Brendan Behan died 50 years ago today. Alan O’Riordan remembers his flawed brilliance

There is one simple reason why David Moyes should never have got the manager’s job at Manchester United.

I BLAME Geri Halliwell. Back in the mid-1990s, just as I was entering adolescence, the Spice Girl’s over-plucked eyebrows suddenly became all the rage.

THE debate about abolishing the Seanad reminds me of the Groucho Marx line: “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

ALISTAIR Darling, Groucho Marx and Denis Healey share the defining attribute for fashionable faces this season.

Groucho Marx once said he would never want to join a club that would have him as a member.

He’s been nicknamed the flying piano man.

Certainly, in the two decades since the two Marys took up the office, the chief significance of the Presidency has come to be seen much more explicitly in terms of the ways in which our Head of State embodies, represents and reflects core values that we want associated with Ireland.

Jane Russell, the busty brunette who shot to fame as the sexy star of Howard Hughes’ 1941 Western 'The Outlaw', has died of respiratory failure, her family said today.

SPORT is more important to most of us than is probably healthy or wise.

YESTERDAY’s alcohol ban in central Bari, only lifted after last night’s match in the San Nicola Stadium, was about as futile and comical an exercise as one high-profile but uncapped League of Ireland player’s announcement of his retirement from international football a couple of seasons ago.

GROUCHO MARX once famously said he didn’t want to be part of a club that would accept him as a member, but had he been a woman in Portmarnock the smile might have been on the other side of his face.

GROUCHO Marx famously sent the Friars’ Club a telegram: “Please accept my resignation. I do not want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

IT would seem our politicians have perfected the art of speaking out of both sides of the mouth, especially on issues adversely affecting their constituents.

RATHER appropriately for an election year, Kenneth Williams’ “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” gag has been voted the funniest film one-liner.

WASHINGTON sniper John Allen Muhammad was convicted of six more of the killings yesterday after a trial in which he acted as his own attorney and the prosecution’s star witness was his young protege and partner in crime.

George Clooney has laughed off Roseanne Barr's outrageous claims they once got so drunk together he allowed her to keep a photograph of his genitals, insisting she has twisted the truth.

IN response to Noel Whelan’s column in which he said that we’d better believe Bertie Ahern when he ruled out a coalition with Sinn Féin (Irish Examiner, November 17):

POSTERS that depicted US President George W Bush with a Groucho Marx-style moustache and cigar were ordered to be taken down at a high school in Los Angeles after a student complained.

Woody Allen is frustrated by cinema-goers who jump to conclusions about the real-life personalities of film stars based on their appearances on-screen.

WELL, if Arnie can become Governor of California, there’s no reason why Groucho Marx can’t be elevated to the Cabinet.

A 113-year-old Dutch woman has become the oldest registered living person after the previous title holder died in Puerto Rico.

THE Bob Hope story is part of American legend: a London-born immigrant shoeshine boy whose wisecracks won him fame and wealth and a niche in the hearts of people all over the globe.

It was the moment Sam Torrance had dreaded.