Mick O’Dea is one of Ireland’s finest portrait painters, and he spent three seasons as the artist-in-residence at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, creating portraits of various participants. He tells Richard Fitzpatrick about those sessions, the fruits of which feature in a new exhibition

Here are the top three films you don’t want to miss this week, writes Declan Burke.

Ireland’s largest-ever celebration of Mozart’s music has kicked off in Kilkenny.

One of the world’s longest-running film festivals is rolling out the red carpet for a special guest next week who was tracked down after 40 years thanks to the Irish Examiner

Clodagh Finn meets the man who coached the Iron Lady and Princess Di on how to speak to be taken seriously.

Cork Film Festival has launched the programme for what will be its diamond anniversary. The event last night saw the unveiling of a roster featuring some of the jewels in Leeside’s crown.

Simon Callow is on a nine-week run of one-night stands with his one-man play. He talks to Colette Sheridan

I can be very lazy. I think many people who work as hard as I do can be. 

Never mind the World Cup — there’s way more drama lined up for the historic stage of Cork’s Everyman Theatre.

Ant and Dec host the eighth series of Britain's Got Talent on TV3 at 7.15pm tonight. Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dixon and David Walliams return to give their verdict on the first batch of 2014's weird and wonderful auditions.

HATS off to Jodie Foster.

Nick Clegg has been embarrassingly forced to withdraw comments in which he branded opponents of gay marriage “bigots”.

Joe McElderry won 'Popstar to Operastar' last night.

Interestingly, this film has been panned by the British press critics; perhaps it’s because it’s too close to home.

The lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's massive stage musical hit, into which he pumped £4m of his own money, looks good, sounds as it should; and is a bit of a clunker.

Camilla Parker Bowles took fashionable inspiration from last night’s premiere of The Woman In White, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical.

Camilla Parker Bowles was the woman in white tonight at the premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical.

Britain's Olympic champion rower James Cracknell was back in action today, at the Gramophone Record of the Year Awards.

Legendary film-maker Ismail Merchant will be in Belfast as part of the film section of Belfast Festival at Queen's.

Simon Callow stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in Christmas Carol — The Movie, an animated adaptation of Charles Dicken’s sombre tale about how Scrooge’s miserly ways dictate his whole outlook on life.

Curiously, the phenomenon of crop circles has never been used before now as the basis of a Hollywood film ... it is a strange and mysterious world in which we live.