Latest news with #FintanOToole
BreakingNews.ie
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- BreakingNews.ie
Complaints as €30 tickets for Barack Obama event in Dublin disappear within seconds
Standard tickets, advertised from €25-€30, for Barack Obama's talk in Dublin appeared to disappear within seconds this morning. Taking to social media, people complained that when they clicked through on the standard priced tickets, it either said they were unavailable or else they appeared for prices of €137 upwards. Advertisement There are limited tickets still available on Ticketmaster, but the prices range from €143.75 to €383.75. The event, 'An Evening with President Barack Obama', will see him interviewed by journalist Fintan O'Toole at the 3Arena in Dublin on Friday, September 26th. He is expected to discuss his two terms as US president, from 2009 to 2017, and the future of ther United States amid the current political polarisation under Donald Trump. Tickets went on pre-sale on Tuesday, and general sale at 10am this morning. Advertisement Despite Ticketmaster saying tickets would be available "from €25", these tickets disappeared in seconds even for people who managed to click through at the promised price after queuing to be online for the 10am sale. It mirrors the experience of fans for popular concerts, with Taylor Swift's Aviva Stadium gigs in June 2024 and Oasis' sold-out Croke Park gigs this coming August being the most prominent examples. has contacted Ticketmaster for comment. Hillary Clinton , who served as US secretary of state under Mr Obama, will be in Dublin for an event in December. Ms Clinton is set to be honoured with the Sutherland Leadership Award at the 2025 Business & Finance Awards in Dublin. The event will take place at the Convention Centre in Dublin on Thursday, December 11th.
The Independent
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Barack Obama to lift the lid on life in office in two live appearances
Former US president Barack Obama is to be interviewed live on stage for two events in London and Dublin. The 63-year-old, who became the first black US president when he took office in 2009, will be interviewed by TV historian David Olusoga for the event at London's The O2 on September 24, before chatting with Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole at Dublin's 3Arena on September 26. An Evening With President Barack Obama will see the former president speak about his experiences in the role and the future for the US. Stuart Galbraith, chief executive of Kilimanjaro, and Alex Fane, chief executive of Fane Group, the groups organising the events, said in a joint statement: 'We are incredibly honoured to bring President Obama to the UK and Ireland for these truly special events. 'His message of unity and progress resonates deeply, and we anticipate an evening that will inspire and empower all who attend. 'We believe in providing exceptional experiences, and this event perfectly aligns with our mission to connect people with inspiring moments.' Tickets for the events go on sale at 10am on Thursday July 10, with 100 tickets set aside in each city for charitable organisations. Since his presidency ended, Mr Obama has signed a deal with Netflix, alongside his wife Michelle, to produce documentaries, documentary series, and features for the streaming platform under their Higher Ground Productions company. In 2022, he won the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks, while he previously won Grammy awards for his audiobook reading of two of his memoirs, The Audacity Of Hope and Dreams From My Father. The Hawaii-born former president has also hosted a podcast called Renegades: Born In The USA in 2021, alongside singer Bruce Springsteen, with the pair also releasing a book based on the podcast.
Irish Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
How Henry Mount Charles brought Dylan, Springsteen and The Rolling Stones to a former rock'n'roll backwater
When Henry Mount Charles , who died on June 18th at the age of 74, first reframed his ancestral home of Slane Castle as a signature rock venue in 1981, it must have been more in hope than expectation. Ireland was then a rock'n'roll backwater rarely included on the touring schedule of the big international acts of the day, as it had a severe shortage of decent-sized venues. The backdrop of violence and the hunger strikes in the North did not help, but the Republic had succeeded in making itself a dispiriting place on its own. Fintan O'Toole, in his book We Don't Know Ourselves , outlined the grim picture. 'The number of unemployed people had doubled over the course of the 1970s. Mass emigration was back. There was a balance of payments crisis and government debt was out of control ... The whole project of making Ireland a normal Western European country was in deep trouble.' Yet there must have been some optimism in the music business, as in 1981 Slane had to compete with music festivals in Macroom, Co Cork, Ballisodare, Co Sligo, Castlebar, Co Mayo, and Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare. Most of those events were headlined by Irish acts, however – as indeed was Slane. Thin Lizzy were nearing the end of their career at the top, but supporting them that day in August was a four-piece on the rise from Dublin: U2 . READ MORE Although only about 25,000 people attended the first Slane concert, its success paved the way for future events and for Henry Mount Charles' emergence as a public figure of note. Slane's natural amphitheatre could safely accommodate numbers much greater than the modest first event. In addition, it was near Dublin and could be reached by bus or car in a relatively short time. [ Henry Mount Charles: A Lord in Slane – The strange blend of fact and fiction around one of the last Anglo-Irish eccentrics Opens in new window ] Rock music is a business. The bigger the audience, the easier it is to attract leading acts. Pay them the money and they will come. And so it proved, with the likes of The Rolling Stones , Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen happy to park their caravans down by the Boyne. Springsteen's concert in front of an estimated 65,000 fans marked an important shift in his career: it was the first time he and the E Street Band played in front of a stadium-sized outdoor audience. It would be the first of many lucrative concerts. As the profile of Slane grew, Mount Charles lapped it up. Although concerts were generally partnerships with the likes of MCD Productions and Aiken Promotions , Henry was the public face of the event. He was no less a performer than those artists he welcomed to Slane. Concert days were celebrated in high style with the great and the good in the castle. [ Foo Fighters, Oasis, U2, the Rolling Stones and more: Slane's 15 greatest acts – in reverse order Opens in new window ] He was keenly aware of the value of good publicity and no slouch when in search of it. The money generated by the concerts was a windfall of sorts, but, crucially, it allowed him to underpin the finances of the castle and its grounds, developing other projects, such as the Slane whiskey brand , and helping to provide the resources to overcome setbacks such as the fire of 1991. Although a very public personality, the young Henry Mount Charles – he was in his early 30s in 1981 – was good and genial company, interested in the world beyond his castle walls and indeed beyond his elite social milieu. Embracing the rock'n'roll world afforded him the opportunity to experience the thrill of meeting great artists and celebrities while banking enough to retain and maintain his beloved Slane Castle for future generations. That concert idea was good fortune indeed. Joe Breen wrote about rock music for The Irish Times from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s
Irish Times
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Disappearing down a hole
Sir, – Fintan O'Toole (' Official reports are disappearing down the Irish 'memory hole'. ' June 17th) identifies a problem that extends far beyond Irish government reports. The phenomenon of 'unpublishing' is rife globally. I have found a number of accounts of speeches that I have referred to in previous research across a wide range of topics hard to retrace ie they have completely disappeared from internet search engines, despite my having details of date etc. This is especially the case when what was said no longer suits the current moment. Thus, I can imagine that right now support for net zero and tackling the climate emergency is going to vanish from the online record of speeches by many public figures as long as Trump is in power. READ MORE Public figures should of course be free to change their minds, but it is sad that they should be able to erase the record of their previous opinions so easily. – Yours, etc. PROF ADRIAN GUELKE Fitzwilliam Street, Belfast.
Irish Times
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
I thought Paul McCartney had sent me a gift after my cancer diagnosis
I was headed to the Borris Festival of Writing & Ideas in Carlow to play a very public game of Would You Rather? recently with my friend Paul Howard . I've known Paul, who writes Ross O'Carroll Kelly in this newspaper, for 30 years. In all that time we'd never been on a road trip together. It turns out we're not really road trip people. It took us about four hours to get from Dublin to Borris on account of the fact that we stopped en route for a coffee and a pecan plait at a motorway services. It was only after leaving the services that we realised we were in fact heading back in the direction of Dublin. We turned around eventually, and got stuck in the same bad traffic for a second time. It's no hardship being stuck in the same traffic twice with someone as uplifting as Paul; in fact, lots of people would pay for the pleasure. Our event was called Would You Rather? only because neither of us had been able to come up with a better title before the Borris programme was printed. Making good use of the road trip, we rang one of my teenage daughters from Paul's car to find out what Would You Rather? meant exactly. 'You know,' she said. 'Like, would you rather have no fingers or no toes? Would you rather be attacked by a shark or mauled by a lion?' We decided to do a cultural version of Would You Rather? Like, would you rather be stuck in a lift with Sally Rooney or Fintan O'Toole ? Would you rather do a meditation retreat with Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame or collaborate with Dan Brown on a Da Vinci Code-style thriller set in Ikea? [ Róisín Ingle: My profound, challenging, surprisingly joyful, life-changing year Opens in new window ] The event went well. The tent was packed. We began by explaining that the Borris festival was one giant game of Would You Rather? with so many excellent events going on at the same time. For example, to be sitting in front of us the audience would previously have had to ask themselves would you rather see legendary actor Fiona Shaw do her thing or watch Paul and I 'grapple with the big questions'. (That was a programme misprint. We only had small questions.) READ MORE 'Would you rather spend a day with Paul McCartney or John Lennon ?' was one of those questions. This enabled me to tell the story of how I'd met McCartney once years ago and how, after I badgered him, he'd kindly signed a column I'd written about him. Which, to my never-ending sorrow, I subsequently lost. And it allowed me to tell them how, after I was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer 1½ years ago and was down in the dumps, a taxi had arrived outside my house with the beautifully wrapped gift of a book of photography by McCartney, with a card signed 'Love Paul'. And about how I rang my good friend Paul Howard up to tell him that, 'Oh my God, Paul McCartney must have somehow found out about my cancer and he's only gone and sent me a book of his photography.' 'It's from me,' Paul said when he had finally stopped laughing. I didn't know it then, but there was a woman in the audience at Borris called Mary who was dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis. Mary had styled my hair into plaits for a photo shoot many years ago. She wanted to talk to me, about our shared experience, but worried that Borris wasn't the time or the place. When she came home from the festival, her sister asked, 'Did you talk to Róisín? 'No,' Mary replied. 'But I will find her.' Two days later I was in the Mater hospital for the scans I get every three months. My name was called along with another woman. It was Mary. The Mary who knew she would find me had accidentally found me. [ My post-cancer treatment hair reminds me of boxing promoter Don King. It makes me laugh Opens in new window ] After the first of our two scans we went for coffee, because I am a big fan of serendipity and because I remembered how good she had made me feel during that long-ago photo shoot with the plaits. 'Would you rather: a pecan plait or a plain croissant?' I asked Mary as we got coffees in the Mater cafe. She went for the plain croissant. Each to their own. It turned out Mary was now where I was 1½ years ago. Newly diagnosed with breast cancer and being scanned to see if it had spread anywhere else. I told her some things I hoped might help. She's a wise woman, Mary. A meditator. A mother. I wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know. We both had a lot to say. We talked for more than an hour. The serendipity continued. We discovered we'd be getting our scan results on the same day the following week. Whatever happens, I know she will be able to handle it. So will I. We swapped numbers. 'We can be cancer buddies,' Mary said before she went off for her second scan. 'No,' I told her before I went off for mine. 'But, if you like, we can be friends.' Because I realised that's what I'd rather. And luckily, Mary agreed.
