4th October, 2001
A friend of mine, a very good quiz team member,
got the phone call last week from the "Who Wants to be a
Millionaire" show. He was told that he was one of 100 people
to have been chosen to go further than the rest of us when we
answer Gay Byrne's question. However, they had one question for
him to progress further. This was the question, and I'm not
joking, this was asked to one of the best quiz minds in Cork.
Here it is, "How many copies of the Star newspaper were sold
in Ireland from September to December 1997. Why couldn't they
have asked an easier question such as, "How many blades of
grass are they in Douglas Community Park?" Anyway, he gave
them an answer and he was told that he was successful, they would
get back to him.
Speaking of that show, did you watch that man on it last week? I
think he was from the North. Every question he was asked he gave
us a lecture on why it wasn't the other three answers, then he
gave the correct answer. I'm shouting at the TV, "You
selfish B..... There are another nine people waiting who
obviously knew how many copies of the Star were sold in 1997, and
they're not going to get on the hot seat." My suggestion
would be to make the chair an electric one, nothing heavy, say
100 volts, you have 30 seconds to answer, after Gay presses the
button, that'll stop them wasting time.
A reader rang us a couple of weeks ago to complain that national
lottery scratch cards had gone up in price from £1 to £1.50, a
nice increase of 50%. We rang the National Lottery office in
Dublin and asked if it was true that the price had increased. The
answer was yes, but the spokesperson told us that the £10,000
prize had been increased to £15,000. "Fantastic," we
said, "How many £15,000 prize scratch cards are printed?"
we asked. Back came the answer, "One is every million
tickets printed".
Let me get this right, by increasing the ticket price by 50p, the
National Lottery take in an extra £500,000 and give out an extra
£5,000. That does not mean that if you buy one thousand of these
cards in one thousand outlets that you will win a £10,000 prize.
To do that you would have to buy the whole block of one million
tickets to win £15,000. Do the words, "There's one born
every minute," spring to mind?
I watched a documentary of BBC1 last Thursday night. The subject
was Ian Paisley. Would we see the big man "Line dancing in
the local Orange hall, sipping a Bacardi Breezer afterwards?"
You're right, we didn't. We saw a man who claims to preach the
word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. I watched the whole
programme, and wondered what young Ian had been taught by his
parents, because it certainly wasn't Christianity, a rabble
rousing bully who led young people astray with his bile, and as
some loyalists said on the programme, "He was like the Grand
old Duke of York, he led them to the fight, but when they turned
around he was gone, and they ended up in the H Blocks". Big
Ian runs a fundamentalist Church, so I went to my Colliers
dictionary and looked up the word, "fundament", and
what a fundament is to me is quite shocking. It's the buttocks,
or an anus!! So what does that make a "fundamentalist?"
Answers to the usual address.
Then there was a documentary on Freddy Starr (I watched a lot of
TV last week). Freddy seems to have been a real nasty piece of
goods, beating up his wife, his son, a reporter. Nobody had a
good word to say about Freddy. Now he lives in Spain, watching re-runs
of his TV shows with wife number ? She pretends to laugh at his
dated comedy. Freddy, what you sow, you reap!
The final documentary I watched was the Six Wives of Henry VIII.
Catherine Howard lost her head in more ways than one. It seems
Catherine was young, fiery and passionate. She confessed to
having an affair with a young man named Culpepper. The presenter
told us that at that stage Henry was old (51!!), fat, and had a
big abcess on his leg. Nowadays, a good lawyer would get her half
the crown jewels, and a flat in Buck House, but in 1541 there was
no alimony, only a wooded block and a big axe! Poor Culpepper was
hanged, taken down, drawn and quartered, disemboweled, and
finally, lost his head. What a punishment, almost as bad as
watching an hour long TV Oireactas report!!
If you have any feelings on what seems like the impending closure
on Douglas Swimming Pool, let us know, because the only action to
secure it's future is people power. Perhaps the powers that be
assume we in the Southside are all £1,000 a year members of
leisure clubs.
Finally, on the subject of our Douglas Weekly Christmas party
night, I just want to clarify that the tickets for th show are
only on sale from the Douglas Weekly office (021-4896496). A
deposit will secure your seat. Dickie Rock and Art Supple are two
of the best entertainers in the country, and we believe that we
have the best Christmas show in Cork. Bring your friends, your
family, or even yourself, we'll be there to enjoy a beautiful
four course meal, a visit by Santa, and 5 hours of musical magic.
Don't leave it too late!
Bye for now,
Michael O'Hanlon.
P.S. Good luck and best wishes to Derry O'Regan of the East
Village Bar and Restaurant, who's getting married on Friday 5th
October.
