Top Gear - BBC 1, Friday
An Aimsir - TG4, Tuesday
My wedding plans are in ruins due to the burning down of Lurretstown Castle in Co Mayo by persons unknown. However, one does not need to be a genius to know that the scoundrels who perpetrated this dreadful act were the same people who burnt down my house in 1975, i.e. the cast of Joseph And The Amazing Tech- nicolour Dreamcoat. For legal reasons, I was unable to name the actual culprits in this column, but their names were printed in the newspapers of the time and their identities are revealed on several Internet websites, such as: josephandtheamazingtechnicolourdreamcoat.com/arsonists, dreamcoatcastburningdownhouses.com/guiltymenrevealed, and settingfiretomyhouse.com/namesofbastarsdswhodidit.
Needless to say, my fiancee, the lovely Orla Ni Suibh, is deeply upset about these developments, and the whole question of whether we should get married at all has now become a bit of an issue. As I have mentioned before, Orla has friends in illegal paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, some of which recently kidnapped me and held me hostage in a remote farm along the Border with Northern Ireland. At the time, I dismissed this development as just one of those incidents that can happen in any relationship and, in fact, it has had the longterm effect of strengthening the bond of love and support that exists between us. After a frenetic bout of love-making on Tuesday, she became rather untypically buoyant for a brief period, and suggested that her contacts in Northern Ireland paramilitary/freedom-fighting circles would happily exact revenge on the Technicolour arsonists.
I immediately urged caution. The best way to deal with matters like these is through proper legal channels, despite the many frustrations involved. I remember a bloody and distasteful feud some years ago which broke out between members of Jury's Irish Cabaret and artists involved in a similar "entertainment with full dinner" show at the Burlington Hotel. This resulted in several entertainers being killed, and I remember thinking at the time that the whole episode was a terrible waste. The phrase "life is a cabaret" suddenly took on a dreadful poignancy.
The most ruthless operator in this terrible affair is still one of Ireland's best-known comedians, with several Jacobs Awards to his name, and is famous for a hilarious catch-phrase which, even as I think of it now, brings a smile to my lips. This man is known to have killed at least three people, including a ventriloquist and one of Ireland's leading impressionists. Again, I cannot name him here for legal reasons, but his name can be found on the website irishcabaret.com/bloodyfeud/topentertainer/killedatleastthreepeople.
As I mentioned earlier, I have managed to dissuade Orla from instigating a rough justice strategy, and, despite the inevitable length of time before anybody can be brought to justice, we shall pursue the men who burnt down Lurretstown through the proper channels.
Top Gear is a motoring programme on BBC1, in which the presenters drive cars around and generally have a bit of a laugh. The truth of the matter is that most people watch a programme like this in the hope that the presenters will prove to be useless at driving, and crash into each other. I certainly did, and when it didn't happen, I was left with a feeling of disappointment.
Last week I did a particularly scathing review of An Aimsir, TG4's programme about Irish weather. However, this week, the weather has been much better, so it seems I may have been too hasty last week in my condemnation.
Weather forecasters, especially Irish-language ones, have a difficult enough time guessing what the weather's going to be like, and we certainly don't want to see a situation - as is the case in Arab countries - in which weathermen are ritually beheaded if they get their predictions even slightly wrong.
Hopefully, with the onset of summer, the weather in Irish will get even better, and there will be many blissful and balmy days ahead.
Arthur Mathews's comic novel, Well Remembered Days, is published by Macmillan