‘The music industry wanted a Dublin Edith Piaf. They got Sinéad O’Connor instead’
People advised her to ‘just shut up and sing’. But there was no separating the singer from the song
Interviewing Tony Bennett: ‘I had the screaming teenage girl fans way before The Beatles’
Singer produced more than 70 albums and had chart success in every decade from 1950s to 2020s
Van life — Brian Boyd on Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl
The most downloaded and most played song of the entire 1960s
‘Conspirituality’: The radicalisation of wellness advocate Novak Djokovic
Opinion: The tennis player is part of a new socio-political movement – ‘conspirituality’
Brian Boyd: We wish him a speedy recovery, but remember Trump has encouraged coronavirus denial
As thousands of Americans succumbed to the virus, Trump continued to be the Pollyana-in-Chief
Brian Boyd: Rave on, Van Morrison, rave on thy holy fool
The extravagant amount of outrage over his Covid-19 songs is commensurate with his exalted status as an Irish artist
Our deification of Matt Damon tells us about how celebrity wattage blinds us
We have a pathological need not just for The Famous Person to visit but through some ritual process of transubstantiation become like us
Terry Jones was the John Lennon of comedy
The Monty Python founder had the idea of dropping punchlines for an absurdist style
Man walks into a bar and hands Boris Johnson a majority
The roots of the Tory victory can be traced back to Eric Joyce’s misbehaviour in 2012
Brian Boyd: Enough of the flight shaming and train bragging
Focusing on the impact of aviation is to miss the point about global warming
Brian Boyd: Can anyone conceivably view the word potato as an ‘ethnic slur’?
Our understanding of what constitutes actual racist language and behaviour has become devalued
Love Island: Better than Oxbridge and harder to get into
Erotic capital may be all the reality television show’s contestants have or need
Brendan Grace: The best bits from a life in comedy
These eight YouTube clips show Brendan Grace’s pioneering, inimitable comedy style
Brendan Grace: His big break came when he gave the gig of his life for Frank Sinatra
Grace was a pioneer in Ireland, writing and performing his own comedy as a headline act
Freddie Starr: Chicken-thrower, Hitler impersonator and ‘idiot’
Anything could happen at a Starr show. That was the appeal of his now dated comedy