It's no fun going to the toilet in the Amazon..

These were the type of wonderful, inciteful observations made by Charlie Bird on his trip up the Amazon. 6 weeks of travel for 1 hour of Charlie moaning about altitude sickness, a 20km/6 hour hike to a bed, toilet troubles and so on.

Awful stuff methinks - an hour of Charlie Bird anxieties.

I never thought that speaking directly to camera was still a technique used by any production company of note for this type of programme......

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CRO Website down

The Companies Registration Office and their IT people seem to be taking their Christmas break early. The site is currently unavailable. The text at www.cro.ie (reproduced below) is very 1990's......

"We are actively working on the problem and hope to have it back as soon as possible. However, it is possible that it will not be back up before Wednesday 20th December."

I love the last bit. Ah shure it will be alright........

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RTE Radio1 Autumn Schedule

The Autumn radio schedule for RTE Radio 1 was much talked about in mid summer. The loss of John Kelly, Rattlebag......and John Creedon to the graveyard shift. The schedule has now settled in, but really there are some oddities.


- Eamon Dunphy on saturday morning. Hopes that the demise of Carrie Crowley on Sunday morning with the VIP Suite (that ran for years), at least saturday morning was sacrosanct from this type of production.

- Mooney, Weekday afternoons. I always thought that " goes wild" on a saturday morning was never as good with the 1 hour as it had been over 30 minutes. There had been occasional hints of feistiness in Mooney in this format - how this might be channeled in mid-afternoon is another thing; early signs are not encouraging.

- Drivetime, Weekday evenings. Too much sport. Des Cahill is an engaging, funny guy on radio, but methinks in small doses. Enough has been said in the weekend supplements about the strange format that runs over this two hours, so there's no point in adding.

- Val Joyce and Late Date. I think this is a great loss. Great voice, great music. Replaced by John Creedon - I think doing a very good impression of Alan Partridge doing the late night slot on Radio Norwich. Maybe summertime is a funny time of the year, but the number of daft text messages Mr Creedons lunchtime show was getting, seemed as if they could almost have been generated from the bowels of Radio Cork.

As a footnote, I could not but mention Rachel Allen of "Favourite Food for Friends" and Ballymaloe. She made an appearance on the Maran Finuncane show a few saturdays back. What is with that accent? it is unnerving it is so pinched. Anyway, alarms bells began to reach levels that would have enraged Quasimodo when she could not tell Marian what the essential items she would always have in the kitchen cupboard. Extremely odd.

ireland, rte, radio, radio1

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Typepad problems - cannot post

I see the irony of posting about typepad from a blogger account...Has anybody experienced problems this morning doings posts from within typepad ?

Tags: typepad

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Smart Telecom on last legs?

....And I thought I had not paid the bill. So I paid the bill - and then of course had a quick look on boards.ie and found that Eircom has pulled the wholesale service from Smart Telecom.



Tags: irish ireland smart telecom

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Down with that sort of thing

If this is a sign of the kind of antics that current TD's are going to embark on, it is going to be long, long winter for the Government.

RTE News today had a report about the lengths that Fianna Fail Deputy for Roscommon - Michael Finneran - will go to, in order to save inpatient surgery services at Roscommon County Hospital; he claims he will not stand for the party if the decision is not rescinded.

The whip will have to be used on this one - and pretty quickly too. It is a clever move from Finneran. He is the hero if he can get the Government to change the mind of the HSE (not a chance) and thus be re-elected. If he stands his ground, the whip could ensure his ejection from the party; he runs as an independent, is re-elected, and is also a hero.

If this an indication of the mindset of existing Government back benchers, it's just a bit too clever for my liking....

Tags: irish ireland politics elections roscommon

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Revenge is a dish best served cold

I don't think you need to be a psychologist to understand that part of the motivation for Roy Keane to take on the managers role at Sunderland must be to prove that he bring success/non-failure to the club where his nemesis Mick McCarthy could not.

If this premise is true, it also shows Niall Quinn to be quite dispassionate but also very clever at understanding the psyche of Keane, and the appeal that the role might have for him, based on this.


Tags: irish ireland roy keane sunderland niall quinn

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Being the talent for AIB banner ads must be awfully stressful

Just noticed this on the breakingnews.ie website.

On the AIB banner ad at the top of the page, rollover the dude on the right. he waves briefly, then invites you in. Then in a not so subtle way, you can see that he takes a deep breath and his shoulders sag with the injustice of it all.

So of all of the takes, they had to choose this one? Poor production.

Tags: irish ireland adverts aib

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