4e5ed2f8a30d98c5f51eee24332b6b85283c96819f57cbda&width=800&height=533 800w, https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/6PLJY4PCXIRAP3EKSITV7XQ5MI.jpg?focal=1460%2C670&auth=80ac2a2c46fcfdaf4e5ed2f8a30d98c5f51eee24332b6b85283c96819f57cbda&width=1200&height=799 1200w" width="800" height="533"/></figure></a><hr class="c-divider"/></article><article class="c-grid b-top-table-list-small b-top-table-list-small--right"><h2 class="c-heading"><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2024/11/23/brianna-parkins-many-irish-have-voted-with-their-feet-but-cant-vote-in-the-election-the-reason-is-plain/">Many Irish have voted with their feet but can’t vote in the election. The reason is plain</a></h2><a class="c-link" href="/life-style/people/2024/11/23/brianna-parkins-many-irish-have-voted-with-their-feet-but-cant-vote-in-the-election-the-reason-is-plain/" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"><figure class="c-media-item"><img data-chromatic="ignore" alt="Many Irish have voted with their feet but can’t vote in the election. 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Strangely, he never made his debut in the octagon even after we broke up. I would have wasted years on men who used women as therapists or rehab centres. I would be making sandwiches on white bread and cutting the crusts off for a man who demanded this well into his 30s.</p><div class="b-it-article-body__quote-wrapper pullquote paywall"><blockquote cite="" class="c-stack b-it-article-body__pullquote" data-style-direction="vertical" data-style-justification="start" data-style-alignment="unset" data-style-inline="false" data-style-wrap="nowrap"><p class="c-paragraph">I would have been negative craic, gone to bed every evening at 7pm and spoken with that special Australian kind of upward inflection that makes every sentence seem like a question?</p></blockquote></div><p class="c-paragraph paywall">I’m glad I didn’t end up with any of the nice ones who make perfect life-partners I am sure for others who are not me. I saw on Instagram recently that one ex had congratulated his wife on having a “drug and toxin-free birth” while using the pronoun “we” in front of “went through a tough and long labour at home”. I would have strangled him with the foetal heartbeat monitor. It all worked out rather well in the end that we didn’t have a baby together because I happen to love the scientific advancements of drugs, hospitals and medical intervention.</p><div id="arcad-feature-f0fA5zOjVt7q5My-3-4-3-148dcebb612a31" class="default__StyledAdUnit-sc-1moicrg-0 gKEhzJ arcad-feature"><div class="arcad-container width_100" style="max-width:550px"><div id="arcad_f0fA5zOjVt7q5My-3-4-3-148dcebb612a31" class="arcad ad-550x250"></div></div></div><p class="c-paragraph paywall">Another old flame’s recent photo dump made me say a silent prayer we had gone our separate ways. I had gone to the airport lounge and he had gone hiking. The Camino to be exact, up and down hills. With his one-year-old strapped to his back. In the rain. Carrying a tent. That could have been me, I whispered, turning my phone over, giving silent thanks that it was not.</p><p class="c-paragraph paywall">If I had got what I had wanted I would have been a blond-haired, blue-eyed “proper” Aussie who surfed every day and exuded good vibes only. One who didn’t have a big, mad Irish family you could hear from three streets away and whose granny didn’t sing ballads or insist on bringing a teapot to the beach when all the tanned families were eating ice creams. I would have been a minor Home and Away character with none of the depth or plot lines. I would have been negative craic, gone to bed every evening at 7pm and spoken with that special Australian kind of upward inflection that makes every sentence seem like a question? I wouldn’t have an Irish family to shape me and make sure I had a culture that was more than just the thing you drank in kombucha. 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type="application/javascript">window.Fusion=window.Fusion||{};Fusion.arcSite="irishtimes";Fusion.contextPath="/pf";Fusion.deployment="155";Fusion.globalContent={"_id":"AZTBPOGJABGOHORS4ZO2BHOAMY","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":284,"audio_url":"https://d22tbkdovk5ea2.cloudfront.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/2297bdbb-9df4-4192-bd5d-62e02db1d64d/versions/1719843873/media/39bd3a4a4eb2d11e067d91b01c5a0d86_compiled.mp3","clipboard":{},"has_published_copy":true,"is_published":true,"publish_date":"2024-07-05T04:00:02.986Z"},"address":{},"canonical_website":"irishtimes","comments":{"allow_comments":false,"display_comments":false,"moderation_required":false},"content_elements":[{"_id":"BULE66QGANDXDMNXEP7AOJVVHE","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332489,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"At the risk of sounding like an inspirational quote your recently divorced auntie posts at 3am on Facebook alongside a stock photo of a rainbow, I am glad I never got what I thought I wanted.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NXWJK7RSBVAI5LVLCSJDCDH2O4","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332490,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"There’s nothing like returning to the place where you spent your formative years to realise your hopes and dreams have been crushed by the passing of time. Thanks be to God. Because you had some truly shite hopes and dreams.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"MXLECRDFPBCRXKZFAWRK2ALYZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332491,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"If I had #livedmybestlife as designed by my box-fresh 18-year-old self, I would now be reading the news on telly with two full-sleeve tattoos of clocks, owls, lions and other horrendous 2010, millennial-core cliches with no actual meaning or relevance to my life. I would have some sort of accidental insult to Japanese traditional-style tattoo on my body, even though I have never been to Japan, can’t speak the language and have chicken avocado as my sushi order. Just thinking about it makes me cringe intensely. Taylor Swift might have told us that cringe is an important harbinger of personal growth and “cringe is unavoidable” but culturally appropriating tattoos of dreamcatchers are very avoidable.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"MJ3UP37YTJFJFJGN7B56LGGNIU","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332493,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"When I was last in this town that pretends it’s a city, I didn’t back myself. I didn’t apply to do journalism at uni because it required a writing sample, something I reckoned I was not very good at. If I had got what I wanted at 19, I would be walking about a carpeted office doing something in politics or the public service. I would have to know how to use Excel with proper shortcuts, instead of just lying on my CV that I was “proficient” without being challenged as the good Lord himself intended my path to be.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"CGBPS2YIVVGLNO2TMV5UMZ6YQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1719842548863,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"If I had got what I wanted in my early 20s I would have married a boy who believed I was the reason his professional MMA career hadn’t taken off and definitely not his lack of training or even talent. Strangely, he never made his debut in the octagon even after we broke up. I would have wasted years on men who used women as therapists or rehab centres. I would be making sandwiches on white bread and cutting the crusts off for a man who demanded this well into his 30s.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"X745MLBO2VHITHJ7NFTXMJZ2NQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"O6GLK4FCTZEZNLGGQRVPJMOPX4","comments":[]},"citation":{"content":"","type":"text"},"content_elements":[{"_id":"PXEEZWPYH5AKPGC3EI43RRBROE","additional_properties":{"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"I would have been negative craic, gone to bed every evening at 7pm and spoken with that special Australian kind of upward inflection that makes every sentence seem like a question?","type":"text"}],"subtype":"pullquote","subtype_label":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"G4TGPHIEUNA5LJ6TPPRAOWGBWA","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332496,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"I’m glad I didn’t end up with any of the nice ones who make perfect life-partners I am sure for others who are not me. I saw on Instagram recently that one ex had congratulated his wife on having a “drug and toxin-free birth” while using the pronoun “we” in front of “went through a tough and long labour at home”. I would have strangled him with the foetal heartbeat monitor. It all worked out rather well in the end that we didn’t have a baby together because I happen to love the scientific advancements of drugs, hospitals and medical intervention.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"VFNCA67JJFBTRJYYXJCCV5P4GE","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332497,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"Another old flame’s recent photo dump made me say a silent prayer we had gone our separate ways. I had gone to the airport lounge and he had gone hiking. The Camino to be exact, up and down hills. With his one-year-old strapped to his back. In the rain. Carrying a tent. That could have been me, I whispered, turning my phone over, giving silent thanks that it was not.","type":"text","paywall":"paywall"},{"_id":"2VTPSWPVRRF5JNPMC2X2RZ5FKI","additional_properties":{"_id":1719838332498,"comments":[],"inline_comments":[]},"content":"If I had got what I had wanted I would have been a blond-haired, blue-eyed “proper” Aussie who surfed every day and exuded good vibes only. One who didn’t have a big, mad Irish family you could hear from three streets away and whose granny didn’t sing ballads or insist on bringing a teapot to the beach when all the tanned families were eating ice creams. I would have been a minor Home and Away character with none of the depth or plot lines. I would have been negative craic, gone to bed every evening at 7pm and spoken with that special Australian kind of upward inflection that makes every sentence seem like a question? 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The patient opposite was snoring.","type":"text"},{"_id":"D6PLSKURVVHJJMOEEKMNZ7PPQY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733306047973},"content":"“That fellow doesn’t sleep well at night,” the General said. “He drives a van.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"WHUFY3IE4REDPKZYSHDIIY4ILM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733306047974},"content":"I could see a big nose protruding above the sheets of the other bed, and pallid, tattooed arms resting on the top sheet. 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The poor creature!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NRZ3EPWZRJBSJHZM7TGODTAJ54","additional_properties":{"_id":1733306047984},"content":"I handed the chocolates to the General and looked again at his leg strapped up in the black surgical boot.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KLFJARSNJ5FSPD3V54O6GZGN44","additional_properties":{"_id":1733306047985},"content":"“By the way,” I said, “you never told me how this happened.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"6U7GP7ALH5G33KCGLZ43XL45AU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733306047986},"content":"He leaned over to me and smiled.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5733FX43XRBWHITWHX5MNJX3YU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733306047987},"content":"“I told nobody,” he confessed. “Because I was blind f**king drunk.”","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"premium"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Michael Harding"}},"name":"Michael Harding"}]},"description":{"basic":"The General, who was in with a broken leg, seemed surprisingly compassionate"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T06:00:00Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘He drinks too much. 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Wait, was that really Mariah Carey in a pre-recorded video, name-checking the Toy Show, and wishing all the participants well? It was. Some begrudgers out there – most likely those silly people who don’t believe in Santa – said it must have been created by <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/artificial-intelligence/\" target=\"_blank\">AI</a>, but no folks, that really was Mariah Carey.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4OAVLIEFVZENRNCCMRGHAU5INM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236892},"content":"And to add to the magic of the show, host <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/patrick-kielty/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Kielty</a> told Abiha that Carey’s people had listened to her singing, and were so impressed that they were going to fly her and her mother Mariam out to Las Vegas to attend one of Carey’s shows. This was right before Abiha did her big number, and it was clear from her face that this news was a total surprise to her.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PVCCCQOUTZGW5C3RKRACTF4FUA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236893},"content":"“I didn’t know in advance,” Abiha says by phone a couple of days later. “It was all a surprise.” Neither she nor her mother have been to the US before, let alone Las Vegas, so 2025 is already shaping up to be a great year for the family. Abiha’s father, Faisal, works for The Irish Times as an application support specialist in the Technology Department. The family live in Clonsilla, Dublin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IAVMGFJAINCYRG3KJ7FNBJALVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236894},"content":"So how did it all happen?","type":"text"},{"_id":"U5L43DSTKRB6LA2EG35ZBQ4N4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236895},"content":"“We sent an audition video to the call-out, I think in September,” Abiha says. She sang The Impossible Dream, a song by Jennifer Hudson, as her calling card. Not long after, the phone started ringing, and she was called for an in-person audition in October. Abiha already had some experience singing live as she was a semi-finalist in this year’s <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/eurovision/\" target=\"_blank\">Junior Eurovision</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CKRX4REH35BBPLS7PNW5LEQYCU","additional_properties":{"_id":"SSACTDMYTFACVE33QJEAPBAJMI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"BX5C2GJEIRC5LAHPSGHLRRCJHI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236896},"content":"When she was told that she was going to be one of the some 250 children performing on the Late Late Toy Show, she didn’t yet know what plans were in store for her. It was only after rehearsals began – she went through six in total, she thinks, some at a hotel, and some on location at <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rte/\" target=\"_blank\">RTÉ </a>– that Abiha was told she was going to be closing the show.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VLTNUIM3IRGM3LGPUJY76JA4KI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236897},"content":"A performing slot on the Late Late Toy Show is one to to be treasured. Did she have to keep the news a secret from her classmates? “I was able to tell people I was going to be on, but not what the song was. We couldn’t say what the theme of the show was either, but I didn’t know what it was anyway.” It was Home Alone, in tribute to the 1990 Christmas film starring Macaulay Culkin.","type":"text"},{"_id":"67OXIURROVCARM3SKTBXI55ER4","additional_properties":{"_id":"IGHHBCSV3RFE5P56R4EGTAA7TI"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"2VD6NSIEMRD3ZPQFZGWFWTVOVY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236898},"content":"Her red Santa dress for the night was provided by RTÉ, and no, she did not get to keep it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EDGEPET37VGKRFZWXGMSPKJ26U","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236899},"content":"On the big day itself, there was no rehearsal. “We got there about 8pm in the evening,” she says. “We got made up, and then relaxed until the show [started]. People were coming and going and we had a very long night. It was about 12 in the night when <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/patrick-kielty/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick [Kielty]</a> had his talk with me. I was super-excited and a bit nervous.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YVXSJSKBNNCR3DODSW3NOR4IJI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733929960017},"content":"Kielty told the Late Late Toy Show audience the Carey’s All I Want For Christmas is You and her Christmas album are 30 years old this year. “But we’re going to bring it bang up to date tonight with our very own Toy Show queen of Christmas,” he said, before calling on Abiha.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LL3STNM5HFEDPKPPIL72DZIJCA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733929960018},"content":"Before Abiha’s live performance, Kielty asked if she was “ready to give Mariah Carey a run for her money”, and Abiha responded: “Yes, absolutely.” She nodded and smiled when Kielty asked if she had “got all the high notes sorted”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7B2PDSVHVBCSFJKRB62QDL3PV4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733929960019},"content":"“We just want to let you into a little secret. We actually told Mariah’s people, Sony Music, about you. They had a little listen to your voice and they are so impressed that they’d like to fly you and your mum to Las Vegas to see the actual Mariah Carey in concert,” he added. “That’s going to happen.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"MY7KC7OCUZF6VKVPL6IR6EWNJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236900},"content":"Abiha asked: “Actually? Really?” before hugging Kielty, as the Late Late Toy Show audience cheered.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OIRNQTRR4ZEWRBJUS62FWQLGUU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733929960021},"content":"“While you get your head around that are you ready to sing us out tonight?” Kielty asked Abiha, and again she replied: “Yes, absolutely.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"KED45WPIOFHB5G4NRVXBU3QTCQ","subtype":"youtube","type":"oembed_response"},{"_id":"XHABKVCNAVGG3COMGK7PDEAP5Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733929960022},"content":"Contrary to what you might assume, none of the parents of any of the performers were in the audience. Some were in the Green Room, or backstage, and some were not even on the premises, due to the shortage of space. Abiha’s mother was watching from backstage, while her father was at home watching the show live with her siblings. After the show, Abiha and her mother got home sometime after 2am.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CZTJFVDPZRETFIKTTSV75DNAGI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236901},"content":"“I couldn’t even stand up by then, I was so tired,” she says happily.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KJ66CF7SIBBK5HYFWUJLZC4RBI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236902},"content":"And what might she like to do when she is older?","type":"text"},{"_id":"M2OGAUXXDRELRCMHKB54XIHI4M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733916236903},"content":"“Probably be a singer,” Abiha replies right away.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OKBEXRQZBRDRDCUCJQZJRWIGIU","additional_properties":{"_id":"FX2A2DHD45CAXJHRVV2QZA4XR4"},"content":"Late Late Toy Show review: Patrick Kielty is fuelled by enough raw adrenaline to power Santa’s reindeer","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"YCDY6C2IB5FUNMX3YVDX7FFP3I","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Rosita Boland"}},"name":"Rosita Boland"}]},"description":{"basic":"Clonsilla girl had no idea she would be invited to US before she closed show with All I Want for Christmas is You"},"display_date":"2024-12-11T16:09:45.112Z","headlines":{"basic":"‘It was a surprise’: Late Late Toy Show star Abiha prepares to see Mariah Carey in Las Vegas","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NND4S7LWG5GLHCPAGLCVE44GQ4","auth":{"1":"3b62ee41cf78ca54b75b238d9fc06c1aaa49e9442df087fd3550aeafc9e4acaf"},"focal_point":{"x":239,"y":181},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NND4S7LWG5GLHCPAGLCVE44GQ4.jpg"}},"subtype":"feature","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"People"},{"name":"Culture"},{"name":"TV & Radio"},{"name":"Life & Style"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/life-style/people/2024/12/12/it-was-a-surprise-late-late-toy-show-star-abiha-prepares-to-see-mariah-carey-in-las-vegas/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/life-style/people","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"People"}}}},{"_id":"YX7ABO2FLVCHLHRHES64TWSAAU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":1605,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/9e32c902-d7d3-4692-9ba1-1c2a4e8c886e/versions/1733843715/media/bc3791314ed22fd3ab0df8a31029fafb_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/culture/tv-radio/2024/12/11/brian-cox-on-costars-politics-and-death-i-feel-ive-upset-a-few-people-over-the-years/","content_elements":[{"_id":"25ZZIQN4VFGF7CZFPKV7GZYQ44","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421250},"content":"As I leave the office, my editor wishes me luck. “Hope he’s not too grumpy!” she says. A moment later, the deputy editor asks where I’m off to. To see <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/brian-cox/\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Cox</a>, the actor, I say. “Oh!” she says, with a rather-you-than-me look. “Hope he’s not too grumpy!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"NSU7IBKH4VDA7J5QNULZC2BAVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421251},"content":"Cox has played grumpy for going on 60 years. All sorts of grumpiness – idiot grumpy (independent candidate Bob Servant in the TV comedy of the same name), world-weary grumpy (school principal Dr Nelson Guggenheim in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/wes-anderson/\" target=\"_blank\">Wes Anderson’s </a>film Rushmore), psychopathic grumpy (the first movie incarnation of Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter), egomaniacal grumpy (Robert McKee in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation) and, of course, brutal grumpy as media mogul Logan Roy in the TV series <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio/2023/05/29/dont-read-this-succession-review-until-youve-watched-the-epic-finale-what-a-punch-it-packs/\" target=\"_blank\">Succession</a>. In recent years, he has often appeared on chatshows being grumpy about the state of the world. In 2022, he published his hugely entertaining memoirs, in which he was grumpy about method acting, useless directors, vain thesps, useless politicians, the church, capitalism, cancel culture, you name it. He was also fabulously indiscreet – Steven Seagal, whom he worked with on The Glimmer Man, is “as ludicrous in real life as he appears on screen”, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/johnny-depp/\" target=\"_blank\">Johnny Depp</a> is “so overblown, so overrated”, <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/quentin-tarantino/\" target=\"_blank\">Quentin Tarantino’s</a> work is “meretricious”,<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/12/08/actor-edward-norton-on-environmental-activism-if-you-find-it-inconvenient-i-think-thats-precisely-the-fking-point/\" target=\"_blank\"> Edward Norton </a>is “a nice lad, but a bit of a pain in the arse because he fancies himself as a writer-director”, while Michael Caton-Jones, who directed him in Rob Roy, is a “complete arsehole”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JJW3JGFICZA45JORZDKBV5JFGM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421253},"content":"“I feel I’ve upset a few people over the years,” Cox says with an angelic smile. “The problem is, I can be quite a loudmouth. Sometimes I have been fairly volatile, and I think, ‘Why the f**k did you say that?’” He’s looking back over his epic career. “There’s a lot of stuff I’ve done which I look at and think, ‘That was crap.’” But today’s not the time for negativity. “No, I’m not going to go down that road.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VCMF6B456RDORB2UN32RI2A7SQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421254},"content":"Blimey, I say, we’re going to have to out you as a diplomat? He laughs – a lovely youthful chuckle. “Yes! You can out me as a diplomat!” he says enthusiastically. The thing is, he adds, certain people are overrated. We’re talking about his memoirs, and the unflinching references to the likes of Depp and Seagal. “But then they probably think they’re overrated as well. So I’m not saying anything they don’t think anyway.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"57JDGF4HMFGRDKL2NXREWFL3UY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421255},"content":"We meet at a hotel in London’s West End, close to the Haymarket theatre where he’s rehearsing The Score, about the ageing Bach, directed by Trevor Nunn. Cox stars in the play opposite his wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, who is playing his stage wife. Cox looks so dapper in 50 shades of brown – brogues, socks, checked trousers and jacket, all offset with a purple tie. As a young man, he looked older than his years – a squat, Sherman tank of a man made for middle age. Now, at 78, with snow-white hair and a goatee, he looks surprisingly youthful.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RPJOKKTNWBGKNG3TLAKONDSFLU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421256},"content":"I ask him why he so often gets cast as grumps. He holds his hands up, nonplussed. Is it because he is one? “No, I’m not like that at all. It’s the antithesis of who I am, actually.” He stops to think about it. “No, that’s not entirely true. Of course, I get grumpy. Particularly about politics, I get very grumpy. A lot of that makes me angry. The failure of the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/labour-party-uk/\" target=\"_blank\">[UK] Labour Party </a>in particular.” Pause. “But I don’t want to get into that.” Another pause. “Listen, I could go on for ages.” And another.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YRUN7JEPOVEX7PE66KLA77MJWE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421258},"content":"One, two, three. And he’s off. “I don’t know why the Labour Party is called the Labour Party. It’s not labour orientated. I just think … ”","type":"text"},{"_id":"P3QFNSGJGFCLNF5JZZ4KTK3R5A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421259},"content":"He exhales with loud disappointment. “Keir Hardie, the guy who started it all, was an extraordinary man. And it was a very inclusive thing he was after – social justice. And this lot coming in now, they’re not exercising social justice. It’s true that the last lot left us in deep shit, so there’s a lot of stuff they’ve got to do, but they’ve got to be a bit canny about it in order not to alienate the folk. And <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/keir-starmer/\" target=\"_blank\">[Keir] Starmer</a> is not exactly the most charming of individuals. He’s not Mr Charm. He’s not got the thing <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/tony-blair/\" target=\"_blank\">Tony Blair</a> had, which served him brilliantly till hubris got the better of him. Starmer is minus one on that score.” Cox does not rate <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rachel-reeves/\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Reeves</a>, the chancellor, either on the charm front. “She’s had a charm bypass. There’s no question.” He laughs again. But he’s worried – for <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/scotland/\" target=\"_blank\">Scotland</a>, for Britain, for Europe, for the world.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NGWQ7BZ5VFHKBAHVITWF4NW25A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421260},"content":"Cox has been campaigning with the group Independent Age against the scrapping of the winter fuel payments for pensioners who aren’t on certain benefits, urging older people to check whether they are eligible for pension credit. “I just think it’s not on. It’s unjust. And means testing?” He hisses the word with contempt. “Means testing is something they did in the 1930s. And I find that … I don’t know.” He stops, lost for words. “I can’t get with it at all.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"XQUEUYROGJDGDIRGKXEIKDLFVQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421261},"content":"He loves his politics. For many years, he was a Labour loyalist. “I was a big Labour man. I was the voice of Labour for the 1997 campaign.” Eventually, he fell out with Blair over <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/iraq/\" target=\"_blank\">Iraq</a>. As for Corbyn, he says, he was not cut out to be a leader. “<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/jeremy-corbyn/\" target=\"_blank\">Jeremy Corbyn</a> is a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s a professional backbencher. He’s a naysayer. And you can’t just be a naysayer, you’ve got to come up with something else in its place. That’s what progress is about.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"537GWU2FJ5HR7NJQ4SHIPGURD4","additional_properties":{"_id":"TWV3GF4GLNBJLB26UAZ2UUBGEU"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"U44U4DQDUJFKNKITHVEIBMF4LM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421262},"content":"And just to show he’s no naysayer, he’ll name the person most suited to the job. “I was all for Andy Burnham.” Unfortunately, he says, Burnham is mayor of Greater Manchester rather than a Labour MP. “But what he’s done in Manchester is phenomenal. And he’s keen on the idea that I’m keen on, which is a federal Britain. I believe the way we will survive and come out of the f**king shite that we’ve been in, and keep regurgitating again and again, is by being a federal society where each country has its own say. You can’t separate these islands off, but we’ve got to come together on a federal basis. Not as subjects.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"EXXBLEU7WFA75D5VJEKU55MVXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421264},"content":"Cox had a fascinating childhood, and is still exploring how it shaped him. He was born in Dundee, to observant Catholic parents. He was the youngest of five siblings – his oldest sister was 17 years his senior. His father, Charles, known as Chic, ran a grocer’s in a deprived part of Dundee; his mother was a spinner in the jute mills. Chic was a kind, sociable man who sold stuff on tick to the needy. “We lived in a tenement, and my dad had the grocer’s shop for 25 years, so he was lower middle class. Not working class.” The flat had two bedrooms – the three girls slept in one room in a single bed, his parents slept in the other, while Cox and his older brother bedded down in the livingroom.","type":"text"},{"_id":"72EYWDL2LBBBRP3RCKLNQCZNTE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421265},"content":"There were three landmarks within a street of where they lived – the church, the library and the cinema. He went to the church because he had to, the library because he wanted to, and the cinema because he was smote. “My first love was cinema. There were 21 cinemas in my hometown, and I visited every single one of them.” From the age of six, he went by himself. First, he fell for Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin’s slapstick, then, by the age of nine, he was watching serious films about corruption and thwarted ambition such as On the Waterfront. There was no question, he says, that he would become an actor. “I knew this was my trade.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VTYAP7TYGFDGFOWDX4NO3RXKIM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421266},"content":"Were there any actors he knew, in the family or among friends? “No, but there were performers.” He looks at the biscuit next to his coffee. “D’you want it? I’m diabetic so I can’t eat it. Every Hogmanay the flat was packed with 70 people and I’d be summoned at 1am to perform.” How old was he? “I was three.” Was he the only one summoned? “No, everybody was. My second eldest sister, May, had a great voice. I’d do Al Jolson impersonations. It was weird for a wee boy to sing ‘Climb up on my knee. Sonny Boy, though you’re only three’! I always remember the effect on the room. There’s something about the room when it’s focused on something. The dynamic changes. Human beings get into a harmony with one another. It’s a wonderful feeling, and I thought, I want to be a part of that.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VWIOSD4LI5BJ3LBYTZV5BKTFJE","additional_properties":{"_id":"VUSBGDZ24JENLGLHL3NSDYTHHA"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"VUQYMALCEBD6TMQCGHQR2JZLXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421267},"content":"When he was eight, his father died and his life was uprooted. They discovered that Chic had given so much away on tick, he had left the family in debt. His mother never recovered from his death and their new poverty, and she had severe <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/mental-health/\" target=\"_blank\">mental health </a>problems from then on. Cox was farmed out to his three sisters. He left school at 15 and went to work at Dundee Repertory, and at the age of 17 went to England to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CVPC4R4GLVDDLOJ42AP55NOAQM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421269},"content":"“The 1960s were amazing. It was the time of social mobility, when you were welcomed. When I came to drama school, people made it obvious they were happy that I was there. I felt so liberated. London to me has always represented freedom. I loved the sense that I was allowed to be who I was and celebrated for coming from my class.” Does he think he would have a chance of making it nowadays, coming from his background? “No, I wouldn’t. The conditions are so different now.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SC3OF26M3ZCSBK4EZY7QJD7PGI","additional_properties":{"_id":"HD37G52NU5BQHIY2WWJFJL3PKU"},"content":"Brian Cox on Succession’s success: ‘I’ve lost the anonymity I had for more than 50 years’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"7H6KKU2F6NFB5HNFRFJWFO5CRQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421270},"content":"He really hoped to be an American movie actor, but of course that was impossible. So he settled for being a British theatre actor. And this is where his identity started to fragment. He wanted to be the best he possibly could be in theatre, and that meant excelling in <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/william-shakespeare/\" target=\"_blank\">William Shakespeare</a>, and Shakespeare was unambiguously English. So Cox started to think of himself as British at best, possibly even a little bit English, and he became more and more divorced from his Scottishness. He moved away from his homeland physically and mentally.","type":"text"},{"_id":"42ALMGOT5BAIVJM6ET64HE4474","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421271},"content":"Ever since he fell out with Blairism, he has been reconnecting with his Scottishness – or more accurately his Celticness. He recently had a DNA test and discovered he is 88 per cent Irish and 12 per cent Scottish. And it makes sense to him now.","type":"text"},{"_id":"P55ZTHHDMVDFXFF7URQKOMCPLY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421272},"content":"Cox campaigned for Scottish independence and became active in the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/scottish-national-party/\" target=\"_blank\">Scottish National Party (SNP)</a>. Did he ever consider going into politics? “Yes. <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/alex-salmond/\" target=\"_blank\">Alex [Salmond]</a> wanted me to stand as an SNP candidate. I just don’t believe in the word national. It’s got too many connotations. It should be called the Scottish Independence Party. SIP.” Cox became close to Salmond, the SNP’s former leader who died in October. Salmond was a controversial figure, who was cleared of 12 charges of sexual assault in 2020, with one charge of sexual assault with intent to rape found not proven. “Alex wasn’t a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but his political thinking was quite brilliant. Probably the most brilliant we’ve had. He was a visionary. I saw a lot of Alex. He was great fun, a bon viveur.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"N6NR2AHRBJFD5GQI2OUGXFKT64","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421273},"content":"Did he ever warn him about his behaviour? “I never got to that stage. I wish I had. Someone had asked me about his questionable relationship to women. I won’t go into the details. And I think that was problematic.” Was Salmond aware it was problematic? “He wasn’t a fool so he had to be aware of what was going on, but he got let off. He was never salacious in my company. I just liked his brilliance; his sense of the world.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"UCCFFJO6UVAFVOYG34ZR2XXIEE","additional_properties":{"_id":"CHCIE46OBRHTDCAWZTHCUNCGR4"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"RETYTQSP6NELTAVPFLC2K5M6IE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421275},"content":"One reason Cox wasn’t tempted by politics is that he has always loved his profession. Acting has been a calling; a vocation. Cox gave up on his Catholicism long ago because it made no sense to him. “If you want a real church, go to the theatre; that tells the truth. Or the cinema. Go and see the performing arts.” He talks about the great directors with awe, paying a special tribute to two who have passed on – Michael Elliott who directed him in a stage production of Moby Dick in 1984, and Lindsay Anderson, who cast him in In Celebration, his second film, in 1975, set in the Derbyshire mining town of Langwith, and also starring the great Alan Bates. “Michael Elliott and Lindsay Anderson were the two people who gave me standards – both were of Scottish extraction, it has to be said. It’s a sort of purity of vision. I loved working with both of them. I’ve still got Lindsay’s notes.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"Q5L2YWEC3BD2JMGKG6GZQGFN7I","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421276},"content":"Cox, famously, can’t stand method acting. He believes it’s pointless, selfish, an enemy of the imagination and destroys the atmosphere for others on set. He has described the technique used by his Succession costar Jeremy Strong, who plays one of his three children, as “f**king annoying”. But, today, the newly circumspect Cox would like to accentuate the positive. “He was wonderful to act with. I had no argument with Jeremy’s acting.” But? “He would be an even better actor if he just got rid of that so there would be much more inclusiveness in what he did.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"VAA4MTIDNXYIAREUDOJIDS4KG4","additional_properties":{"_id":"UVBWTZQLNZADHFUOBPP4NOKID4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"ZAJCDVV3NRHN5FI2ZRMPLUHWZA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421277},"content":"Isn’t it a pain when you can’t have real conversations with a cast member because they are permanently in character? “Well, it’s not good for the ensemble. It creates hostility. That’s the problem.” Did he talk to Strong about it? “No, not in the way I would like to have talked to him, but it’s a very emotive subject for people who follow the Strasberg line.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"C46FNAUUQBDTBLPV5HBZ5U4WYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421278},"content":"Cox is talking about Lee Strasberg, regarded as the father of method acting in the US. Last year, Cox suggested that if Strong had been more relaxed about his technique it would have been helpful for the Succession cast: “Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?” Does he hit the marijuana? “Oh yes,” he says. What does it do for him? “It relaxes me.” He says it was only in middle age that he discovered the joy of a spliff. He was introduced to it by the uncle of a former girlfriend. He does a Cockney wide boy impersonation of him. “He was staying with me, and I’d come home and say it’s difficult for me to switch off, and he said, ‘Have you ever tried the weed?’ I’d always been very against that because when I was young I thought drugs just obfuscated the career path. And probably it would have at that time. So he said, ‘Why don’t you try some weed?’ So I did, and I just thought, ‘Oh God! It’s just the best way to get rid of the day.’”","type":"text"},{"_id":"FT53B4V34VGXNH7ONK2W5XAF4U","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421279},"content":"Succession has made Cox more famous than he ever had been. A mixed blessing, he says. Beforehand, he would get stopped by people who recognised him, but didn’t know why. Now there’s no doubt. Strangers not only ask for selfies, they also beg him to tell them to f**k off Logan Roy style, which often he’s happy to do, with feeling.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7EFSSKIARZASDEOHJVA7LYAVCU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421280},"content":"Looking back at earlier profiles, it’s an astonishing career progression. In the 1980s, when he won the Laurence Olivier award for best actor in a new play for Rat in the Skull, and Critics Circle award for Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew, we were told he was a latecomer to success. In his 70s, he has won a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/golden-globes/\" target=\"_blank\">Golden Globe</a> and been <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/emmy-awards/\" target=\"_blank\">Emmy </a>nominated three years on the trot for playing Succession’s dyspeptic media mogul, who some have compared to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/rupert-murdoch/\" target=\"_blank\">Rupert Murdoch</a>. “There’s a lot of, ‘Oh Brian Cox, isn’t he doing well now?’” he says. “But I’ve done well my whole career. I’ve had a great career.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"D25VPH7NAVFOZDMILN76K7PZMA","additional_properties":{"_id":"NISLJ3NZOVE2NDCCUISJITAV7Q"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"SB4JVFQXAZAZVFQQ2LSQSIGHZU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421282},"content":"Succession has, however, given him opportunities that he might not otherwise have had. He has just finished directing his first movie. Glenrothan is a family saga about a whiskey distillery, which he calls his love letter to Scotland. What he has learned most from the experience, he says, is that directing is the wrong word for the job. “I realised I’m not a director, but a curator.” What’s the difference? “Film is a communicative art, where you’re curating brilliant costume designs with brilliant set designs with a brilliant DP. It’s not you. You’re just gathering that together and organising it, rather than saying we must go there and do this and do that. Not me, me, me. I mean the film may be shite, but at least it’s shite on my terms.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HUJPFDYC3FGX3OWPJNPRXYDZZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421283},"content":"He has worked alongside his wife, Nicole Ansari-Cox, before; he directed her in 2020 in Sinners, a play about a woman stoned for adultery. “I love directing her. Or even curating her! She’s great – so good, so open.” Before marrying Ansari-Cox, he had two children with the actor Caroline Burt, to whom he was married for 19 years. His oldest is the actor Alan Cox, now in his mid-50s, who played the young John Mortimer in the TV drama A Voyage Round My Father.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FYUDXIQ5HZDUXOE4GLI6JPX7CE","additional_properties":{"_id":"INI7UTRYYJBEVNIL2S4XOGRJB4"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"NHX6CSOCABHSTKAMHJH2I324O4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421284},"content":"Cox has straddled the classes over the years, and known both poverty and considerable wealth. Burt came from an upper middle-class family, and they sent their children to prestigious public schools. He has often said he was lacking as a father first time round – impatient, absent. But now he’s not so sure. “I think that’s just to do with the fact that I got married so young first time. I was 21 and had my first kid at 24. It was all alien to me.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"BR5VSES4F5GOFLDJ73NSHCBYGE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421285},"content":"He has experienced being both a young father and an old one. His two sons with Nicole, Orson and Torin (aged 22 and 20, respectively), have grown up in New York, where the family live. He becomes gooey when talking about them. “I still look at their baby pictures. I miss them from when they were small. They’re now grown adults. They’re ridiculously tall, which is embarrassing because I’m only 5ft 8in and Nicole’s 5ft 2in.” How tall are they? “6ft 4in and 6ft 3in. It’s something about America. I used to think, ‘If I go to America, I’ll grow tall. Well, I’ll be taller.’ And of course I never lived in America when I was young, so I never got tall!”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QMUZFLTXJVGDDL3EMGQIRPCDOQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421286},"content":"As a US citizen, how does he feel about the return of<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/donald-trump/\" target=\"_blank\"> Donald Trump </a>as president? “The penny doesn’t seem to drop about him. I can’t understand it. That’s why it’s so shocking. A man known to be sexist, racist, a suspected rapist … ” He turns puce, and struggles to get the words out. “And he’s got a big Catholic vote behind him … and I kept thinking, ‘How does that tie in with Catholic consciousness?’” No wonder, he says, that he gave up on religion. “It’s all b****cks. B****CKS,” he roars. I’ve never met anybody who says b****cks with such ferocity. Then he rows back. “I don’t want to be disrespectful of people who believe, so b****cks is a bit harsh.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LZQWKUCPRVBIFJNEAW7YV6EUQI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421287},"content":"The older he gets, the more he wants to know why we’re on Earth – what our purpose is, if there is any. And the re-election of Trump makes him even more baffled. “We don’t understand who the f**k we are. We really don’t. We have no f**king clue who we are. How did we get to a stage where 80 million Americans will elect this f**king, you know, to become president.” He says “f**king” every bit as ferociously as he does “b****cks”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JWVU3CGSENG33FYDRVILJNDEJ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421288},"content":"Does the<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us-election/\" target=\"_blank\"> US election</a> make him lose faith in people?” “No, it doesn’t make me lose faith in people. It just makes me realise people are stupid. We’re in for a pretty rough old four years coming up.” Does he think he’ll stay in the US with Trump in power? “I don’t know. I’ve got to because my sons are there. But I’ll try to spend as much time here as I can.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"G736R7LQAZG3ZOAZT7ULFAXZUY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421290},"content":"We change the subject to something more positive. He tells me how he got together with Nicole. He’d previously met her one evening in 1990, when he was playing Lear in Hamburg. They talked, they danced, and then eight years elapsed before they saw each other again. By now he was single, recently out of a long-term relationship, and working on Broadway. “I got this message from the stage doorman, Jerry, and he said, ‘This broad came here last night. Really good-looking broad, she left this note,’ and I had one of those weird thoughts, ‘If I open this note, it’s going to change my life.’ I literally had this premonition. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life.” And it did. He had just heard there was a no-show, so he rang Nicole and offered her the ticket. “We got together over that weekend – 1998, 26 years ago.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"QLIE4SXAYRD4ZD46TDNADHBOZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421291},"content":"He has previously said the secret to a happy relationship is separate bedrooms. Did he mean it? “That helps.” Why? “Because it means we’re independent. We’re not dependent on each other. I mean it’s very hard at the moment because we’re having to share a room, as I’ve got such a small flat in London. It’s weird. The place is such a f**king mess.” Normally, back home in the US, they have a totally different set-up. “We visit each other.” Does he stay overnight if he visits? “Yeayeayea. The secret of a happy marriage is to allow the person to be the person and not make them into what you want to make them.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DS6W4GG4MNBVJGOES4IDCWZ6PA","additional_properties":{"_id":"5A2ALZTKBZCP5EH4DXA5ZT5CKU"},"content":"Succession: How Brian Cox felt about that major Logan Roy twist in episode three","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"B2CFUTB6ZZEVNOHN4RWL4RCLNE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421292},"content":"I ask if he thinks about death. “Yes, all the time. I have a fantasy every night about how I’m going to die. I don’t think about it in a depressing way. I just think of all the possible scenarios.” What’s his favourite? “Going without fuss, wrapped up in bed with a cup of tea, maybe with the telly on.” I think you may have a long wait ahead of you, I say. “Maybe. Maybe.” I hope so.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2LZL3BF6MRHDHCIJMTGIOO5PJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733833421293},"content":"It’s time to leave. We head off together. He talks about where I grew up in Manchester, the years he spent there working in the theatre, and the people and places he loves that I may know. Grumpy? No way. Sure, he’s passionate about a better world and pointing out all that’s bad in the present one. Yes, he’s a loudmouth with a penchant for roaring “b****cks” at the world’s shysters and hypocrites. But, whisper it, Brian Cox may just be one of life’s great enthusiasts. – Guardian","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"name":"Simon Hattenstone"}]},"description":{"basic":"Succession star Cox, who recently found out he’s 88% Irish, is often betrayed as grumpy, but he may be one of life’s great enthusiasts"},"display_date":"2024-12-11T08:38:27Z","headlines":{"basic":"Brian Cox on costars, politics and death: ‘I feel I’ve upset a few people over the years’","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"NV45V6DEZZHMFBQLJXUS3LPAOM","auth":{"1":"540219b687db78607431d4acd1768b12d8c2b68edb009beeefb540466ec8f3f5"},"focal_point":{"x":374,"y":307},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/NV45V6DEZZHMFBQLJXUS3LPAOM.jpg"}},"subtype":"showcase","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"TV & Radio"},{"name":"Life & Style"},{"name":"People"},{"name":"Culture"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/culture/tv-radio/2024/12/11/brian-cox-on-costars-politics-and-death-i-feel-ive-upset-a-few-people-over-the-years/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/culture/tv-radio","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"TV & Radio"}}}},{"_id":"PP3L3E7AXBAA7GISGYWLNQUPCQ","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":453,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/05df9d77-e1ab-4913-a693-6f6fae4a432e/versions/1733313751/media/2b469852c6e1b735cbc8fafaeb7809ee_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/life-style/people/2024/12/11/my-smear-test-dilemma-how-do-i-confess-that-this-is-my-first-one-at-the-age-of-41/","content_elements":[{"_id":"E2EOX4KAGBACPHGQPMEKD62DNA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893968},"content":"The fluttery prickles of embarrassment swirled in my stomach as I waited in the<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/womens-health/\" target=\"_blank\"> doctor’s surgery </a>for my appointment with the practice nurse. Should I just come right out with it at the start or drop it gently into the conversation nonchalantly? Should I just gloss over it, as I’d done before, and wing it?","type":"text"},{"_id":"OHRB6OAGSZAFDCOASWJIL7QF4E","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893972},"content":"I sighed and felt incredibly stupid and ashamed. How do you confess that you’ve never had<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/cervicalcheck/\" target=\"_blank\"> a smear test </a>before at the age of 41?","type":"text"},{"_id":"MTFEUGILZ5H4PMIOQ5W34JXOZE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893973},"content":"I still wasn’t sure how I’d got to this point. It wasn’t a deliberate path of avoidance; it just sort of spiralled. What started as some trepidation and reluctance over going for the physical test itself, had now morphed into a huge sense of shame for putting it on the long finger for so many years. For putting a simple test and my own health to the bottom of my list of priorities. For saying “Jesus, I must do that,” every time a cervical check letter arrived but never actually doing it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VQLIMYHYIRENHBWXXMIHVUPONY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893974},"content":"When I got my first letter at the age of 25, I remember thinking that I’d put it off. Just this once, mind. It was so easy to do.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GS66BECFLZF6NI7LAG436HWRDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893975},"content":"As the years went on, the reasons to put it off became easier and easier. I was busy, or I was away. I had to commute in and out of the city centre and my local GP surgery was never open late. I’d have to take time off work to get it done and that was a hassle. I didn’t want to go to a nurse or doctor I didn’t know for something so intimate either.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QIAJVUP4AJAPVKBSNOVMQEFTBU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733311257562},"content":"“Next time,” I said to myself.","type":"text"},{"_id":"BNYYFFKLKJFRVAMJCVIOYMEEZ4","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893977},"content":"Many times I did make an appointment, but predictably had to reschedule due to a commitment or something urgent that came up, or my period would arrive. I had every intention of rescheduling. But it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind”. Life was hurtling by at light speed. Building a career. Saving for a house. Organising a wedding. Following up on my missed smear was the last thing on my mind, and I simply let it fall off my radar altogether.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LRUYWB7RVFD4FBQGVLEAVGH5ZY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893978},"content":"Then as the cervical check letters went from three years to five, I had landed in the baby years. I was asked if my smears were up to date at antenatal appointments. It was only then it hit me; I’d never actually been. A deep sense of shame washed over me. Flustered and embarrassed, I muttered something like, “Oh God, I can’t remember”, and that was that.","type":"text"},{"_id":"5PCITFCNWFD35LAHNFOPINZWJQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"ZFUMDIPXEVD75PN4NQREBNY7HA"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"Q7ZBE6I7ZZCBPDXUSYC66ONXXA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893979},"content":"Becoming a mum for the first time in 2016 was eye-opening. I battled through perinatal depression and was so focused on survival in the early years that any routine healthcare appointments went out the window. Having two babies in three years was full-on and, in the years that followed, I lost myself to motherhood. Like many mums, my own healthcare needs tended to come second to those of my family.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RPB2TWBFXRCFXN2O4IOHROVHEU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893980},"content":"I distinctly remember prizing the last letter before my most recent one out of the letterbox in 2019. I was carrying my newborn in the baby carrier in one hand and trying to wrangle my two-year-old toddler with the other. I waddled in the door, like a pack mule, the letter in my teeth. It got put on the counter along with a million and one other things and when I eventually got around to opening it, I simply laughed knowing I’d never get a spare minute to go and do it.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OGY4I27LFJA3DPV3UUG25OGQIA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893981},"content":"A few months later Covid came and changed the world. I sat by and watched all but one of my newborns’ public health nurse appointments get cancelled, so the idea of a little thing like a smear test wasn’t even on the agenda.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JDQSOVP24ZFLRKNZBZUXSGKTJE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893982},"content":"Then <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/vicky-phelan/\" target=\"_blank\">Vicky Phelan</a> passed away from cervical cancer in 2022. So brave, so strong, so bright and far too young. I promised myself that for my two young boys when my next letter came, I’d go, come hell or high water.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CVS266QFUNAS7MUR32R4CX5K5Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893983},"content":"My five-year letter arrived on schedule the other week, and I made good on my promise. As I sat, castigating myself for my own stupidity, I wondered if something else had been holding me back all these years. Something under the surface I couldn’t quite name, but something serious enough to have an impact all the same.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6JIKPWNZIVA7ZBZUOLJQJKO5YQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893984},"content":"I thought about growing up in the 1990s and hearing about <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2024/02/22/i-have-passed-anger-and-bitterness-women-infected-in-anti-d-scandal-30-years-ago-recall-its-impact/\" target=\"_blank\">the anti-D/Hepatitis C scandal,</a> which saw contaminated blood products given to mothers in maternity hospitals. I thought about hearing the testimony of women who had their wombs ripped from them by the monstrous acts of <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-neary-affair-1.1195814\" target=\"_blank\">former obstetrician Michael Neary</a>. I thought about my utter horror learning about the countless women who were subjected to symphysiotomies; a vicious practice that saw labouring mothers’ pelvises broken, often without consent, instead of being offered a Caesarean section, and the legacy of pain that followed them all their lives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"HUKVGHHZHBBBDAIXBB7KWP4SIQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"GUKB3MSEZFEWXAZ2HUOIP535PA"},"subtype":"pullquote","type":"quote"},{"_id":"RFLKSPPYXZB55BI3IDGVUZVBAM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893985},"content":"I thought about the friends in recent years who had had their endometriosis misdiagnosed and dismissed as simply “bad period pain”, given two paracetamol and told to suck it up. I thought about my first labour experience and that feeling that things were being done to me, rather than me being an informed party.","type":"text"},{"_id":"EUCJRBRLVJC2NOLYMZ73RU64YU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893986},"content":"I thought about my mum’s generation who were put off HRT due to cancer scares and left unable to utter anything about perimenopause or menopause, lest they be told they were simply depressed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VTYCW2LJO5FJBPGFPNSNNWPG4Q","additional_properties":{"_id":"FJASXKKV3ZH3RDAB76AVMICMAY"},"content":"CervicalCheck patients have improved healthcare with their advocacy, study finds","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"LEBPHNJ4XFARDP2GDG4XFEO73A","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893987},"content":"I thought about the countless women too embarrassed to seek treatment for incontinence or pelvic pain after living through a system that dismissed them all their lives.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YPPC2DIIA5CMLEV27ND3K5FFOI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893988},"content":"I wondered then if the decades of ill-treatment, scandal, and overarching patriarchal nature of women’s healthcare in this country had any unconscious bearing on how I’d viewed my own smear test.","type":"text"},{"_id":"36NLKRUB2RCARHJ64ZX66H7OYU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893989},"content":"Back in the waiting room, the nurse called me in, and I decided to spill my guts from the off. I sat there and waited for a barrage of well-deserved shame and judgment to come my way.","type":"text"},{"_id":"Z2TXAEAPAJHLXLRA5OAFHOR4LU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893990},"content":"Instead, she smiled, full of compassion; “Well, you’re here now and that’s all that matters.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"7GMZWDJJG5D6NF2UDBUWJ5DWYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893991},"content":"I felt like a bag of bricks had been taken off my shoulders.","type":"text"},{"_id":"AYHAU7AY7NDWNCSHUXLL4FOEKE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893992},"content":"“Five, four, three, two, one. And you’re done,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"NZMNP6EPHBE4DPN4Q3LWSSCCCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893993},"content":"“You’re kidding?” I laughed. “That can’t be it? That was literally nothing. I mean it was completely painless.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"TRIZHU4ANRBFBKQOGE5NQIQGOY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893995},"content":"The nurse smiled at me, and we both laughed, but part of me felt like crying.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XBEUNLLMBVBPLHAGCU2RRLGFDM","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893996},"content":"I couldn’t go back and reassure the 25-year-old me that the physical test itself was a cinch. I couldn’t go back and convince the younger, busier me to make her healthcare a priority. I couldn’t go back and tell myself there was no need to be ashamed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"UME2QL3VT5AR7J36WKXNNMOP5M","additional_properties":{"_id":1733310893997},"content":"I can’t turn back the clock, but maybe by writing about it, I’ll help another woman find the courage to put her healthcare at the top of her list, let her know she has nothing to be embarrassed about and reassure her that there is compassion to be found in women’s healthcare.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YCDY6C2IB5FUNMX3YVDX7FFP3I","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Niamh O'Reilly"}]},"description":{"basic":"It wasn’t a deliberate path of avoidance. 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Life didn’t follow its planned course; “the visit extended into what now is 18 years”. Next year, the freelance photographer will have been based in Ireland for as long as she was in her native <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/lithuania/\" target=\"_blank\">Lithuania</a>.","type":"text"},{"_id":"FAK5NLO6MZBQRPS2C7HVT4SPXI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661229},"content":"Jefremova lives close to <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/galway/\" target=\"_blank\">Galway</a> city but as we chat she’s out west, in Barna, the sea visible behind her, minding a friend’s home and pet. The weather is wild and she’ll spend her day photo editing. She’s planning to fly to Copenhagen to catch up with an old friend and shoot a <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/gig-reviews/sigur-ros-1.1599035#:~:text=On%20paper%2C%20Sigur%20R%C3%B3s%20shouldn,might%20leave%20some%20people%20cold.\" target=\"_blank\">Sigur Rós</a> concert. “They’re my most favourite band in the world, and they’re playing with full orchestra in one of the biggest concert halls in Europe.” Then on to Paris to photograph behind the scenes and tech rehearsal for Teaċ Daṁsa’s dance show Mám. She’s thrilled at the prospect of both shoots, and “leisure and work, in the most beautiful balance”. She talks about being focused on the camera but able to absorb what’s happening too. ”","type":"text"},{"_id":"A5TYSOZN3JHHRDBP5I6RDDEQJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661230},"content":"She grew up in Klaipeda, a port town on the Baltic, Lithuania’s third biggest city. “I never left the water.” Her mother and grandmother are still there, and her father died a couple of years ago. Her mother visits often, and she goes back too. Christmas will be in Lithuania, but “my core people are here. I’m blessed with very good friends through the country”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KCSFAECYG5AKLJAZ3TFOVJ6S3Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661231},"content":"After school she considered studying theatre or creative writing in Vilnius, then planned to study digital media in London. But after their Irish summer, “the London thing kind of fizzled out”. Her Lithuanian boyfriend was in Kerry, and they decided to work for a year, saving for college. It was the end of the Celtic Tiger and as a waitress in first class on the Tralee-Dublin train, she cleared €650 a week after tax; “we’re earning a lot as kids, as the first job”. As well as saving, they could travel during time off (“a lot of discovering, hiking”), and there was a choice of quality apartment rentals in Kerry.","type":"text"},{"_id":"MQ53HY3SM5BZFP2VBAOJG7PZYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661232},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"U4N6CF6OFJAEZBEBIW2JCTKFCI","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661233},"content":"She studied TV and film in Galway, and by the time she finished college the economy had changed. “But I was lucky, I got good enough jobs on feature films.” Eventually she and her boyfriend split, but they remain on good terms. For a time she planned to move back to Lithuania, and travelled abroad for long periods too, but returned to Galway. “Good old hedonistic Galway has a tendency of catching you.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"JEH43DUIXFABVBEH6OXRIESFBE","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661234},"content":"","type":"text"},{"_id":"FCAFUJFEHBHKJAUYH6DCERTUDY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661235},"content":"In 2015, she started at TG4 as camera assistant. She recalls a passing comment, by a visitor not a colleague, that “you won’t be able to become camera operator, because you’re a female and a foreigner”. For Jefremova that comment was “a big push”. With training and support from her department head (“she was a great boss”), within two seasons she was camera operator. She did Irish language classes but “they didn’t go down well. 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She trusted and believed in my work,” when Jefremova lacked self-belief.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XSTALE5MINBQRFD3Z45IM6RMEY","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661240},"content":"She started photography around 2019 while still in TG4, on weekends and evenings, slowly building her portfolio and contacts. “It’s a pretty long journey to get there.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"ZPUMFTAAE5AMVO3CQK7NZDCP6Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661241},"content":"She’s been a freelance photographer for four years, and “with every job, I constantly learn something. That is the most beautiful aspect of photography”. Her work is eclectic: portraiture, theatre, project-based work, documenting, video and drone, magazine, PR, corporate and freelancing for a news agency.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SSQAK7CVDJBJJJAG2C2LIM6IPU","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661242},"content":"“Even during Covid ... I had enough stable monthly jobs. I mean, it was scary, but it was easy because I had a very solid support.” She built up clients: Galway International Arts Festival, Mácnas, Fáilte Ireland, several councils. She’s always seeking new challenges. She hopes to travel more with her work, and would like to buy a home.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3FMGQFDHWZC4LCNEFP6TUFEJDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661243},"content":"Part of the draw is Connemara ... “I’m addicted. It’s my healing and teaching space. It’s everything. The whole west coast is a big, big part of why I’m in Ireland. It has something I can’t really grasp on.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DUZT4FDIB5FQDBIRAAILMG63A4","additional_properties":{"_id":"MSLNI5CKZFGEHG4AK2N6YZHH3I"},"content":"An Englishman on Irish life: ‘There is an underlying positivity in Ireland, certainly in comparison to your Anglo-Saxon neighbours’","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"OF4PNPZ4DVFHDGQ5X6DHNAK7ZQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661244},"content":"Flying to Lithuania is “going home”, but so too is coming back to Galway. Her memories of Lithuania are of childhood, and Ireland is where “I grew up as an adult, and established myself as a creative”. And, “I don’t know if it’s just pure luck, because I know it happens, but I have never had any comments or bullying about my nationality or that I was with a woman.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"E25JV26EVNHJFAS2F4DVXNBN4Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1733180661245},"content":"The biggest difference between Lithuania and Ireland is “the warmth and the coldness of people. 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She told the Guardian that Wallace had suggested they exchange numbers, and told her he would be “a great contact for her as a journalist”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"XBOPQJL2N5A5ZISRYT4G3LOL3A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410033},"content":"She said it had been noticeable that he was paying more attention to her than others, and that she remembered having a “slightly icky feeling of, I wonder if he’s offering his number to all of the journalists”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"GA5D2F6WBZCEXGDSS26XN2MLGY","additional_properties":{"_id":"6GV46RLISBGEVDPCGFLLDGEZ2U"},"content":"What are the allegations against Gregg Wallace?","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"JP7NEBHGDBFE3LEMMHEDHOOAPI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410034},"content":"When they returned to their separate tables to taste food, she said she had received a text message from Wallace. “It said: ‘All right, gorgeous’ and then something about, ‘I like the way you’re eating that’ and, ‘fancy a snog? 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And I thought, ‘Oh, God, I’m going to have to say something’.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"LA5DPNDTTZFWLANZ5OJUV7BJPQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410036},"content":"She said she had been worried about offending him: “I thought, maybe comedy is the way forward here, and I said, ‘Ha ha thanks, I’ve just eaten a meat pie’ or something.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"B2LLS5OE35EBZMGJEKPQAA4A2A","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410037},"content":"For the rest of the event, she said she had tried her best to avoid him, “but obviously at that point he had my number, and then it was really a series of weeks that I was still getting text messages and voicemails, a lot of voicemails, all of which had these innuendoes about food and tasting and eating”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IHEQV2CFXRF3LLHQL5GJKZLJGA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410038},"content":"She said the messages had “gross” innuendoes that were obvious references to oral sex. “I didn’t feel at any point really threatened or unsafe, but I definitely felt uncomfortable and grossed-out, and I remember saying to friends and colleagues at one point, ‘I feel like he’s kind of stalking me’.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"N4G54AHJMFEAXFVLGYCINAEONA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410039},"content":"She said she recalled one voicemail where Wallace said: “I remember the look on your face when you were eating that pie”, and that “it was clearly a sexual reference about watching me eat and wanting to watch me eat again, noshing or something like that”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LMDCT6JH4BEIVFYA77SCGUJZ7M","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410040},"content":"The former journalist said she had not responded to any of his messages after that night, but had felt unable to know how to ask him to stop, given that he was significantly older and a celebrity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"3KZ6DQXHHJD4DMQKYCJTVNGG7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410041},"content":"She said there was an age-gap of nearly two decades between them, and looking back on the incident made her angry because: “I think my thought process was, I must have done something to encourage that from him ...","type":"text"},{"_id":"2LVEOKPXRZFIVDGMZE67BUFWQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410042},"content":"“And actually, what makes me angry when seeing it, is this wider pattern and women standing up, going, ‘I did not want that from him’. It was like, God, no, this wasn’t me interested in him in that way.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"HKVSELRNMZEUVIARFGSHQWLNSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410043},"content":"Wallace’s lawyer said: “It is entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"SLEWFQHITFEMRB5I37K4XNXTBA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410044},"content":"The editor of the Grocer, Adam Leyland, said he decided the magazine would never work with Wallace again after that night. “Of course I remember, I’ve been telling my friends for years about how pervy he was and the HR issue he created with one of my staff, because he was sexually harassing her.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"B2RNP2WK55HLTBGDNEZ5AB6KME","additional_properties":{"_id":"TZUJQ5PWC5AO7CSWJH5UUSXKQY"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"56NMN4UMRZBYJJZPLZDW5YZF44","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410045},"content":"The Guardian spoke to other former colleagues of the young reporter, who said Wallace’s behaviour had been well known at the time. One said he recalled the reporter playing one of the voicemails in the office the next day and said: “He’d left a bunch of quite creepy voicemails, and not just one either.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"M5YLMRQTIREI7B5TGUW5TA7JQQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410046},"content":"Leyland said Wallace’s conduct had also been inappropriate at other times at the awards and that while judging, “he immediately started up a constant banter of ‘suggestive commentary’. It was supposed to be jokey, a sort of nudge nudge, wink wink innuendo, but after a short while it became really grating. The tone was vulgar and inappropriate. It made me squirm”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"ARNCJEJFH5AVLC3NHSPT7ZOKCQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410047},"content":"He said this behaviour “was nothing compared with what my reporter had to put up with. She didn’t share the gory details, but she felt as though she had been sexually harassed, and I advised her to contact HR and I vowed we would never work with him again”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7SVENQCG5RCM3L5KXMXKWXUFUM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410048},"content":"Following revelations that the BBC received multiple complaints about him over a period of 12 years, Wallace dismissed his accusers as “middle-class women of a certain age” – though he later apologised for this.","type":"text"},{"_id":"U7L4DJ4QWBDUPGWVEARS4MJFYQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410049},"content":"Leyland said: “This isn’t just middle-class women of a certain age. It’s also younger women, like my reporter, who was much more junior than him. It was a power trip, texting dirty and suggestive remarks, presumably in the belief that she might be interested or would somehow find it attractive.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"IW7JP5ZRNZAATLCU4N7G5G6IHU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734001410050},"content":"A representative for Wallace did not respond to the specific allegations and said he had nothing to add beyond a statement from his lawyer last week. – Guardian","type":"text"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"name":"Emily Dugan"}]},"description":{"basic":"MasterChef presenter has stepped back from the television show amid allegations of misconduct"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T11:40:22.965Z","headlines":{"basic":"Gregg Wallace accused of sending ‘gross’ texts and ‘creepy’ voicemails to young female reporter","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"BASPSTQW27YJP5HHMDZ7XTX5OQ","auth":{"1":"baf6da1650dcc8707a81d3a05c9553e56c336d4e20bf9a068969f56a003d4b36"},"focal_point":{"x":1640,"y":1410},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BASPSTQW27YJP5HHMDZ7XTX5OQ.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"TV & Radio"},{"name":"Culture"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/culture/tv-radio/2024/12/12/gregg-wallace-accused-of-sending-gross-texts-and-creepy-voicemails-to-young-female-reporter/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/culture/tv-radio","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"TV & Radio"}}}},{"_id":"TOBJNMNVXZCCZIVUU7XL6WIBCU","additional_properties":{},"canonical_url":"/health/2024/12/12/flu-cases-three-people-have-died-and-over-400-hospitalised-this-winter-season/","content_elements":[{"_id":"JFIVIEGQ7VAZ5LDNF5FUVGBZ5U","additional_properties":{"_id":1733998589425},"content":"Three people have died and more than 400 people have been hospitalised due to influenza this winter season, according to the latest figures from the infectious disease watchdog.","type":"text"},{"_id":"LNOOEU5UJREZDP4VTEU6PGV3R4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119699},"content":"On Thursday, the <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/hpsc/\" target=\"_blank\">Health Protection Surveillance Centre </a>(HPSC) published latest data on respiratory illnesses in the State.","type":"text"},{"_id":"F4FPMU62GVG4DKEX453ZR2CSDA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119700},"content":"The number of notified influenza cases increased by 91 per cent in the past week from 277 to 528 cases for the week ending December 8th.","type":"text"},{"_id":"6YA6EOQ46JHQFIX6PIV7P6343U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119701},"content":"The number of hospitalisations doubled when compared to the previous week, with 149 hospitalisations and two ICU admissions last week. There has been more than 400 flu hospitalisations since the end of September.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IO3EM6HYYVCTFE2ZG3CRQ7GJSQ","additional_properties":{"_id":"TKV2KPGVWFF63IBMII2EV5RQOA"},"content":"Digital health a ‘new strategic imperative’ for medtech and pharma","type":"interstitial_link"},{"_id":"KNACWZ5TYJCEXEYMXEBAQAP25Q","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119702},"content":"For the season to date, eight ICU admissions and three deaths have been reported.","type":"text"},{"_id":"JAP42UBSYBBL5CRMWYXERHQBKQ","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119703},"content":"There has also been an increase in flu outbreaks in health and care settings in the past week. So far this winter season, influenza hospitalisations are mainly affecting older adults and young children, the HSE said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"2VVB7RSZTVAPBM5LWH6VSG3XLM","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119704},"content":"<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/covid\" target=\"_blank\">Covid-19</a> activity remained stable last week, the HPSC said, with cases decreasing by 17 per cent from 138 to 114. Hospitalisations also decreased to 37, while intensive care admissions and deaths “remained low”.","type":"text"},{"_id":"QKF2KLK5VJFWBJ5DEVOXOA7DHA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119705},"content":"Respiratory Synctial Virus (RSV) were generally stable last week when there were 305 cases reported, with the number of cases highest among those aged less than one year.","type":"text"},{"_id":"22RONHHUO5D53OZ3U5OTP5YEH4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119706},"content":"There were 113 hospitalisations and three ICU admissions last week. No RSV deaths have been reported this winter season.","type":"text"},{"_id":"CAXBPJUHPVALPOH5XJ6N5PWQSI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119707},"content":"Dr <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/colm-henry/\" target=\"_blank\">Colm Henry</a>, chief clinical officer of HSE, said flu is “actively circulating in the community”, warning rates of Covid-19 could also increase in the coming weeks.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PBPO2JEPGNFMDFGVEZXI2BXZVI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119708},"content":"“I would urge all those who are eligible to put winter vaccines on your to-do list and get them done. This will keep you and your family protected, allowing you to concentrate on all the things that need to be done in the build up to Christmas,” he said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"24GUAXTXGBEZXB6FSGI6IO6XAA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000119709},"content":"“This year, we have extended the flu vaccine to more people, making it available for free to everyone aged 60 years and older.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YCDY6C2IB5FUNMX3YVDX7FFP3I","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Shauna Bowers"}},"name":"Shauna Bowers"}]},"description":{"basic":"The number of notified influenza cases increased by 91 per cent in the past week from 277 to 528 cases for the week ending December 8th"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T11:11:36.729Z","headlines":{"basic":"Flu cases: Three people have died and over 400 hospitalised this winter season","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"WDYHTQXIEKGXF4XDB43XVOFM5U","auth":{"1":"fac04f2d8cd50d472bc79f34d7d4cb4e5f070447dd49d42332049b45f4f708c9"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WDYHTQXIEKGXF4XDB43XVOFM5U.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Health"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/health/2024/12/12/flu-cases-three-people-have-died-and-over-400-hospitalised-this-winter-season/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/health","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Health"}}}},{"_id":"E5ZX4N6HUZHGHPDSORG3XMJHB4","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":177,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/8948/podcasts/05d55b5c-24ee-4abb-a1fd-74df153e08f4/versions/1734002154/media/423b96a860d6cb8062322de6eda2b625_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/politics/2024/12/12/pause-on-syrian-asylum-claims-to-be-reviewed-in-coming-weeks-says-helen-mcentee/","content_elements":[{"_id":"JEEOE4J3VNAJFBQ6735MZVFAMU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961562},"content":"A temporary pause placed on making final decisions on requests for asylum from people who fled to the State from Syria will be reviewed in the coming weeks, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"VTYZUEY6AFCRZLEY6KDCLGJ5PI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961563},"content":"The assessment of fewer than 400 applications from Syrians are impacted by the move, with final rulings on their asylum claims now on hold. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"FC7ZKWMHZFBNPCY6Y2DLL4HONM","additional_properties":{},"content":"“This is not a long-term pause as far as I’m concerned, but we do need to see how things transpire in the weeks ahead,” Ms McEntee said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"RRBH6M3FENDA5LLOOGQKLM5WFA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961564},"content":"The Department of Justice this week paused decisions on asylum cases involving people from Syria following the collapse of the autocratic regime of Bashar al-Assad after a 13-year-long civil war. The fall of the brutal regime took international leaders by surprise, with Syrian opposition forces, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, quickly advancing across the country and seizing the capital of Damascus in recent days.","type":"text"},{"_id":"PEEJYGGC7JGQRFEMAFDQ5G4INY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961565},"content":"“I really welcome the end of the Assad regime,” Ms McEntee said. “This is a regime that worked with fear and violence and control and I think the Syrian people now have an opportunity to set their own future and their own pathway.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"DGFLCMQU4JBJNEQQVM2PGYYMYA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961566},"content":"The Minister said decisions on whether to grant asylum or refugee status had to take into account the current situation in an applicant’s country of origin. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"6IRVKHHKRVEVBNNHIWZY7PDX2Q","additional_properties":{},"content":"“What I’ve done simply is pause any decision-making on the basis that it is uncertain as to what the situation may be in the weeks ahead. Any decision has to be made based on what is happening in that country of origin at that time,” she said.","type":"text"},{"_id":"IDB35W2UERBV3KJ3GZ4VRDBUJU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961567},"content":"Ms McEntee was speaking on her way into a meeting of EU justice ministers in Brussels, at which matters including the future of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers are to be discussed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"OMXUQOGTVVAVNBSGOF4YNXK7UI","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961568},"content":"More than one million Syrians fleeing the civil war and Assad regime came to Europe over the last decade. A number of EU states, such as France, Germany, Belgium and Italy, have also paused decisions in pending asylum cases for Syrians.","type":"text"},{"_id":"YC2CM42CQZFNZGHNTT3LNJY77U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000961569},"content":"The Austrian government, known for its hardline approach to migration, has in recent days raised the prospect of organising a programme of “orderly repatriation and deportation” to send asylum seekers back to Syria. ","type":"text"},{"_id":"PTMJXLLJCBERDFRMY6J6WHAAZA","additional_properties":{},"content":"Ms McEntee said Ireland was not considering any similar scheme. “It’s important that we do work together and that we work, where possible, in step on this issue,” she said. “I think it’s really positive that the Assad regime has come to an end. At the same time I think we can all see that it’s not clear what will happen next.”","type":"text"},{"_id":"YCDY6C2IB5FUNMX3YVDX7FFP3I","additional_properties":{},"type":"list"}],"content_restrictions":{"content_code":"metered"},"credits":{"by":[{"additional_properties":{"original":{"byline":"Jack Power"}},"name":"Jack Power"}]},"description":{"basic":"Minister for Justice says fall of Assad regime ‘really positive’ but it is not clear what will happen next in Syria"},"display_date":"2024-12-12T11:10:46.504Z","headlines":{"basic":"Pause on Syrian asylum claims to be reviewed in coming weeks, says Helen McEntee","native":""},"label":{"audio_project_id":{"text":"8948"}},"promo_items":{"basic":{"_id":"CC4VSO23HSTDNCXBTLZSCUYMOA","auth":{"1":"1a6907a4c9714457c7f63c3d66dbf1c976e504d1d836e7f4ce50f0294648044e"},"url":"https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/CC4VSO23HSTDNCXBTLZSCUYMOA.jpg"}},"subtype":"default","taxonomy":{"sections":[{"name":"Politics"}]},"type":"story","website_url":"/politics/2024/12/12/pause-on-syrian-asylum-claims-to-be-reviewed-in-coming-weeks-says-helen-mcentee/","websites":{"irishtimes":{"website_section":{"_id":"/politics","additional_properties":{"original":{}},"name":"Politics"}}}},{"_id":"WBPHMTF2QVFPXOQVVDECDCW5MU","additional_properties":{"audio_duration":247,"audio_url":"https://beyondwords-h0e8gjgjaqe0egb7.a03.azurefd.net/audio/projects/5469/podcasts/d19899d6-fbd5-43ac-8562-587f1a6a5bf3/versions/1734001475/media/2f48c2525bf81d24e50440870084ba78_compiled.mp3"},"canonical_url":"/culture/tv-radio/2024/12/12/100-years-of-solitude-review-a-woozy-feverish-watch-to-be-savoured-in-bite-sized-portions/","content_elements":[{"_id":"PUZZZ3UWPJFSFLRNAEISTIYSWU","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723499},"content":"When people assure you a novel is unfilmable, they usually mean they don’t much like the source material and want to tell their own story instead. For proof, just look at those adaptations that do adhere closely to the original – Peter Jackson’s <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/lord-of-the-rings/\" target=\"_blank\">Lord of the Rings</a> trilogy, for example, or <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/denis-villeneuve/\" target=\"_blank\">Denis Villeneuve</a>’s Dune movies.","type":"text"},{"_id":"TNQNTG6DEFHNZPSDLBRHNQJGIY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723500},"content":"Tolkien and Frank Herbert are routinely cited as writers who could not possibly translate to the screen. Another is Colombian writer <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/gabriel-garcia-marquez-nobel-prize-winning-author-dies-at-87-1.1765799\" target=\"_blank\">Gabriel García Márquez</a>, whose 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (<a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/tags/netflix/\" target=\"_blank\">Netflix</a> from Wednesday), did so much to make “magical realism” a respectable literary genre and which has come to occupy the same place in the South American consciousness as Ulysses in the Irish one.","type":"text"},{"_id":"A7BMG3L6NRBGJMULHSXXTNPJ2U","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723501},"content":"Nobody was more convinced of its un-filmability than Márquez – who, during his life, forbade any attempt to transpose the story to film or television. But with his death in 2014, the wheels were set in motion. Now, here arrives Netflix’s lavish take on the tale of a metaphysical town in the Colombian interior, which becomes a metaphor for the traumas that stalked Latin American society through the 20th century.","type":"text"},{"_id":"4ZCTR4B6NBAEJNGOMWGT5DLIPY","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723502},"content":"The novel has sold more than 50 million copies but is by all accounts a challenging read: either you dive in head first and don’t bother at all. The same is true of the series, which begins with – yikes – cousins José Arcadio Buendía (Marco González) and Úrsula Iguarán (Susana Morales) announcing they are to marry, only for Úrsula to be promptly (and not unreasonably) trussed up in a chastity belt by her mother.","type":"text"},{"_id":"SRFQ4IMXKNGWDHVQSR6PN6ICK4","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723503},"content":"Netflix’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is a woozy, feverish watch. It isn’t very bingeable – nor should it be. Yet its meditative tone is counterpointed by a steaminess that sometimes verges on unintentional hilarity.","type":"text"},{"_id":"KFMPNSFQIOWZZKRMPDPGYJ4Y3U","additional_properties":{"_id":"S4RHZPXYUZBXZGRYYYVDAAKVNQ"},"type":"image"},{"_id":"HHUKOMBP5BFQ7KSI2WZ5D2NM24","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723505},"content":"You can sympathise with the producers, who had to squeeze in lots of the sex that features in the novel without coming across as sleazy – not a problem confronting Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (unless A Long-Expected Party has a different ending to the one I remember). Still, it’s all a bit early Game of Thrones: the first episode alone has so many scenes of José Arcadio and Úrsula wriggling around in bed that you wonder if you’re watching a literary adaptation or a sordid Colombia remake of an early Paul Verhoeven erotic thriller.","type":"text"},{"_id":"7WD5ZJL7WRGIDMRSXOIAXOAPJA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723506},"content":"Along with the quasi-nudity, there is a fair degree of violence. First up, José Arcadio stabs a villager who mocks his sexual prowess (the chastity belt having become an open secret – as is the way with villages full of gossip).","type":"text"},{"_id":"AGBWAZNGJ5GJFIEY6O6SCB6K7Y","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723507},"content":"He comes to regret his murderous rage as the ghost of the killer follows him around – even into the marital bed chamber. To escape, he and Úrsula depart for the coast. Or so they think. Instead, they end up in a swampy valley, where they establish from scratch the town of Macondo – an accursed, liminal motherland where their descendants will live and die. They include colonel Aureliano Buendía (Claudio Cataño) the first person born in Macondo, whom we meet just as he is about to be executed.","type":"text"},{"_id":"N4IATS7FM5AGXGQRAXAIBSW4DA","subtype":"youtube","type":"oembed_response"},{"_id":"GFUEPV5GQJGORIEWOYSMNTAPSA","additional_properties":{"_id":1734000723508},"content":"It is hinted throughout that they have left the mortal realm and passed into a twilight place not quite of this world. A sailing ship pops up in the jungle – evoking memories of Fitzcarraldo (the 1982 <a href=\"https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/2024/01/16/werner-herzog-lives-every-day-like-he-wants-his-life-to-be-an-adventure/\" target=\"_blank\">Werner Herzog</a> movie, not the Frames album). Strangers playing music emerge from the undergrowth, like visitors navigating limbo. 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