Christmas TV ads 2024: Patrick Freyne on Marks & Spencer, Lidl, Boots, Amazon and more
Patrick Freyne: here are my favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas TV ads, as I believe you call them in the suburbs
Dublin’s crack cocaine epidemic: ‘You get a rush. You come down. And then you have to go again’
Crack cocaine is the new heroin, say addicts and frontline support workers, its use and widespread availability an epidemic that is getting worse
‘We’re in uncharted territory’: Why the forgotten threat of nuclear war presents real and present danger
With the Doomsday Clock set at 90 seconds to midnight, the US and Russia’s Cold War stand-off seems quaint in retrospect
No Magic Pill: ‘If you cast disabled actors, they bring with their performance the lived experience of disability’
It’s time for professional productions to use disabled actors for both disabled and nondisabled characters, say playwright Christian O’Reilly and his colleagues
Doctor Odyssey’s core message: just imagine Pacey from Dawson’s Creek holding you tight and saying, ‘Shhh, it’s okay’
Patrick Freyne: Cruising takes on an alternative meaning in this medical melodrama, with Joshua Jackson visiting multiple ports of call
John Creedon: ‘I was always being sent away, not because they didn’t love me, but because they couldn’t cope’
Broadcaster and author reflects on an unusual childhood in Cork, constant low-level anxiety and presenting Winning Streak without understanding the rules
Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
Patrick Freyne: If I was in Disney+’s Jilly Cooper adaptation, someone would surely compliment my ‘magnificent column’
Changing career midlife: ‘At 45 I thought I was finished... But it didn’t even occur to me that I could do anything else’
More and more people are opting to switch professions in midlife. We talk to three people who have taken the plunge
Long-lost story by Dracula author Bram Stoker unearthed at National Library of Ireland
Gibbet Hill, the Irish writer’s macabre tale of a man set upon by strange children at the site of a real murder, was discovered by Dublin researcher Brian Cleary
The 2 Johnnies – what you get if you feed Ant and Dec a Tayto sandwich after midnight – are taunting us now
As I get sucked into this regional boosterism, I feel something change in me. Do I ... actually like it?
Patrick Freyne: Where does Love in the Country find its taciturn Irishmen? I thought they had gone from this isle, like elk and shame
Anna Geary is such a good host that she’d probably want to help rural romantics find the partner of their dreams even if RTÉ wasn’t filming it
Michael Harding: ‘Solitude sounds beautiful, but what you get is isolation’
The Irish Times columnist on ageing, the double-edged nature of solitude, and his new memoir’s focus on his distant relationship with his father
Instagram star Garron Noone: ‘I’ve been broke most of my life. I’ve cleaned up people’s puke for money. Success is a transient thing’
The TikTok and Instagram star, who is hosting a new podcast, has grown used to attention from strangers. Not all of it is welcome
A Romani survivor of Nazi terror: ‘Young people, babies, infants, were beaten to death’
Holocaust survivor Christian Pfeil says ‘it’s important to remind society again and again that this actually happened’, especially at a time when right-wing extremism is growing across Europe
Watch as these bellowing beasts – the three kinds of ageing Englishman – roam the plains one last time
On The Grand Tour: One for the Road, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May bow out of their Prime Video car show