Carlow/Kilkenny: Conor Mac Liam

This year is the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth. Biographies, reissues and TV and film adaptations have poured out showing he still has immense drawing power even 140 years after his death. Dickens was a towering figure who dominated English literature for nearly 40 years, from the early runaway success of The Pickwick Papers in 1836 to the cryptic murder story, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left incomplete at the author’s death in 1870.

A few weeks ago I suggested in the Dáil that the queen of England might be politely asked to contribute to the cost of her bed & breakfast during her visit to Ireland this week.

"The protesters in Athens can riot all they want, but they cannot alter the fundamental economic fact of their country - it is busted, mainly because it has been consuming more than it produces for many years. Even a socialist revolution... would not change that reality." (Sean O’Grady, economics editor of the Independent)

In an obituary of George Best, comrade Peter Hadden wrote “George Best composed poetry with his feet”. What a wonderful complement to a football genius from the working class streets of Belfast. And now Marie Jones and Martin Lynch have gone one further. They have “Besty” using those poetic feet dancing. And that soft Northern Irish accent singing in their unforgettable play “Dancing Shoes - The George Best Story”.