It is about three-quarters of an hour into my interview with Father Ted co-creator Arthur Mathews when the conversation ventures into uncomfortable territory. A certain subject has been looming on the horizon from the off and it explains why, early on, he seems so ill at ease.
Nowlan Park in Kilkenny is used to feats of great athleticism. After all, the stadium is the home of Kilkenny hurling and its celebrated pitch has hosted all of the greats of the game.
Opinion will be forever divided about when this always-on internet age began, but the launch of Google in 1998 certainly changed the world forever. In a little over quarter of a century, many aspects of our lives have become unrecognisable to our 1990s selves. The transformation is best captured by our reliance on the mobile phone the ‘black mirror’, to borrow the title of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian drama series.
“House the Irish first”, “close the borders” and “Eire will no longer run by EU puppets” read the placards at the protest outside Simon Harris’s family home on Thursday.
Anybody under the illusion that Ireland is a sort of paradise for wealthy tax exiles might want to think about Leslie Charteris. The writer of The Saint, the hugely popular Roger Moore TV series, he moved here in the 1970s to avoid paying a fortune to HM Revenue & Customs but had a thoroughly miserable time among the burghers of south Dublin. Why on earth, he asked, would anyone live in Ireland if they didn’t have to.