A question of taste - Edwin Sammon
The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth which is a fascinating and funny book about the origins of phrases and language in general which reads like one long stream of consciousness and is very hard to put down.
I’m really enjoying the great westerns that have been coming out recently. The Revenant and The Hateful Eight but also Slow West and Bone Tomahawk.
Róisín Murphy in the Olympia. She has a wonderful charisma and stage presence and fabulous costumes that Father Gabriel would definitely approve of.
I use Spotify because I got a free two-year subscription with my mobile phone provider, but I also still have about a hundred or so CDs that I keep in a few boxes in an attic in my family home. I’m hoping that in a couple more years they will become the new vinyl and rocket up in value.
Recently I’ve been listening to David Bowie’s final album Blackstar and Jerry Goldsmith’s score from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie. I like walking around and pretending that I’m Charlton Heston being chased by monkeys.
Watching The Good, The Bad And The Ugly one Saturday afternoon when I was very young. It’s a pretty long film and all the ad breaks made it seem like I had been watching it all day. The imagery and music and characters really stuck in my head and it’s still one of my favourite films that I rewatch every year.
David Byrne in the National Concert Hall a few years ago was an amazing gig but Radiohead, left, in the RDS in 1997 was probably the best gig I’ve been to. At the time it was the biggest crowd they had played to and they were in the middle of their OK Computer tour.
My guilty pleasures would be First Dates and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA which I find hilarious. I never miss The Graham Norton Show or Nationwide.
I don’t really listen to the radio that much and when I do it’s not usually talk radio. I’ll have RTÉ Gold on in the background because you never know what song they will play next. One minute you’re strutting away to ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees, the next minute it’s ‘Like A Prayer’ byMadonna.
Steve Martin, Eddie Izzard and Steve Coogan.
I once shared a big bag of Maltesers with Nelson Mandela. He kept asking could he pour them into his popcorn and he annoyed me so much I left the cinema. I still haven’t seen the end of Sex and the City 2.
A suit I bought for a wedding which cost approximately €310.
I’m very computer phobic and I really only use my phone for most things including making internet phone calls to my guru who lives in China.
Irish nurses don’t get enough respect in my opinion. They get a lot of respect but they deserve all of the respect.
Nurses would get paid the most and politicians the least. And there would be no one sleeping rough on the streets, I’d let them all stay in the politicians’ second homes.
