Rick O'Shea

Billy Bragg had a brilliant new album out this year called Tooth And Nail; in case you missed it. It’s not like his earlier, angry “New England” stuff, it’s the gentler almost country ramblings of a man in middle age. Still with loads of furious political thought, mind. The lyrics of Handyman Blues are lovely… “I’m never gonna be the handyman around the house my father was / So don’t be asking me to hang a curtain rail for you, because / Screwdriver business just gets me confused / It takes me half an hour to change a fuse.” He […]

This week I have a brand new game for you to play the next time you’re watching telly or a movie. Well, maybe not new, but certainly one only the anal few call their own and one that I’m fairly sure my other half and I play with a passion to put us on the Irish Olympic team if standards ever sufficiently slip to make nonsense like that worthy of the highest accolades in world sport. Now that I say that, you can win global awards for playing console games, tweeting, and (perish the thought) radio so maybe this old […]

I’m conscious already in mentioning what I’m about to write that I don’t want to get myself banned from eating in many of the nicest spots in Dublin for adventure, new stuff and foodie delights that we would all have killed for 15 years ago. Still not sure why I’m typing this then, maybe it’s my Spidey-sense tingling somewhere telling me that, while these restaurants are rightly concentrating on the food, the packaging has started to seem a little, well, samey. Two things before I get into the meat of this particular pan-seared column – I’m not going to call […]

You and I have just met on the street. We know each other and I’ve given you a big hug to say howya. Like so many things in life, that act will drive you down one of two roads diverging in the forest of awkward human etiquette. Either you’re what’s pejoratively termed a “touchy feely person” and you wouldn’t think twice about it (I’m one of those) or you’d feel squeamish and icky unless I was your significant other or your small child. Irish guys have had a fraught relationship with hugs ever since hugging between guys became a widespread […]

  I’m aware the title of this column is 21st Century Man so maybe this isn’t the best place to put my latest cobbled-together theory out there. However, the need to think things through has never stopped me before, so this week I bring you – the internet is turning us into small, whining little children. Tah dah! I think I can say this as the canary in the coalmine because I spend so much of my working day online, hooked up and scanning The Matrix – we are being infantilised by our smartphones and the medium of the internet […]