It hasn’t taken Joe Duffy long to throw off the shackles that came with being one of RTÉ’s best-known figures for decades.
With a tilt at the presidency ruled out soon after his 37-year stint in Montrose ended late last month, Duffy has now gone from being a public service broadcaster to a private detective of sorts as part of a promotion for retailer Lidl.
In episode one of the “Value Beyond Belief” series, Duffy, sporting a suit and hat, enters a Lidl store as a screechy film noir style score plays, though he’s more like Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun than Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep.
“I promised myself I was out. No more talk. No more questions. Just an average Joe,” he says. “But questions, they don’t take no for an answer.”
The 69-year-old, the highest-paid person at RTÉ in 2023, earning €351,000, is now free to pair up with brands as his extracurricular activities no longer fall under the broadcaster’s Register of External Activities. Here he is unashamedly leaning into his past work as a consumer champion on Liveline.
“Come on, Veronica. Talk to Joe,” says Duffy in one clip posted on the retailer’s social media accounts, as he sits over a polygraph machine interrogating a Lidl staff member about a consumer discount case.
Duffy also investigates an “an anonymous tip from a Ballinasloe woman named Margaret Mary O’Brien” who has reported value so good that it “must be a conspiracy”.
Trump antagonist and Gatsby celebration coming to Wexford
Another RTÉ alumnus has been demonstrating there is life after the State broadcaster, with Eileen Dunne serving as chairwoman of the Kennedy Summer School, which takes place in New Ross, Co Wexford next month.
The former newscaster, who retired in 2022 after more than 40 years on our screens, left some people scratching their heads when she appeared in promotional photographs for the event.
She donned a flapper dress and gloves to showcase an event, which generally focuses on global affairs, Irish politics and former US president John F Kennedy, who visited his ancestral home outside New Ross in 1963.
However, the choice of outfit makes more sense on reading the programme, which this year includes sessions covering the centenary of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
“Our 2025 line-up embraces ideas that cross borders and generations, inviting us to reflect on Irish identity, global affairs, literature, and the pressing challenges of our time,” Dunne said. “In doing so, we honour the Kennedy family’s legacy by fostering rigorous debate, cultural dialogue, and a spirit of civic curiosity.”
The event will feature interviews with author Colm Tóibín and former CNN broadcaster/Donald Trump antagonist Jim Acosta; sessions on local journalism and Stem subjects; and discussions on the changing face of Irish America and the upcoming Irish presidential election.
The summer school is still going strong in its 13th year, which would have delighted its founder, Noel Whelan, the barrister and Irish Times columnist who died aged 50 in 2019.
Ireland’s biggest stud retires
Cash cow is possibly not be the right term to use when talking about horses, but the Irish National Stud is seeking a new one after the retirement of a “living legend” from covering duties.
The Co Kildare operation incurred an operating loss after tax and depreciation of more than €1.8 million last year as Invincible Spirit’s “remarkable” run came to an end.
According to his profile on the stud’s website, the stallion was introduced at a fee of €10,000 but “his ability to produce fast, durable racehorses” saw this rise to €35,000, €100,000 and then €120,000 before later becoming a private matter.
The stud’s 2024 annual report notes how Invincible Spirit, who sired 22 individual Group 1 winners, was in 2017 responsible for some “70 per cent of the entire company’s revenue”. This fell to 40 per cent in 2020 and to less than 2 per cent last year as the 28-year-old’s workload wound down.
Progress has been made in finding a replacement, the stud says, “but the reality is that investments in stallions ... take time to bear fruit”. Phoenix of Spain, now “one of the most popular stallions in Ireland”, covered 217 mares last year, “testament to the excellent results of his first crop”.
As for Invincible Spirit, the stud’s chief executive, Cathal Beale, says little will change for “unquestionably the greatest stallion to have ever stood at the Irish National Stud”.
“He will live out his days being looked after by the same people, being turned out every day to the same paddock and being given the same exceptional care. He retires as a living legend.”
O’Gorman stands up for the Green, Green Grass of Home
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman has long been keen to see that the Phoenix Park, one of the foremost amenities in his Dublin West constituency, is well looked after.
“The size of the Phoenix Park means it acts as a ‘green lung’ for Dublin city ... It provides a key environmental space, both for humans and wildlife,” the former minister wrote last year in response to an Office of Public Works (OPW) strategic review regarding the park.
He was clearly an interested party as tens of thousands of people, many in cowboy hats and boots, descended on the park recently for country musician Zach Bryan’s run of three concerts – the first big shows staged there since 2018.
So much so that, in a parliamentary question this week, O’Gorman asked Minister of State Kevin “Boxer” Moran if he was satisfied the park “was returned to an ‘as found’ condition, as was promised to residents” following the gigs.
Without offering a straight yes or no, Moran said concert promoter Aiken Promotions engaged a litter collection company to pick up any related rubbish and returned the site to the OPW on June 28th “subject to identified remedial works” due to be completed in the coming week.
“These works include grass seeding, and it will take some weeks for the grass to germinate and grow,” he said. “All costs for these works will be covered by the concert organiser.”
The single Something in the Orange helped Bryan become a household name, but it’s the safe return of the Green, Green Grass of Home that O’Gorman will be looking out for.
