Page 8 - Barry Egan News Today

What was in the news 100 years ago today? Richard Forrest reports in our Echoes of the Past column

The last time I met Mick Flannery was in 2015. As befitted a semi-legendary troubadour whose songs were full of extraordinary stories and images, he told some great stories that day in Dublin – chief among them being . . .

Andrew Strong was 16 years old and on his summer holidays from the Patrician Brothers National School in Newbridge, Co Kildare, in 1990 when he got a call about singing in The Commitments. He never went back to school again.

The Dublin-born beauty who is dating Jeremy Clarkson, once had a glam career in the entertainment industry and was married to multi-millionaire Baron Steven Bentinck.

Google Maps says I am outside Leo Moran’s house in Tuam, Co Galway. If I am, I can’t see it. I park nearby and ask a man would he know where the guitarist in The Saw Doctors lives. He says it is just down the road and I can’t miss it. That may be true, but I’ve missed it, I tell him.

I didnt like Licorice Pizza the first time that I watched it, but Ive gone back and re-evaluated it. Heres why I think my opinion has changed.

Ryan Hennessy has over 50 tattoos. He got the first one — Georgie Lee, his god-daughter’s name — when he was 15. He has his cat’s name, ‘Rudy’, tattooed on his arm. “I do get some looks from people in swimming pools.”

It may well be that a track from the album she had almost finished before her death will, in time, demand a place in the pantheon of Sinéad O’Connor’s greatest songs. For now, though, her magnificent body of work over almost 40 years makes choosing a top 10 very, very difficult. But here goes.

Shocked by her death, the singer’s compatriots recall her courage, kindness and humour

“I had no choice, so I figured it out.” That’s what Sabine Ducrot told her 13-year-old son Cian when he asked her: “How did you find the strength when you had no money and two kids to take care of?”