Fiona Looney annoying The Panal!

BolBill wrote:

In her article yesterday she mentioned "been called a gobsh*ite on the internet", maybe we are getting through to her. She shamelessly plugged her play again.

link? at least she knows now that she is a gobsh*ite!! better not be on tonites show!!

So bored in work I actually got the article.....she is a f**kin a**hole....how many times can you mnetion your "hit" play!!!!!!

HERE'S the bind of the successful playwright: for over a year, I've been collecting coupons from the back of packets of Odlum's porridge oats with a view to one day exchanging 15 of the precious slips for a single prize bond. I make no apologies for doing this; I am my grandmother's granddaughter and I am unable to pass a special offer, a saving or a six-pack of snacks reduced because it's past its sell-by date. It is what I do.

Anyway, after eating a hell of a lot of porridge and carefully snipping the appropriate amount of plastic, the great day finally dawned about six weeks ago. I put the 15 coupons in an envelope, dutifully enclosed my name and address and dispatched it to Odlums via an industrially restful postal service. And since then, doodly. If there is a prize bond out there with my name on it, it is lost in some void . . . a postal Bermuda triangle, perhaps.

Now, if it weren't for the play, I could phone Odlums up and stamp my feet a bit.

Even if they never received my clipped coupons, my experience of these things (oh yes) is that they'd most likely give me the benefit of the doubt and dispatch the bond post haste. But now I'm not so sure and frankly, I'm mortified to try. Ever since the woman at Customer Services in Dunnes Stores in the Pavilions in Swords gave me a dirty look when I exchanged two pairs of children's pyjamas for two cheaper ones while on a book signing expedition, I've felt the winds of change whip around my legs.

Without being afforded any of the perks of celebrity . . . the money, the Mercs, the minks . . . I have been quietly stripped of the benefits of anonymity. If I ring Odlums now, it's possible that they'll think that a woman with a hit play in the Olympia has no business collecting coupons, and certainly shouldn't be pretending she collected coupons. Whichever way I run it, there's no good outcome to the Odlums conversation.

And anyone who suggests I simply buy a prize bond really doesn't know me at all.

But back to the hit play. I say 'hit' because it's my column and I'm smarting over the whole Odlums affair, but it's certainly true to say that people are being very kind about Dandelions (to me) and a lot of them are going (to it). Even the Irish Times said really nice things about it, which, in spite of my bullish insistence before the event that these things don't matter, was a huge relief to me. It is one thing being called a gob****e on the internet; it's quite another to be dissed in the Irish Times. As it happened, though, they said some stuff which I'm too modest to repeat (though obviously not too modest to have splashed across posters at some point in the future), and threw in a couple of caveats to stop me dying of champagne abuse before Christmas. I remember, years ago, hearing that Chris de Burgh had won a fine case of wine in a bet with a friend over a review of one of his records in the same Irish Times. De Burgh correctly predicted that the review would include the word 'saccharin'. Likewise, in those panicked days before the previews, I made a short list of all the adjectives that might be used to dismiss my labour of love.

In the end, it was 'melodramatic' that won the money. Mind you, that was before we discovered that audiences would laugh at everything in the play . . . including the sad and serious bits . . . and after a frantic and exhausting exercise in cutting out phrases like 'hostile uterus', which were inexplicably bringing the house down, melodramatic seemed like the highest compliment.

I'll stop now. Please go and see it. And if, by a happy coincidence you work in Odlums, could you leave a prize bond for me at the stage door?

Melodic mice GREAT excitement this week over the discovery that mice sing love songs to each other when they are a-wooing. Leaving aside the small fact that Walt Disney actually noticed this 50 years ago, I'm particularly charmed by the further revelation that male mice which are genetically identical will sing completely different songs. We're not told what they might be, but I can assure you that there could be no more heart-melting sight on earth than that of a small mouse singing 'I Predict A Riot' in an impossibly high octave.

Especially in the same week that we learned that the most requested artist on Dogsandcats FM . . . the American radio station designed to please the furry brigade, or at least convince their deluded owners that this is the case . . . is Enya. No wonder the mice always win in the cartoons.

Tidings of roasties and joy NOW that Hallowe'en is put away for another year, The Boy's thoughts have predictably turned to Christmas. He's made a list, he's mis-spelt it twice and he's even volunteered that this year, on condition he gets extra roast potatoes, he'll try the ham.

Normally, I'd resist this unseasonal rush into the festive season, but this year, I really can't muster enough good reasons not to start jingle-belling now. Once The Boy gets fixed on something, he is a force of nature and frankly, I'm too tired to stand in its path. Besides, I quite fancy the idea of a few extra roast potatoes myself, in tandem with a long and lovely rest. Bring it on.

penguinbloke wrote:

I read it and now I just feel dirty, and not in the good way.

I need a shower...

Shield ur eyes from it!!! you will go blind from the pure s**t she is writing about....how eating porridge is a link to her play is beyond me!!