Ben’s Books – Great Reads, Great Prices!

You can buy my memoir and my poetry collection here for only €8, including free shipping to anywhere in the world. And the guide to Dublin I edited with Katherine Farmar is now only €5! Don’t miss out on this opportunity – if you don’t buy my books I’ll have to burn them, and book-burning is a sin! All copies are signed – once I make it big, they’ll be worth millions!

Dublin: The Local Way

The Local Way is an exciting new series of video guides to cities around the world! The Dublin series is based in part on the guide to Dublin I wrote with Katherine Farmar. What’s more, Katherine and I are the presenters of the show! Check out some videos in the series, Dublin: The Local Way, here. More to follow!

Ben’s Second Book, Dublin on a Shoestring – Buy Here Now!

Shoestring Dublin is the Dublin of the quiet streets, the second-storey cafés, the little places tucked away in unlabelled cul-de-sacs and only advertised through word of mouth. Opinionated, practical, entertaining – Dublin on a Shoestring is the original insiders’ guide.

Michelin Star Lunches for Around a Euro!

We’re all being told to tighten our belts — perhaps that means we should be watching what we eat as well as counting the pennies. Even with shops offering value deals on sandwiches and soups it’s never as cheap or as satisfying as making your own. I spoke to four Michelin-starred Irish chefs and asked them to come up with some simple, healthy, delicious and affordable recipes — for salads, pasta, sandwiches and soups that you can carry in your Tupperware lunchbox to work, college or even school. You can eat a homemade Michelin-starred lunch for around a euro — and that has to beat the local deli or supermarket any day. – by Kevin Flanagan with additional reporting by Ben Murnane

On a pint-sized stage

AROUND EIGHT O’CLOCK, it starts to get crowded. I’ve been sitting here, with my bottle of Miller and my Newsweek, for quite a while. In this Connemara pub, I couldn’t look more like a blow-in if I had orange ears and five eyes.

But that doesn’t matter. I know, because I’ve been coming to Paddy Coyne’s in Tullycross for years, sitting by the fire in the cosy front room. I still smile when I see the sign over the bar: “No Credit Given to Women” (beside it there is one that reads simply, “No Credit”). Wednesday is the best night here.

As I finish my beer, summer tourists are drifting in – a French family, an English family, some Italian students . . . They come in the front door and go out the back, brushing past the nonplussed locals. Some of the locals get up and join them. Different accents and languages are heard in the queue to leave. Everyone (except children) pays €5 to walk out of the pub.

Outside, there is a small blackboard with “Smoking Area” chalked on to it, and a sign pointing towards the “Beer Garden”. Tonight, however, there is no beer garden. Under the hanging baskets and the old beer ads, there is a stage.

Wounded City: Live from Ground Zero

Travelling in a taxi from JFK International Airport to our rented apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, it becomes apparent that the people of New York City are still reeling from the attacks of September 11, 2001. Like blood from a wound, raw feelings always threaten to rise to the surface. Our cab driver speaks openly about his ‘9/11’ experiences. Business – the tourist market in particular – has not yet recovered, he says, though it is getting better. The world changed that day, he tells us, and a lot of pain was caused for a lot of people. As outsiders looking in, we don’t really know what to say, and so merely sit back and enjoy the manmade beauty – one of the most incredible skylines in the world, and liberal spatterings of carefully placed greenery. The evening sunlight twinkles in the leaves.

A Day in the Fair City: Soap Opera Exclusive!

Love it or hate it, RTE’s Fair City is Ireland’s most popular soap. Or should that be Ireland’s only soap? Either way, when Ben Doe gets the chance to become an extra, meet the cast and crew, get two free meals, and earn €63.74 just for walking behind some tables, he doesn’t turn it down. Well, not the first time, at least…

007ed: Meeting Pierce Brosnan

It wasn’t a very good start. We drove into Ardmore Studios by the ‘Trucks Only’ road, and embarrassingly had to turn around and go back. Ardmore Studios – where Pierce ‘James Bond’ Brosnan was filming his latest movie, Evelyn. Walking to Studio Building B, I spot Stephen Rae and Aidan Quinn. Hmm…I really imagined they’d be taller.

And On Till Morning: The Story of a California Courtroom

The genesis of Jackson’s recent problems was in February 2003. For those of you who’ve been hiding under the floorboards or something, that’s when British ‘journalist’ Martin Bashir’s disturbingly biased documentary Living with Michael Jackson aired on ITV in the UK, and on ABC in the United States. It was within this fantastic feat of journalistic integrity that MJ told the world he has, from time to time, allowed children to sleep in his room, even his bed. One boy appeared in the programme, holding hands with Jackson and laying his head against the singer’s shoulder. His name was Gavin Arvizo.