Ciaran Ward

Nostalgia – the double-edged sword…

Ciaran Ward on January 16, 2022, 9:00 am

| Readers 15849

The nostalgia industry has become something of a lucrative business. There are now entire TV channels dedicated to repeats of old shows where (if you have time on your hands) you can spend all day watching the likes of Columbo, Murder She Wrote, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch or The Sweeney. There are radio stations which only play golden oldies. Ageing rock bands re-form (sometimes with less than half their original line-up) and go on tour thereby cashing in on the …

Brave New Post Lockdown World: Same Office, Different River?

Ciaran Ward on November 6, 2021, 8:38 am

| Readers 1113

In the early 2000s, TV viewers were invited to see the funny side of the drudgery and monotony of the white-collar workplace. The Office starring Ricky Gervais as David Brent, a deluded manager at a regional branch of paper merchant’s firm Wernham Hogg cashed in on the then-new trend for reality TV, presenting itself as a fly-on-the-wall “mockumentary” and revelling in the incidents of social awkwardness, gaffes, flirtations, clashes of egos and professional rivalries which permeate workplaces throughout the world. If …

Haunting Of Queen’s University Halls?

Ciaran Ward on October 31, 2021, 11:15 am

| Readers 3528

Back in the 1990s when I was a first-year student at Queen’s I lodged in one of the brutalist Soviet-style 1960s tower blocks known as the Elms halls of residence located just off the leafy Malone Road. During the week the area was a hive of activity, a self-contained student village where countless tomfoolery, pranks, romantic liaisons, all-night parties and all kinds of alcohol-fuelled debauchery and hedonism abounded – just as you would expect to find at any university campus …

Notes from the outer regions…

Ciaran Ward on September 28, 2021, 8:00 am

| Readers 5583

Having lived in London for over 20 years now I’m always careful not to bring back too much of the local currency when I return from trips home. I’m referring of course to the regional banknotes produced by Danske Bank, Ulster Bank, First Trust and Bank of Ireland. It’s a well-worn rant that most retailers and service providers in GB won’t accept such notes despite the fact that they are sterling and should (in theory) be legal currency (albeit not …

Throwing a Scammer in the Works…

Ciaran Ward on December 19, 2020, 4:55 pm

| Readers 1119

I’m sure many of you have received an unsolicited phone call asking about that alleged car crash you were supposedly involved in (or Microsoft (allegedly) telling you you’ve got a bug on your PC that needs fixing) or an email from someone asking you to deposit a large sum of money into your account – or a message purporting to be from your bank, HMRC or Netflix – with numerous spelling and punctuation mistakes, upper and lower case letters in …

The Past Was Certainly A Different Country… But That’s Entertainment

Ciaran Ward on July 10, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 1920

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” (British novelist LP Hartley, 1953) In the months following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a whole new debate has opened up on how we should perceive the events and actors of the past. History is undoubtedly awash with shameful events. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s statues of …

Cycling – One of life’s simple pleasures…

Ciaran Ward on July 4, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 1211

Normally at this time of the year, cycling fever would be in the air with the Giro d’Italia a recent memory (remember the year it started in Belfast?), and that other famous pharmaceutical warehouse on wheels (sorry, bike race) the Tour de France just about to start. This year it’s all different though, but it hasn’t stopped the Middle-Aged Men In Lycra (MAMILs, I believe the modern terminology is) – ie people like myself – from making the most of …

Is time an illusion?

Ciaran Ward on June 14, 2020, 7:10 am

| Readers 987

For most of May with its spectacularly premature good weather, I was in t-shirt and shorts. Then In the first week of June after temperatures plummeted, I suddenly found myself under leaden skies wearing three layers of clothing including a fleece. It’s as if time is going backwards. But, in these crazy days, we’re now living in time has come to a sort a standstill. We’re still getting older of course, but it seems as if every day is the …

From Banana Republic to Boomtown Rodents and Celtic Tigers…

Ciaran Ward on June 13, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 1507

I watched a recent BBC documentary on the Boomtown Rats (available on iPlayer for the next eleven months) which wasn’t just your average bog-standard rockumentary, but also partly a commentary on how the once socially conservative, deeply religious, unemployment-riven Irish Republic (a country many ambitious young people wanted to leave once they were old enough – Geldof and co included) has changed beyond recognition since the band started plying their trade at the height of the punk scene back in …

Tiochfaidh ar Laugh – A brief history of Irish comedy…

Ciaran Ward on May 30, 2020, 7:05 am

| Readers 2082

At times like these when so many of us are simply not amused humour can often be the best medicine… After the ground-breaking Father Ted hit our screens a quarter of a century ago, Irish comedy shows tended to keep a low profile within the wider televisual world. However in recent years we’ve had something of a renaissance, now that three Irish comedies have made their mark on UK TV. The most popular of these shows (purely in ratings terms …

Shining a light into the darkness of the Covid 19 crisis…

Ciaran Ward on March 27, 2020, 2:43 pm

| Readers 2002

We’re now living in unprecedented times, sailing in uncharted waters, travelling rudderless to an unknown destination. Now if you had a quid for every time you or heard this sort of thing over the last couple of weeks you’d no doubt be a multi-millionaire several times over. Ok, slight exaggeration – you’d probably be about £74.50 richer. The weird (or not so weird as the case may be) thing about all this is that for many of us who live …