Boxing St Stephen

Poor guy St Stephen.

First he gets stoned to death – one of the first Christian martyrs.

Then he gets a designated day just after Christmas so no one notices it.

Then – to add insult to injury – it’s renamed Boxing Day, so he lapses still further into obscurity. (Though in Ireland we’re still holding out to some extent.)

No longer! In the spirit of Stephen’s Green, I bring you this St Stephen’s Day / Boxing Day / Christmas song. Best to skip ahead to one minute in – he waffles a bit and has a false start.

Aah – Elvis Costello – always a pleasure.

I wonder would any reader fancy explaining about the third creature sharing the 26th of December – the wren? Maybe you have direct experience? Any wren boys out there?

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A pair of brown eyes

Shane MacGowan and Cait O’Riordan

In days gone by, The Pogues never failed to cheer me up.

We go back a long time.

I remember sitting on top of a wardrobe in the Crescent in Belfast watching Shane MacGowan beat out a fast tempo with a biscuit tin lid on his bonce.

Or the time the UDR kind of pulled us over because the car was bouncing excessively to Sally MacLennane (er… that’s the song rather than any young lady who may share the name). It was odd, because we were stationary at the time. Perhaps it just seemed we were moving. Or they weren’t so keen on The Pogues.

Or the time I was rescued by Jim from a melee in the Ulster Hall. (Dunno why. It was all fine. Just a bit lively. No idea what he was worried about.)

Or the time in Dublin that “Country” Jem Finer accused me of chucking a television out their hotel window. It wasn’t me at all. (Though I’m not so sure about the fella I was with.)

Or the time I bumped into Cait O’Riordan coming out of the gents in the Olympia Theatre. (No, nothing like that. She was with Elvis Costello.) She sounded like this.

Or the time we sneaked into the Fleadh through a bar tent… Or the time… Or the time…

Or all the times The Pogues were a guaranteed remedy for melancholy.

So here they are. They have cheerier songs, but this was the best video I could find. Even with a song of death, regret and mutilation they still lift my spirits.

Anyone got a guaranteed spirit-reviving song they like to offer as an alternative? (And don’t suggest All Kinds of Everything by Dana – it won’t get through.)

No smoke without fire

Not dead. (At time of writing.)

Here’s a little insight into how easy it is difficult it is to subvert international news organisations.

Somebody created a twitter account that looked very much like an official Sky News account. It had the Sky News logo as a picture. (I’m not linking to it.) Then they tweeted that Margaret Thatcher had died.

Oh dear.

Cue big excitement behind the scenes of news organisations.

It’s a prime example of how much more important it is to be right than to be first. (Sky News has had ascribed to it the motto “Never wrong for long” i.e. might not be dead now, but will be sometime. Or wrong news now, but we can correct it and then it’ll be fine. To be clear though, Sky wasn’t the culprit in this case. The twitter account was fake.)

Was the incorrect news of Margaret Thatcher’s death broadcast on the BBC