Page 3 - Barry Egan News Today

Although she was in The Beach in 2000 with Leonardo DiCaprio, and About a Boy in 2002 with Hugh Grant, some people had Victoria Smurfit stuck as Orla O’Connell, the priest’s sister in BBC series Ballykissangel in the late 1990s. That view, however, was presumably revised when they saw her as Cruella de Vil in series four of the American ABC drama Once Upon a Time.

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Yesterday was Kira Murphy’s birthday. It is not an exaggeration to say it was a birthday she’ll never forget. The body of her sister Lisa, four years her senior, lay in repose at a funeral home in Rathfarnham. Her funeral mass is to take place this morning in St John the Evangelist church in Ballinteer, Dublin.

The last time I met Lisa Murphy was a few years ago by accident. I was pushing my daughter Emilia in a buggy through Marlay Park in Dublin. In the distance, this glamorous figure was power-walking towards us — in a faux-fur coat, purple Juicy Couture tracksuit and what appeared to be kitten-pattern slippers. It was a blustery day, but her Farrah Fawcett hair was perfectly coiffed.

In 2004, Kells musician Podge McNamee bumped into Bono. When he mentioned he played in a band called HamsandwicH, the U2 singer suggested they should change their name. Podge ignored his counsel. Twenty years later he, Niamh Farrell and Brian Darcy are about to release their fifth LP, The Live Album. Among those songs is Ants, from 2011.

Seán French was elected as Lord Mayor of Cork 100 years ago today. While he served 12 terms, Aodh Quinlivan and John Ger O’Riordan explain why it wasn’t smooth sailing for French

Directed by Neil Jordan, The Company of Wolves was a lot more than Little Red Riding Hood remade as a feminist, slasher movie. Released in 1984, it was (as the New York Times noted) “absolutely jam-packed with the kind of symbols that delight Freudian analysts of culture, particularly of folk tales”.

Empire magazine called it in 2012 “the best Irish film in some time”. Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, produced by Ed Guiney and written by Malcolm Campbell, What Richard Did was an adaptation of Kevin Power’s novel Bad Day in Blackrock, inspired by the killing of Dublin teenager Brian Murphy in 2000.

Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith is much admired. Long-term supporter Elvis Costello wrote in a Vanity Fair magazine article that his Wastin’ Time album was an essential part of a record collection along with Joni Mitchell’s Blue, The Beach Boys’s Pet Sounds and Frank Sinatra’s Only the Lonely.

Like sheep filtering into a pen, a vast crowd of millennials drained from the other arenas at Electric Picnic last September and flocked into a single tent.