I thought I knew about cyberbullying until I interviewed Joni O'Sullivan on the show last week. She told me about the 14 month ordeal her daughter Zoe has been put through at the hands of hundreds, maybe even thousands of other teenagers after kissing the 'wrong' boy at a disco. It's harrowing stuff. Joni is doing [...]
An oldie but a goodie A colleague reminded me of this one earlier. Dan is definitely the most outrageous, unapologetic, unreformed sexist we've had on the show. Ever. I think the research team saved him for me deliberately... he reckons women shouldn't be allowed on golf courses because their husbands will get no dinner. Listen back [...]
The debate about ads in the UCC student cafe got a bit heated on the Opinion Line last week. While nobody thought they were funny, the spectrum of opinions ranged from mildly disinterested to downright disgusted. For once, I wasn't outraged about it. It was stupid, sexist and generally unintelligent. As a couple of our callers [...]
Have you seen Brooklyn? Saoirse Ronan's just been nominated for an Oscar for it, and if you haven't seen it, you should go NOW. It's also been nominated for Best Picture.. You'll need tissues, because this girl's face is so expressive that you'll be bawling before she even says a word. I really hope she wins [...]
https://soundcloud.com/opinionline96/saved-from-suicide-daniels-story[/embed We take a lot of unusual calls on the Opinion Line; everything from runaway swans to the most intense personal stories of love and loss. One particularly heartrending call we received, last thing on a Friday a few months ago, was from Daniel. He called because he wanted to thank a local Garda who [...]
Let me preface this by saying I'm not one of those journalists who hates PR people. PR people often make my job much easier than it would otherwise be, and the good ones are extremely creative, helpful, hardworking and organised. But, in the past couple of weeks I've received so many emails of this nature that [...]
I don't normally do very personal blog posts here, but quite a bit of my op/ed stuff over the past year related to personal experiences, so I feel I should bring it all together a bit here. It's late January, and I am only now getting into 'January mode', the mode of healthy eating and exercise, [...]
https://soundcloud.com/fergalbarry/chicken I'm currently presenting a phone-in radio show on Cork's 96m while my colleague, PJ Coogan, suns himself in Santa Ponsa. The difference in callers to a female presenter has been interesting, with my favourite one so far being Diarmuid... who called to ask me how to cook a chicken. Diarmuid said he wouldn't have [...]
Gail as she appeared in 1978. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I had a chat with Dave Fanning and Declan Cashin on Saturday about watching TV while Tweeting; my friends came up with various words for this including Tveeting, Twatching, and a range of other rude words that I couldn't possibly write here. Whatever you want [...]
Last week I tweeted that I hate Movember. I do. All those beautiful men (and some not so beautiful men, obviously) disfiguring their faces and then showing daily evidence of the mutilation on Facebook! Lads, I'll pay ye not to! Or to grow a proper beard that takes dedication and perseverance! Anyway, after that tweet ended [...]
