Being in a boy band isn’t all just hysterical teenage girls, strong-hold hair gel and wild partying. At least not on Louis Walsh’s watch. The pop Svengali, to give him his correct title, has a new group, Next in Line, and it looks like they’re set for some hard graft. The band’s management recently sent out emails to primary schools, offering pupils a chance to hear Walsh’s next big thing in person.
“The lads are trying to grow and establish a more sustained fan base across the country, seeing performances in schools as a necessity of that sustained growth,” it said. “The reason I am contacting you today is to see if you would be open to having the lads come in and perform for your fourth/fifth/sixth class year groups, with a few songs and a meet-and-greet-style period directly afterwards.”
The email suggests the group, made up of Harry O’Connell, Joshua Regala, Conor Davis and Conor O’Farrell (Neung Kelly recently departed), might be “more suited to an audience of girls, though of course that is left to the individual discretion of the schools”.
But has the boy bandwagon not reached the end of the road, K-Pop excepted? The group released their first single, Out of Breath, last week so if they’re to make any impression on today’s kids, it’s time to put in the grind.
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For their sake, let’s hope they experience that rite of passage of all boy bands: temporary tinnitus from screaming girls.
The Ditch doing fine without Sugar Paddy
Ditch Media, the company behind the Ditch website, which broke the story earlier this year of munitions for the Israel Defense Forces being transported through Irish airspace, turned a modest profit last year of just under €44,000, according to newly filed accounts, increasing its cash reserves to €73,589.
The company is now owned by two of the website’s journalists, Eoghan McNeill and Roman Shortall, who both have a 43 per cent share, while its other staff journalist, Paulie Doyle, owns the remaining shares. Web Summit lawyer Adam Connon, who previously had a 33 per cent stake in the company, transferred his shares to the trio after the board of Web Summit, during Paddy Cosgrave’s brief exit, decided to “conclude” its “funding relationship” with the website.
Last year McNeill said Cosgrave had agreed to provide €1 million in funding to the website over five years but there’s no indication in the accounts of any cash injection from Cosgrave and there was no response from The Ditch when asked about it. That said, they seem to be doing fine without their Sugar Paddy, as Shortall once called him.
Dermot Desmond’s green energy
Billionaire entrepreneurs are nothing if not competitive animals. So Dermot Desmond, now 74, must have been chuffed with winning the team title at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, the most prestigious Pro-Am competition in the world, alongside Denmark’s Thorbjørn Olesen last week. Desmond previously won in 2010 playing with Swedish pro Robert Karlsson.
So what could have kept him battling away year after year for a second title? It couldn’t possibly have been because his fellow billionaire and Sandy Lane resort co-owner, JP McManus, has two titles to his name, both won alongside Ireland’s Pádraig Harrington, could it?
Fianna Fáil moving forward together with the DUP
The most curious aspect of the RTÉ story about a freshly printed batch of Fianna Fáil election posters being spotted on a pallet in an industrial park in Dublin was not that the party is primed for an election but rather the slogan it has adopted for the campaign. The bundle of posters, photographed by RTÉ reporter Fiachra Ó Cionnaith, bears Micheál Martin’s grinning visage with the catchphrase: Moving Forward Together.
Did nobody notice that the same vacuous motto was used by the DUP in recent years? Or is it just a none too subtle ploy to troll the Shinners?
Brendan O’Carroll backs Kamala Harris – to a point
As if Brendan O’Carroll hasn’t earned enough money from the Mrs Brown’s Boys juggernaut (the inevitable Christmas special will surely be announced any day soon) he’s also proving adept at playing the property market in Florida. The comedian bought a five-bedroom beachfront house in Indian Rocks, with its own heated pool, putting green and hot tub, for $2.85 million in 2016. He put it on the market last year, seeking $6 million. While it didn’t quite meet its asking price, he’s still quids in – it recently sold for $4.5 million.
O’Carroll, who lives nearby in Davenport, Florida, in a row of seven houses all owned by him or his family, is spending some of his dough on getting Kamala Harris elected. Federal Electoral Commission filings show O’Carroll has signed up to donate $25 a month to ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform being used by Harris to bankroll her election campaign.
Euromillions heir’s plans for luxury homes near Lough Derg appealed by locals
Gary McNamara, a son of Euromillions winner Dolores, has poured his share of the lottery windfall into a safe bet: land. McNamara has hundreds of acres of agricultural land in Clare, Limerick and Tipperary and keeps more than 100 cattle at his Tinarana estate, near Lough Derg, in Co Clare. He may be out of luck with his latest foray into property development, though.
McNamara’s Lough Derg Marina Ltd secured permission from Tipperary County Council earlier this year to build 13 luxury homes on the shores of Lough Derg near Ballina. About a dozen locals have now appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála.
Barren brack at Dunnes Stores
A reader alerts us to a Halloween tradition under threat. They recently visited Dunnes Stores to buy a barm brack only to get a fright at teatime when they discovered that their purchase, an own-brand “Halloween brack”, contained no novelty ring. Health and safety gone mad, or Dunnes cutting corners? Either way, they need to put a ring in it, as Beyoncé would say if she were an Irish mammy.
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