Patrick Freyne

Patrick Freyne

Patrick Freyne is a features writer with The Irish Times

Patrick Freyne: ‘I hoped that the Lincoln Lawyer would be a lawyer who dresses like Abraham Lincoln (I didn’t know a Lincoln was a type of car) but I see now that that would be overkill.’
Patrick Freyne: If he’s the Lincoln Lawyer, am I the Nissan Micra journalist?

The lawyer has a simple personality: he lawyers the heck out of things while owning a car

‘Ooh, Betty! I’ve done a whoopsie in my costume.’ Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight
Patrick Freyne: How the hell did Frank Spencer become Marvel’s latest superhero?

In Moon Knight, Oscar Isaac talks like the bumbling twit in Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em

Ronela Hajati from Albania with the song ‘Sekret’ performs during the first semifinal of the 66th Eurovision Song Contest in Turin. Photograph: EPA/Alessandro di Marco
Eurovision 2022: Topless hunks, writhing women and Marty Whelan. It’s like my wedding day

‘I think music is over now.’ Patrick Freyne watches the first semifinal of Eurovision

Brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn of Ye Vagabonds: ‘Someone asked us to sing something and we sang in harmony together, just the two of us for the first time’. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
Ye Vagabonds: ‘We just felt like we were total weirdos in Carlow’

The MacGloinn brothers on becoming part of the Irish folk scene

John Connell at the Camlin river: ‘Those three books are about me trying to understand myself and understand everything that happened in the last 10 years.’ Photograph: Alan Betson
John Connell: ‘I did an accidental trilogy on Longford’

Author of The Cow Book has written a new book about canoeing on the Camlin river

Penn Jillette and Teller: ‘Magicians were the people who came on TV and got in the way of me seeing The Who and Led Zeppelin,’ says Penn.
‘If you look like Penn & Teller, you have to have the best magic trick ever seen’

‘Houdini used deception to help people recognise the difference between fraud and reality’

Love Is Blind. (L to R) Jarrette Jones, Iyanna McNeely, Shayne Jansen, Abhishek Chatterjee, Nick Lachey, Kyle Abrams, Salvador Perez, Vanessa Lachey, Natalie Lee, Deepti Vempati, Mallory Zapata, Shaina Hurley, Danielle Ruhl and Nick Thompson. Photograph: Netflix
Patrick Freyne: ‘Instead of relationship counselling, let us go dogging in the car park’

Love is Blind, The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On – glossy modern courtship on Netflix

In the first episode of Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof, eight people jump into an ice-hole.
Patrick Freyne: A reality show about cold celebs – perfect TV for the fuel poverty era

In Freeze the Fear, celebrities face oddly low-energy challenges, like showering

Fergal Murphy, Luke O’Neill and Dr Brian McManus in the van together.
Luke O’Neill: What really struck me was the hunger, which I wasn’t expecting

TCD professor on his trip by van to provide badly needed medical equipment to Ukraine

The all-new Kardashians. Photograph: Hulu
Patrick Freyne: The Kardashians are back, and they’ve been reading their Lenin

We return to Kardashia and find it subtly changed. It’s now even better

Garage Ensemble who will perform at the Music Current festival on April 23rd
Building an audience for contemporary classical music

Recitals, workshops and the determinedly avant garde feature in Music Current festival

Syrian artist and asylum seeker Manar Shouha. Photograph: Alan Betson
Ireland’s asylum limbo: ‘We are beginning to say home was better’

As Ukrainians are fast-tracked, those fleeing other dire situations face a different system

In Old Enough! children aged two to four are given jobs to do
Patrick Freyne: It’s about time toddlers were set to work

People interested in innovative employment practices will enjoy a new Japanese series

What will Gordon Ramsay demand of the twelvesome on the beach?
Patrick Freyne: Gordon Ramsay’s wetsuit seems snug as he tells 12 people to jump off a cliff

Future Food Stars sees the chef and his immaculate quiff grilling would-be entrepreneurs

Damien Owens: ‘I was hoovering the stairs and I was thinking about how, if Sinéad hadn’t plucked me from the shelf, I’d be an old bachelor.’ Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Damien Owens: ‘People confuse seriousness with intelligence. Life is a comedy-drama’

The Monaghan-born writer on finding his voice and his fascination with other families

The Simpler Life starts with a premise that only a species that has grown ridiculous could contemplate. Photograph: Channel 4
Patrick Freyne: Anyone living in a cult or Ranelagh will know how oppressive conformity can be

The Simpler Life sees a bunch of addled suburbanites living the life of the Amish

The National Adult Literacy Association set up the scheme in Portlaoise Prison with the support of the Laois & Offaly Education and Training Board and the Irish Prison Service. Photograph: Laura Hutton
Prisoner literacy: ‘I wrote to my girlfriend. She wrote back and I could read it’

A peer-to-peer literacy programme in Portlaoise Prison is proving a huge success

There are approximately 200,000 people in Ireland living with cancer. Photograph: iStock
Cancer in Ireland: From fatal sentence to liveable illness

Thirty-four years after the first Daffodil Day, cancer treatments and attitudes have changed

Bridge of Lies: Most things said by gameshow hosts nowadays could be spoken by cult leaders in a post-apocalyptic society. Photograph: BBC
Patrick Freyne: Britain has four armed forces – army, navy, air force and Ross Kemp

Kemp is a celebrity vassal for Bridge of Lies, a whimsical TV entity that has needs

Andrey Kurkov initially fled from Kyiv to Lviv, and has now moved again to a town in the mountains. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images
Writer Andrey Kurkov tells Ukraine’s story: ‘It’s my duty. This is my front line’

The night before the war the author joked about cooking “the last borscht in Kyiv” but he didn’t believe Russia would actually inv(...)

Jeri Ryan, Patrick Stewart, Michelle Hurd, and Evan Evagora in Star Trek: Picard Photograph: ViacomCBS
Patrick Freyne: Where did a Star Trek space person learn to say ‘Sláinte’?

Star Trek: Picard is lost in nostalgia and doing its best to be no fun

Andrea Elliott’s book is a visceral, moving and shocking depiction of how poverty and the social infrastructure of poverty degrades, oppresses and punishes the vulnerable. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City – Shocking and moving

Book review: Andrea Elliott has done meticulous work depicting the realities of US inequality

One of Us Is Lying depicts the usual teen anxieties of homework, murder and crow’s feet
Patrick Freyne: American teen dramas are intrinsically weird to the Irish mind

Netflix series One of Us Is Lying has a big twist coming. And the twist is: I don’t care

Nursing homes revisited: It was the saddest year in my life

Lockdowns and fear took their toll in the pandemic. Now, the sector faces post-Covid challenges

Sam Corlett as Leif in Vikings: Valhalla
Patrick Freyne: Curious about the Scandinavian social model, I switched on ‘Vikings: Valhalla’

The hunky, vengeful, axe-wielding warriors expose flaws in the Nordic social model

The female cast of Love is Blind season two. Photograph: Ser Baffo/Netflix
Patrick Freyne: If I know anything about women, it’s that they love a man who whines

Netflix's Love is Blind: If a blue rectangle of light is your sexual fantasy, you should apply

Sean McLaughlin, aka Jacksepticeye
Jacksepticeye, the millionaire YouTuber from Offaly

Sean McLoughlin didn't have internet growing up. Now he has 28m YouTube subscribers

The Masked Singer: designed to make us hunger in our hearts for something the physical world can’t provide
Patrick Freyne: The Masked Singer is a bit like an Eyes Wide Shut party

A traffic cone singing ‘If you like piña coladas’? This must be the DTs again

Jaime Nanci: ‘I wanted to be a punk but I was a disco queen as well.’ Photograph: Jean-Marc Sanchez
Jaime Nanci: ‘I think gender fluidity is the natural evolution of humanity’

The singer on growing up gay in Dundalk, coping with MS and running in heels

‘This was a very kinetic, very fast moving environment that’s just always teetering’. Photograph: Ross McDonnell
Joyriders: Remembering an Ireland washed away by the Celtic Tiger

Photograph Ross McDonnell on his latest book showcasing Ballymun in late noughties

Enda Bowe’s photo of Joe Alwyn as Nick and Alison Oliver as Frances features in the Vanity Fair spread
Conversations With Friends: First trailer released for Sally Rooney TV adaptation

Lenny Abrahamson’s forthcoming 12-episode series features in a Vanity Fair spread

Alan Ritchson in Reacher. Photograph: Keri Anderson/Amazon Prime Video
‘Kill them Reacher!’ I shout. He makes them crunch and squelch, and I laugh myself sick

Patrick Freyne: Diminutive Scientologist Tom Cruise no longer plays Jack Reacher

Everydays: The first 5000 Days by Beeple. Technically, the NFT isn’t the image but a unit of data on the blockchain that says you own the image. Photograph: Handout/Christie’s/AFP via Getty
What the hell are NFTs and what do they mean for art?

Populist uprising or environmentally destructive fad – either way, there’s lots of cash in digital non-fungible tokens

Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski in The Gilded Age. Photograph: Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO
Patrick Freyne: What really matters is how sickeningly rich one is

In Julian Fellowes’s world, big houses with servants constituted a perfect social order

David McWilliams on a Sinn Féin-led government: ‘I think they will try to make good on their promise on housing.’ Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
David McWilliams: Sinn Féin ‘will change the housing market’

The economist spoke to Cliff Taylor at the Irish Times Winter Nights Festival

Steve Slusarski pedals Stephen McManus, founder The Bike Hub on Dun Laoghaire Pier. Photograph: Laura Hutton
Local heroes: The people making a difference in communities around Ireland

We asked you to nominate someone in your life who gives back

Hype House: The kids are all cargo-cult capitalists extracting value from the alienated labour of their own bodies
Patrick Freyne: Lipsynching with your shirt off. That’s a job now

Netflix reality show Hype House reveals that jobs now include being sexy in 15-second chunks

Emily in Paris is unaccountably watchable despite being entirely frictionless and devoid of stakes
Emily in Paris? The French call it Leave Me Alone, You Illiterate Sociopath

Patrick Freyne: She has no French yet she’s thriving in a Parisian marketing firm?

Daniel Airey lost the eight hours a day of help from a personal assistant after he graduated from college. Trying to get a similar service through the HSE has been a battle. Photograph: Laura Hutton
‘I’m tired. I’m scared. I know I have the potential to do something good’

For people with disabilities, living an independent life is close to impossible without a personal assistant – but it’s not easy g(...)

Natasha Lyonne in Russian Doll Season 1. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix
Patrick Freyne: The pandemic can’t end until Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends airs

The big shows I’m anticipating in 2022, featuring Baby Yoda and my wife’s other husband

Boris Johnson: Like the British PM’s, I’m fairly sure my direct-debit obligations are only going to increase as the years go by. Photograph: Hannah McKay/Pool/Getty
Patrick Freyne: I feel like Boris Johnson on child-support day

What do I mean? Well ... mumble, mumble, mumble. Plus nine other TV trends of 2021

Breege Clancy: ‘It’s a very shocking and incomprehensible form of death’. Photograph: Tom Honan
‘It’s an incomprehensible form of death’

The charity Cry Ireland is campaigning to raise awareness of sudden cardiac death

Look at the cut of us now, gorging on food and alcohol, and worshipping not Jesus but Santy, a pagan god of plenty. Photograph: iStock/Getty
Anyone saying ‘Father Christmas’ instead of ‘Santy’ will have their Irish passport revoked

Patrick Freyne: Once Christmas jumpers happened only ‘in America’. Now? Everywhere

Chucky: The must-have toy this Christmas
Patrick Freyne: Chucky might be a bit happy-go-stabby, but he’ll bring back blue-collar jobs

Why come up with new ideas when you can just reanimate a 1980s murderous doll?

Princess Switch: Netflix’s Christmas kingdoms must have Vanessa Hudgenses as far as the eye can see
This is Fiona, who’s flanked by goonish fashion victims – much like yourself in Coppers

Patrick Freyne: The Princess Switch films celebrate Yuletide tat and aristocratic grandeur

Richie Sadlier outside the Aviva Stadium in Dublin: ‘I’ve a real interest in people.’ Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Richie Sadlier: ‘Stopping drinking made my life a lot simpler’

The former footballer on sport and drinking, abuse and therapy, consent and reinvention

Lucy Burke with daughters Amelia (14) and Kitty (12), from Dublin, during their family visit to Barretstown. Photograph: Alan Betson
Barretstown: ‘You gave me back my child, the child that was there before they got sick’

The Co Kildare camp is open again, to help children who are sick ‘feel a bit normal’

‘High fantasy’ is a genre where when someone says, ‘This is very, very long’ the writer in question looks happy and says, ‘Thank you!’
Warning: This programme contains insufficient sex, violence and swearing

Patrick Freyne: Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time dives straight into mystical whimsy

Niall Breslin's tattoo
The story of my tattoo: ‘It sounds ridiculous, but it holds me to account’

Hope, love, trauma: Patrick Freyne hears the stories behind people’s body art

Ebanana Scrooge: the radicalised banana in Aldi’s Christmas advert. Photograph: Aldi/PA Wire
Aldi’s Christ the Carrot, Amazon’s fake kindness: The Christmas TV ads, 2021

Patrick Freyne: Disney’s ad is quite moving. M&S’s needs more existential angst

Look smart: Indigenous people joined climate change activists at Glasgow Green for the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on Saturday. Photograph: Getty
Cop26: Glasgow protest draws 100,000 in torrential rain

Climate activists unite as ‘a cleansing voice, the voice of truth and it has to be out there’

Activists wearing fish heads during an Ocean Rebellion demonstration on Thursday in Glasgow. Photograph: Peter Summers/Getty Images
Cop26 week 1: The head and the heart of climate change don’t always work together

The couch-surfing activists have little contact with the powerful people. But they’re connected

Members of indigenous groups from Brazil told demonstrators about the deaths of activists and destruction of rainforests. Photograph: PA
Cop26: 'Fighting to save our life-support systems isn’t radical at all,' says Thunberg

Patrick Freyne meets activists at a protest in Glasgow, as Greta Thunberg addresses the crowd

Police and protesters at the entrance of the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
Cop26: ‘It’s called Cop26 because everywhere you go there are 26 cops’

Protesters make gradual progress through Glasgow streets usually flanked by police

US actor Leonardo DiCaprio attending on day three of Cop26 in Glasgow, Scotland. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
Welcome to Cop26 – ‘it’s a bit like a circus’ but with a ‘corporate feeling’

‘The negotiation is a competition about what your country needs, and everyone is selling how good they are at saving the world’

A delegate passes a display of polar bears wearing life jackets on the Tuvalu trade stand on the sidelines of the Cop26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on Monday. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
Cop26: 'It’s a bit too white and elite,' says Mary Robinson

Former president is a 'prisoner of hope' as nations meet to discuss climate targets

Tom Clonan: ‘If the Army in and of itself is an unsafe place for women, then it’s not fit for purpose.’ Photograph: Alan Betson
Tom Clonan: ‘To think 21 years later that all these young people could have been helped’

The whistleblower recalls his revelation of abuse and harassment in the Defence Forces

The noughties were the golden age of free speech, when Simon Cowell wouldn’t desist from crushing the dreams of someone whose resting face could already be described as “in great pain”. Photo: RTÉ
Nadine Coyle, Samantha Mumba and Nicky Byrne: pop music’s middle management

Patrick Freyne: RTÉ’s The Last Singer Standing proves pop is now a middle-aged interest

For more than 34 years Robert Harris has been warden of one of Ireland’s most remote and isolated locations – the monastic Island of Skellig Michael. Photograph: Valerie O’Sullivan
The warden of Skellig Michael: ‘I have seen people just start bawling crying’

Robert L Harris on spending 34 years as warden of the remote, monastic island

The cats are generally in the nude, though there are some exceptions, like Mr Mistoffelees, who is wearing a top hat and a sparkly jacket
Pussies galore: The Cats review you never knew you needed until now

Nightmarish cat people with tails but human limbs, breasts and bums? TS Eliot would approve

Kellie Harrington at the Sport Ireland Institute building at the National Sports Campus, Abbotstown. Photograph: Alan Betson
Kellie Harrington: ‘I don’t need my life to change. That’s not why I went to the Olympics’

The boxer was ‘very happy’ before she won her gold medal. She wants to keep it that way

Jeanna De Waal in the musical Diana. Photograph: Sara Krulwich/New York Times
Patrick Freyne: Royals ride who they like. It says so in Latin on the Windsor crest

Diana: The Musical tells the story of the famous tea-towel and mug model Diana, princess of Wales

Ann Marie Hourihane: It seems like every issue Hourihane has dealt with in her decades of journalism are revisited in her new book through the prism of death. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Ann Marie Hourihane: ‘Death shows us you can’t manage life’

Hourihane’s new book is a powerful exploration of death, dying and rituals in Ireland

Martin Hayes: How I smashed my fiddle and stopped drinking

The fiddle player on becoming a ‘vegetarian, eastern-thinking, long-haired something’

The Great British Bake Off: the programme trades on mild peril
Patrick Freyne: Paul Hollywood’s handshake is like being gripped by the full force of your father’s love

Who could replace Mary Berry, named after both the mother of Christ and a popular cake filling?

Rosita Boland. Photograph: Alan Betson
Rosita Boland: ‘I am exposing my vulnerabilities. It’s okay to say you’re vulnerable’

‘Sometimes life is hard and complicated and messy. It wouldn’t be authentic to ignore that’

The Big Deal: The only judge in this crowd worthy of being on a Talent Show Supreme Court is probably comedian Deirdre O’Kane
Good singers? Show me talent-show entrants with full HGV licences. Then I’ll be impressed

Patrick Freyne: In The Big Deal, cash-strapped entertainers vie for a few months’ rent money

The celebrities get ready for an early bath in Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week – The Professionals. Photograph: RTÉ
Did you see Throwing Celebrities off a Bridge into a Ravine? It reminds me of my childhood

Patrick Freyne: As an Army brat, I have lots of insights into Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week – The Professionals

Ann Ingle. Photograph: Alan Betson
Ann Ingle: ‘People don’t think about older people as exciting’

Author talks about her memoir, Openhearted, and defying expectations as she gets older

In Ready to Mingle, 12 male hunks shack up with a solitary female hunk and vie for her affections like common garden bees
Patrick Freyne: The honey or the money? Dating is so complicated these days

The hunks in Ready to Mingle clearly have delicate skin: they keep ripping their clothes off

Patrick Freyne: I leapfrogged several violent young thugs as I rose through the tough-boy ranks at my local national school
Patrick Freyne: My highest ever accolade was being designated fourth toughest boy in fifth class

Schooldays I’ll Never Forget: How did I do it? I channelled The A-Team’s ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock

David Greene from Dublin City Council has been inspecting the tunnels under Dublin for 49 years. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd.
Underground Dublin: A pilgrimage through an ancient tunnel network

Patrick Freyne explores the capital’s little-known subterranean river network

Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins 2021. Photograph: Pete Dadds/Channel 4
Patrick Freyne: Boris is conscripting celebrities into the SAS. I like his moxie

Everyone loves crying celebs. So Celebrity SAS exposes its stars to CS gas in the first episode

‘We went to this private school and there was a lot of egos floating around ... There was a lot of stuff about status and what your dad does.’
Jedward: ‘We’re going to be 30 so we’re not these teen popstars’

The popstars reflect on their career in show business, social justice and parenthood

The Walking Dead returns, but are we who still watch it those walking dead of the title?
Patrick Freyne: The braindead are a nightmare, and zombies can be a bit of a chore too

If zombies are metaphors for our deeper anxieties, what does The Walking Dead say about us?

The new Mill Street Global Student Accommodation in Dublin which has 400 units averaging €1,000 a month. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons
Student accommodation: ‘It’s not what students want. And it’s extortionate’

Concerns persist that purpose-built student accommodation is unaffordable for students

Ant & Dec’s DNA Journey: rest assured, there is weeping. Photograph: RTÉ
Ah, lads, you couldn’t be more Irish if you were tipping Revenue off about a neighbour’s tax affairs

Patrick Freyne: All that’s left for Ant and Dec to do is drink red lemonade from an old Tayto bag

Quite well off: Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson being hoofed in the testes. Now that’s what I call erotica

Patrick Freyne: I will be giving Clarkson’s Farm my usual joyless Marxist critique, but first...

Friends: David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston as ‘Ross’ and ‘Rachel’. Photograph: NBC Universal/Getty
How dare Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer deny they are in a relationship

At €1m an epsiode, ‘Ross’ and ‘Rachel’ should be obliged to say they’re more than Friends

He-Man and Battle Cat in Masters of the Universe: Revelation
What is free will? Can we know God? And what if everyone was really buff, with abs and stuff?

Patrick Freyne: Like all great fiction, Masters of the Universe asks the big questions

Tommy Bryne in his back garden. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
In the shadow of giants: Living next to Dublin’s high-rise developments

'I had a stroke over this place in 2016… The stress of it. No one was helping us'

Patrick Freyne sharpens his knife skills on the ‘essence of survival’ course at the Irish National Heritage Park in Ferrycarrig, Co Wexford. Photograph: Patrick Browne
‘Squirrel’s quite nice ... fox tastes awful’ – Learning to survive in the wild

You must slow down to nature’s pace, be able to make fire, and be prepared to eat anything

Sexy Beasts: James, who goes on a date with a drone-flying zombie, an ex-army pixie and a songwriting leopard
Patrick Freyne: After several episodes of Sexy Beasts, I'm attracted to many animals

You’ll either hate Sexy Beasts, Netflix’s new dating show, or like it so much it disturbs you

Pure Grit: ‘It’s very scary. They’re really wild horses. And Sharmaine is tiny,’ says film-maker Kim Bartley
‘Near-death experiences happen a lot. But I pray to ask for protection and for my horse to be okay’

Kim Bartley’s film Pure Grit tells the moving story of Indian relay racer Sharmaine Weed

From left to right: Selina Xu, Emily Murray Nelson, Joe Reidy, Louí Montague, Michael Lavery, Aisling Murphy, Éadaoin O’Neill and Ray McHallem outside the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Photograph: Damien Eagers
Young playwrights separated by lockdown come together for Abbey debut

Writers from Fighting Words programme meet for first time as their plays grace the stage

Adam Demos as Brad Simon in Netflix’s Sex/Life. Photograph: Amanda Matlovich/Netflix
‘Finally,’ I thought, ‘an erotic drama that makes sense to me.’ It so doesn’t

Patrick Freyne: I live in hope that there’s a cameo from the real Billy Connolly

Students from Coláiste Uí Chadhain Irish College near Baile Na hAbhann, Co Galway, practice their singing for the houses competition. Photograph: Joe O’Shaughnessy.
How many teenagers can a Bean an Tí fit in her house? One more

Irish college may be cancelled this year but it’s an experience that never changes. Ever.

Richard Curran: we meet him on the grounds of a stately home over which he presides dressed in a nice suit
‘Believing his penis to be haunted, he streamlined his factories and made a billion’

Patrick Freyne: I get why people want to be a bit rich: poverty sucks. But why Rich-List rich?

Legalising drugs: ‘Drug use should be treated as normal adult behaviour’

Irish youth workers have banded together to seek an end to drug prohibition to remove criminal risk from users

The hunks and hunkettes of Love Island 2021. Photograph: ITV
Love Island: Ah, happy memories of meeting my own wife while taking part in an erotic challenge

Patrick Freyne: Is the reality show giving young people unrealistic ideas? I wouldn’t say so

The G7 should have had a plan to vaccinate the world, says former British prime minister Gordon Brown Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Gordon Brown: ‘We’ve got to give people a message of hope’

The former British prime minister spoke to Fintan O’Toole at the Irish Times Summer Nights Festival

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy involves a man who savours his words almost as much as he savours his food. Photograph: CNN
We’ve crammed the word ‘Kerrygold’ into this headline that should be about Stanley Tucci

Patrick Freyne: A US celeb says he likes our favourite butter? Make him president

Theatregoers Phyl O’Farrell, Rian O’Farrell and Fay O’Farrell from Walkinstown, Dublin looking forward to the Abbey show on Monday evening. Photograph Nick Bradshaw for The Irish Times
Abbey Theatre reopens for a select few but ‘it feels like 80,000 at Croke Park’

Live audience returns for the first time in 15 months, to see new play by Úna McKevitt

Some of the young stars of Our Town: ‘You’ve got working-class Bray. You’ve got middle-class Bray... It’s in the shadow of Dublin, so it has this identity thing.’ Photograph: Arthur Janowsky
This is Bray: Nine lives in an Irish seaside town

A new TV series, Our Town, follows a diverse group of young people with big dreams

GB News: Dan Wootton, Andrew Neil and Michelle Dewberry
GB News, week 1: It takes until Tuesday to go full wingnut

Patrick Freyne on Dan Wootton, Andrew Neil and a sort of Fox News UK

Anti-vaxxers: an Irish Freedom Party protester outside Custom House in Dublin in November 2020. Photograph: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty
How to talk to the vaccine denier in your life

Anti-vax sentiment is strong among people who rely on social media for most of their news

Marvel mischief: Tom Hiddleston as Loki
More content sludge from a vast conglomerate? Right down my gawping tube, please

Patrick Freyne: Loki entertains, but soon all art will be sucked into the Marvel Cinematic Universe

James Vincent McMorrow on stage at the Iveagh Gardens. Photograph: Tom Honan for The Irish Times
James Vincent McMorrow at the Iveagh Gardens: ‘I didn’t realise how much I needed this’

‘I cried on the Luas on the way in,’ says one gig-goer, as live music returns to Ireland

Martyn Turner in his studio in Co Kildare. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill. Background: Martyn Turner
Fifty years of Martyn Turner cartoons: ‘I have always been a liberal bigot’

The Irish Times satirist on the X case cartoon, those worms and his inability to draw

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