Category Archives: articles

Medium-Sized Court Case, Fairly Big Story

By Ronan | Published: October 25, 2011

With Local News­pa­per Week being cel­e­brated in all 32 coun­ties of Ire­land this week, my ‘Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story’ slot on RTE 2FM’s Break­fast With Hec­tor fea­tured a story which demon­strates first hand the power of a local news­pa­per. The story con­cerned a court case from the Fer­managh Her­ald. Noth­ing unusual (or major) there […]

Also posted in blog, events, everyday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Medium-Sized St Patrick’s Parade Committee, Fairly Big Scandal

By Ronan | Published: October 11, 2011

Another pile of regional news­pa­pers, another week of sto­ries show­cas­ing the lighter side of Irish life for Break­fast With Hector’s pop­u­lar ‘Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story’ slot. Every week we get to fit four or maybe five sto­ries into the slot, so often sto­ries slot into place quickly. This week was one of those weeks […]

Also posted in blog, everyday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Medium-Sized Anniversary, Fairly Big Birthday

By Ronan | Published: October 5, 2011

RTE 2fm’s Break­fast with Hec­tor cel­e­brated it’s first birth­day on Tues­day Octo­ber 4th 2011 and luck­ily for me I was in the stu­dio in Gal­way to help them cel­e­brate. I’ve been con­tribut­ing to the show for a lit­tle less than that, about ten months, and believe you me it’s an absolute joy to be able […]

Also posted in blog, everyday | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Medium-Sized Bottle of Urine, Fairly Chaype Drinks…

By Ronan | Published: September 27, 2011

It’s a good thing Rihanna chose not to frolic about in the nip in a Cork field this week as the Cork Inde­pen­dent fea­tured an alarm­ing story about what goes on in the fields of Glyn­town. As the pop star cavorted with some County Down corn, res­i­dents in the Cork parish were left per­plexed by a what […]

Also posted in blog, everyday | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

George Galloway public interview

By Ronan | Published: September 22, 2011

Round­ing off the fes­ti­val sea­son this week­end is Green Vil­lage, a bou­tique music, arts and cul­tural event tak­ing place in the estate of Mount Druid/Vastina House in the vil­lage of Castletown-Geoghegan in County West­meath. There is an absolute myr­iad of stages for this fes­ti­val, most of them under can­vas, and among them is the Days Bazaar […]

Also posted in blog, events, everyday, upcoming | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Back from a break — Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story returns to 2fm

By Ronan | Published: September 20, 2011

After two weeks of doing noth­ing aside from soak­ing up some Vit­a­min Sun­shine in rural Spain with some added rural read­ing (Belinda McKeon’s excel­lent debut novel ‘Solace’ and a pile of John McGa­h­ern includ­ing his mas­ter­ful ‘High Ground’ col­lec­tion) it was back to the read­ing of the rural news­pa­pers for RTE2FM’s Break­fast with Hec­tor show […]

Also posted in blog, everyday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Medium-Sized Dog, Fairly Big Dig

By Ronan | Published: August 30, 2011

After a short break to cel­e­brate the end of sum­mer, I was back on the bril­liant Break­fast with Hec­tor show on RTE2FM on Tues­day morn­ing, August 30th, for the return of ‘Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story’, our weekly trawl through the local news­pa­pers of Ire­land. The bite-sized Pod­cast is avail­able here, so have a listen […]

Also posted in blog, everyday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Good looking women, and men, give it more and more

By Ronan | Published: August 23, 2011

The recent Joe Dolan Mullingar Fes­ti­val in, er, Mullingar, brought an esti­mated €2 mil­lion euro into the local West­meath econ­omy, with thou­sands attend­ing a vari­ety of Joe Dolan-themed events. As author of his offi­cial biog­ra­phy I was asked to be part of the fes­ti­val, and was delighted to con­tribute a small part. Along­side some talks […]

Also posted in blog, events, joe dolan book | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Landmark…

By Ronan | Published: August 16, 2011

The Blue Bridge of Port­laoise – A spe­cial farewell The Mid­lands answer to the Eif­fel Tower is no more. After a long and hard strug­gle, well doc­u­mented on this site and in the local news­pa­pers serv­ing Co. Laois and its envi­rons, the iconic struc­ture came crash­ing down over the sec­ond week­end of August. It was […]

Also posted in blog, events, everyday, food and drink, music | Leave a comment

One more thing gets thrown up on stage and I’m leaving…

By Ronan | Published: August 3, 2011

In the late 1980’s, a good pal of mine worked for a well known music pro­moter and for­mer Euro­vi­sion star. One of his spe­cial­i­ties was to bring in stars either past their prime, or on the skids for Irish tours. The Irish would never give up on a star was this pro­mot­ers mantra. The hits […]

Also posted in blog, music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment