Archive for the ‘Celebrity Bainisteoir’ Category
The Year That Was..2010
Independent Group Local Newspapers 29/1/2011
This week I am going to look back on 2010. I am so conscious of what an awful year it was for thousands – many losing their job, others losing sleep about their mortgage and their mounting debts and, this Christmas, so many looking at the prospect of losing members of their family to emigration in the coming year. So I feel almost guilty that I have had such an eventful and productive year. The Editor has pointed out that there will be a fuller review of all the year’s international, national and, of course, local news here in the paper but has asked me to write a personal log of my year.
January started with me beginning to write this column. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and thank you so much for your most positive feedback! Like me, you too are fed up with the constant negativity of the national media.
In February I inadvertently made the headlines. The Irish Daily Mail ran two pages of photographs of me meeting, on a street in Dublin, with Sean Fitzpatrick, the now disgraced former boss of toxic bank, Anglo Irish. The story sarcastically suggested I was probably meeting Sean Fitzpatrick to see would he invest some of his pension money in my Dragons’ Den products. Though it was a chance meeting, I still had to inform the media that I had never met Sean Fitzpatrick before (or since) and I had never been a client of Anglo Irish. Eventually the story petered out, but for the first time in my life I knew what it was to be “paparazzi-ed”.
In March, during the run of Dragons’ Den on RTÉ, I hit the jackpot! Noelle O’Connor walked in to present her idea for a healthy, non synthetic, non smelling, 100% natural, organic sunless tan. In the first three months in pharmacies over the summer, TanOrganic generated over €1m in sales. It became the number one selling tan in Ireland. So, despite being in the middle of the world’s worst recession, the point was proven again – if you have a good Irish-manufactured product, regardless of the economy it will sell and sell.
At the end of April Gerry Ryan died. We now know this was probably as a result of cocaine use. I would never condone substance abuse but I am not really qualified to comment because I am one of a tiny minority in Ireland who has never drank alcohol or smoked tobacco and has certainly never tried any form of drug. I do have many vices just not those more common ones! What Gerry did was wrong. But I worked with Gerry and I will always remember him as one of the greatest radio presenters.
In May I was asked to go on the Late Late Show for the finalists in the Transition Year Young Entrepreneurs competition. One student had a brilliant idea, “The Wrap”. It is a little plastic thing for wrapping up and avoiding tangling of the wire of your earphones for your phone or I-pod. I was delighted the following week to introduce him to Vodafone, and now his concept is now a real product out there on the market. It proves yet again that our schools are teeming with boys and girls with great business ideas.
In June I started my summer-long involvement with Celebrity Bainisteoir. Definitely one of the highlights of my year was the warm welcome I got from the Roche Emmets football club and its community. I still feel the team and I let ourselves down, and that such a great club deserved to go further in the competition, but I loved every moment of my involvement. The experience reaffirmed for me what a great contribution the GAA makes to local communities across the country.
On the 11th July the nation witnessed the greatest daylight robbery ever. Sports fans from all over the country agreed that Louth was robbed of a deserved Leinster title and Meath also suffered ‘winning’ what became a sullied championship. We simply have to introduce video evidence into these key games.
In August I was asked by RTÉ Radio 1 to fill in for Ryan Tubridy, who was moving over to 2FM, before John Murray was available to start the programme. I hadn’t presented a radio programme for well over a decade and if the truth be told enjoyed it far too much. It was a pleasure to work with Annmarie Power, Aonghus McAnally and their team in Donnybrook.
In September I was doing the job interviews for the Apprentice for TV3. One of the final four and the eventual winner was Michelle Massey. On her CV it stated she had done some modelling so I had to ask her was there anything in her past that could embarrass a future employer. She then revealed her dalliance with Playboy TV. I can tell you now I was never, ever expecting that one. I had to keep it all secret until the programme aired in December.
In late October my fellow Dragons and I really felt the pressure when RTÉ informed us that for 2011 the programme was moving to a prime time slot, 9:30pm on Sunday nights. We were all concerned that in the recession people might not come forward with good ideas. But when we did get to the Den for recordings, we were mightily relieved at the high standard of business ideas. It is television, so the producers will still feature the wacky ideas, but this year there were plenty of sound business ideas. Also RTÉ confirmed that there will be a follow up series looking back on many of the people who featured in series one and two.
In November we had the ‘good’ news that it was in the ECB’s interest to come to our nation’s rescue and bail us out but at a price. Personally I was delighted with the development, because I see it as the turning point on the road to recovery. The media kept pushing a line that we should default. We can’t default but we must restructure our debt in approximately 18 to 24 months from now. So we take this deal and in two years time after Portugal, Spain and maybe even Italy have required ECB/IMF assistance then we can, as a group of countries availing of the bailout, force the senior bondholders to restructure our debt. They will be forced to write a large percentage of it off. Of the group, which country has the strongest exports? Yes, Ireland. I assure you we will eventually come out of this valley of tears and our little nation can be great again.
In December Noel Dempsey followed his cabinet colleague, Dermot Ahern, and announced he wouldn’t contest the General Election. Dermot Ahern would have got re-elected but Noel Dempsey was doomed. He claimed he was doing it because he is over 55 years of age. The facts are party sources in Meath-West were forecasting that he could only muster, at best, 2,000 votes. Worse again his running mate, Deputy Johnny Brady, would poll better. So Dempsey, a former poll topper, couldn’t face the ignominy of being eliminated in an early count and bowed out on a fat pension. We so badly need the New Year’s General Election to draw a line under all the fall out of the Celtic Tiger and start on the road to recovery. To you and yours, a Happy New Year and all the best for 2011.
Ivor’s expenses
There has been a lot said and written about the now disgraced Fianna Fail Senator Ivor Callely. He has protested he is the victim of a media witch hunt.
It is true he has been the focus of journalists’ attempts to expose the corrupt culture of easy expenses paid as a type of top up to our already overpaid politicians.
And therein is the problem. During the boom many in public service complained that they were grossly underpaid when compared with their “colleagues” in the private sector.
And so a culture was allowed to grow where it became normal practise to pay generous expenses, often unvouched, to politicians but also executives in state employment.
There was a belief that if we can’t pay the going rate then we will make up the gap through expenses and, wait for it, bonuses.
The latter is farcical. Many HSE and local authority executives have received large bonuses, worse, still do. For what you may ask? But the practise is widespread.
As tens of thousands of men and women have lost their jobs in the private sector surely the public servants must now accept that having a permanent, pensionable job is actually the greatest job perk anyone can have.
Many teachers have seen their pay cut by about 12%. That’s a hefty pay cut, especially, if like most of us, you were living beyond your means and on top of that have a big mortgage. In such circumstances any pay cut bites deep and really hurts.
But the reality is our teachers are, even after the pay cuts, some of the best paid in Europe. They work very hard but, because of the nature of their job, have months of holidays over the year.
Compared to the private sector worker who has already seen take home pay cut by as much as twenty per cent and works 49 weeks of the year but, probably, spends 52 weeks worrying will he or she have a job next year, the public sector worker has by far the best job terms.
The so called ‘witch hunt’ that Ivor Callely is complaining of is of his own making.
No-one forced him to provide allegedly false mobile phone expenses and if it all serves to get rid of politicians who believe there is one rule for them and another for the rest of us and also ends the easy expenses culture in the public sector, well then I say it is a job well done.
Jet setting Minister Dempsey
Sticking with expenses journalist Ken Foxe of the Sunday Tribune has done the nation great service exposing the irregularities of the expenses system that has benefitted our elected representatives.
His latest target is Minister Noel Dempsey who used the Government jet to fly to the MacGill Summer School. Such an act cannot be justified. I genuinely believe if the punishment was that an offending politician who has wasted resources in such an ostentatious fashion was then forced to pay the bill from their own pocket that would put a stop to all these expensive capers.
But the latest revelation about Noel Dempsey is that he received cash payments as apparently a type of spending money to have when he was going on foreign trips. Is this fair?
A cash advance would be paid to the Minister and then he would spend the money on accommodation and “entertaining” and claim it back.
Now if a Government Minister is abroad and he buys a drink or a meal, “entertains”, someone our country is doing business with should that not be legitimately claimed as an expense?
Jetting to the MacGill talking shop at taxpayers’ expense is unforgivable but it is justifiable to pay some spending money in advance to a Minister going on a foreign trip if that money is then accounted for by receipts which must be submitted and recorded after the trip.
The next assignment for Ken Foxe must be to look at the state employees of RTE and examine their expenses.
For example, journalists talk a lot about balance and fairness. So why doesn’t Ken do a quick trawl on the last five RTE Washington Correspondents just to have a look at their expenses and what they claimed.
I have no doubt the journalists will be seen to be squeaky clean compared to the politicians they report on.
But wouldn’t it be nice to get that assurance and further wouldn’t it be nice to see journalists applying the same high standards to themselves as they expect of all others?
Tune in to Radio 1 from Monday.
Finally, just a bit of news regarding myself. This Monday, the 16th, and for three weeks, I am presenting from 9am to ten each morning on RTE Radio One.
Ryan Tubridy is off preparing for his new show that takes over from the late Gerry Ryan on 2FM. So I am the fill-in before John Murray takes to the airwaves with his new show on September 6th.
I think John is an inspired choice and hopefully will prove to be a winner for RTE in the mornings.
Along with being on Radio One each morning I am building up to my big quarter final clash as part of RTE television’s Celebrity Bainisteoir. That takes place on August 21st.
I can’t believe I am taking it so seriously. I am waking up each morning thinking about where I will play certain players. My team is Roche Emmets from County Louth and we are drawn against Kilconly of Galway, managed by the star of last year’s The Apprentice, Breffni Morgan.
I love football, any type of football. But my first love has always been Gaelic football. I just love the GAA, the parish club and its significance to community life in rural Ireland and now I am living it and loving it.
I will be broken hearted if we don’t win this big game Saturday week. Am I feeling the pressure? You bet I am. Before that hopefully you will be kind enough to listen out for me on Radio 1 from Monday. Talk to you then, bye for now.
Rural Ireland Awake, Fáilte to her Majesty & I’m a Bainisteoir
This week we have seen evidence of the great urban – rural divide in our country as the Green Party, lead by John Gormley, tried to force through their bill to ban stag hunting.
I was brought up on a farm. Sometimes that involved helping my Dad to sheer horns off cattle and to cut lambs tails. By the time I was ten I had seen a lot of blood. So, naturally, I have a different view of hunting, shooting and fishing than people brought up in Dublin, Cork and other cities, who have little or no contact with agriculture or the countryside.
In fact if you asked today’s city kids where does meat come from, they’d probably say, ’Tesco’. In the era of vacuum-packed meat, the city consumer doesn’t have to bother themselves thinking about all the work the farmer has to do calving the animal, rearing it, sending it for slaughter and so on. The farmer is overworked and underpaid so the city person can enjoy their protein as part of healthy, natural, balanced diet. The dairy farmer works 365 days a year so the city person can open their fridge to get their tetra-packed milk.
The Dublin media is asking how come this Green Party initiative to ban the country’s only stag hunt, the Ward Union, has been so divisive and difficult? They have wondered how, last week, an unprecedented seven Government TDs from Fianna Fail condemned their own legislation on the floor of Dáil Eireann but less vocal whilst supporting cuts in social welfare, or committing us to billions to bail out of the banks?
And here’s the answer for our city cousins.
It is called people power. The campaign to save the Ward Union stag hunt, RISE, which stands for, Rural Ireland Says Enough, has united the countryside. All who live in rural Ireland know that they cannot sort out the economy overnight or fix our appalling health service by making a representation to their local TD. However they realised quickly they could lift the phone, talk to their local TD and say if you vote for a ban on stag hunting we see it as the thin edge of the wedge and we won’t be voting for you come the election. Thanks to this issue a strong message has been sent to all political parties – don’t take rural Ireland for granted.
A State Visit.
So the Queen of England is coming to Ireland – here’s a true story.
My Aunty Peg has been a lifelong Bushmills whiskey drinker. Her tipple is Black Bush and despite consuming copious amounts of it over her lifetime it seems to have done her no harm, she is still with us, hail and hearty at eighty. When she was celebrating her seventieth birthday as a treat her daughter arranged a trip to the Bushmills’ distillery in the North.
Her best friend and partner in crime, my mother, Anne, accompanied her on the big trip across the border. My mother had just received a new, fangled thing that she was a bit frightened of – a mobile phone. Let’s say she didn’t adapt too well to the new technology. She really never got the mobile aspect of it. We’d ring her but never get her as, when she went out shopping, she always left the phone at home on her mantle piece. But on this day of the big trip up North, and wanting to show off to Peg how thoroughly modern and with it she was, she brought the mobile phone – a big mistake.
As they crossed the border, my Mother’s mobile phone made a noise, a text alert, and my mother fetched it from the bowels of her very large hand bag. She read the text and screamed in horror. The message simply said, “Welcome to the UK”.
My mother, normally a very dignified, diplomatic and deferential lady was highly insulted. She demanded to know of my poor cousin, who was the driver, how come the British had the effrontery to claim jurisdiction in what God and the world knew was Ireland? My mother was apoplectic. How did the spies of MI5 know that she and Peg had just crossed the border, a border that in her mind should have never existed? Perhaps Peg wasn’t as upset but saw it as an opportunity to suggest that in order to recover from such an awful shock and insult they must stop at the very next pub for a strong coffee – a black bush.
This week my mother said she’d like to see Queen Elizabeth come to Ireland. If my mother accepts it, then I know the vast majority of the Irish people have matured enough to say ‘Cead Mile Fáilte’ to the British Monarch who comes as an equal, acknowledging our little nation has joined the nations of the earth.
‘Celebrity’ Bainisteoir
I think I have become a media slut. I seem to be constantly on the telly and now it is official, I am to be a Celebrity Bainisteoir. My teenage kids are cool enough about my role in Dragons’ Den but they are really excited that Dad is doing the reality show where eight celebrities each take over a team in their county in a knock out championship – all televised.
Of course I don’t believe I am a celebrity, in fact the programme should be called, yeah I think I vaguely recognise your man or woman who is now a bainisteoir. Having said that, the reception I got when I first met the team was just overwhelming. My team is Roche Emmets, from the parish of Faughart, in County Louth, literally immediately south of the border from Armagh. So it is a real, rural community with the spirit and togetherness you only get in parishes in the Irish countryside.
Of course the TV production company like to keep it a secret as to who is going to be the “celebrity”. I was dealt a cruel blow. Though they deny it, the producers put out a rumour that the team was going to get music goddess, Andrea Corr of The Corrs as their Bainisteoir. So you can only imagine the disappointment of the testosterone filled, athletic, fit, young men in that dressing room. There they were waiting for the dressing room door to open and Andrea to enter, no doubt, in a short, figure hugging, summer dress and – shock – they got me instead. To their eternal credit they masked their disappointment superbly and instantly made me feel at home and so very welcome.
Our first game is against Kilconly of County Galway and their Bainisteoir is Breffni Morgan who starred in last year’s The Apprentice and this summer’s Celebrity Salon. With Louth in its first Leinster final in fifty years this could be the wee county’s year so come on the Roche Emmets!