Sandra Harris Writes

  MISSING YOU ALREADY, STRICTLY! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © STRICTLY COME DANCING held its twentieth final the other night, and peel my tangerines if it wasn’t a total glamour-fest! My kids and I have been watching it for about twelve or thirteen years now and it’s been the highlight of our winter televisual viewing season ever since. This year they celebrated their twentieth anniversary and this added an extra element of nostalgia and excitement to the whole thing. Back in the days of X FACTOR, when the two shows would clash on rival stations, we’d have to make do with watching STRICTLY during the breaks of Simon Cowell’s massive brainchild (that’s kind of an odd image, isn’t it?) , but, with the demise of X FACTOR, it’s been STRICTLY all the way ever since on a Saturday night. It's a dancing talent competition show with ‘celebrities’ as the contestants, as opposed to the ‘ordinary’ folks utilised in regular talent shows. I put ‘celebrities’ in inverted commas because, sometimes,...

  WORLD AIDS DAY: LOOKING BACK ON THE START OF HIV AND AIDS IN IRELAND. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Sunday the first of December was World AIDS Day, and our national broadcaster aired a programme a few days earlier to mark it: MEMORIAL: HIV AND AIDS IN IRELAND. A physical memorial to all the Irish people who died of AIDS stands now in the Phoenix Park, a gorgeous sculpture using the little red AIDS support ribbon people wear on their lapels as inspiration for its shape. I haven’t been out to visit it yet myself, but I hope there are seats provided so that people who want to reflect about times gone by and people who’ve passed can do so in peace, tranquility and comfort.   I was only a young one myself when AIDS first began to be talked about and noticed in America. That first little headline from 1981 in an American newspaper, RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS, was something I had no clue of until much later. Young gay men began to present to doctors in their droves with the ...

NOVEMBER BLUES... AND BROWNS, REDS AND ORANGES TOO… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I have the November Blues. It happens every year at the same time. Yes, November, lol. I know some people who love November because they’re looking forward to Christmas so much, but, to me, November is kind of a ‘meh’ month. I’m usually tired, for one thing, after all the effort I put into making Halloween the best time of the year. I love September and October, with the brown and red and orange foliage and falling leaves and glorious early sunsets. Also, there are the films…! HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN 3, THE THING, THE FOG, THE SHINING, THE CHANGELING, THE HAUNTING, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS, these are all on my regular Halloween go-to list and they literally just improve with age. I never get tired of watching these classics by terrific directors such as John Carpenter, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. Then there’s the best film Hammer never made, the superb horror comedy CARRY ON SCREAMING , with the gorgeousl...

  LOVE RATS: THE RISE AND RISE OF ROMANCE FRAUD. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I’ve been watching a documentary show on Netflix recently called LOVE RATS, narrated by former EastEnders actress Daniela Denby-Ashe. It features some of the most unbelievable footage I’ve ever seen of real people who’ve suffered through what we now call ‘romance fraud.’ Though it’s only recently that we’ve found a name for it, it’s something that’s probably existed since the dawn of time. The strange thing is that nearly all of the victims- mostly female, but one or two men as well- have such exactly similar stories to tell that it’s like there’s an actual template for this kind of crime. The victims are often middle-aged women who’ve been widowed or they’ve just come out of a long marriage. They may have married when very young and have therefore almost no experience of dating in the modern era. They decide they’re ready to meet someone again and they go to online dating sites like Tinder or Plent...

  LIAM PAYNE, ONE DIRECTION AND THE X FACTOR: END OF AN ERA… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Liam Payne, pop star, X FACTOR alumnus , big football and wrestling fan and father of one, has died in Argentina, where he was on holiday with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy. He fell – or jumped, we don’t know- from a hotel balcony shortly after hotel staff had called the police, saying that an aggressive man under the influence of drugs and alcohol was wrecking the place. He was only thirty-one. I have a son of nineteen who is champing at the bit for fame and fortune. No matter how many times I tell him that those things aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, nothing sinks in. He’s adamant. In a way, I can hardly blame him. He was born in 2005, in an era when Simon Cowell’s smash hit TV talent show-slash-factory assembly line  THE X FACTOR , then in its infancy, was convincing kids all over England and Ireland that they too could be the next big music star. He grew up watching this and other ...

THE MANCHESTER REVOLUTION, BRITPOP AND THE OASIS REUNION: WHY I’M STILL MAD FOR IT AND ALWAYS WILL BE. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © First came the ‘Manchester Revolution,’ an explosion of bands from the home of iconic soap opera CORONATION STREET onto our radios and television music shows in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Remember the Stone Roses, with their baggy jeans, floaty tops, bucket hats and trippy riffs? Remember the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, the Charlatans, Candy Flip, who did a rather divine covers of the Beatles’ hit, Strawberry Fields Forever ? I was still a young one at this stage, still child-free, and I loved music. I’d spent the whole of the 1980s with my Coca-Cola-bottle-shaped radio clamped to my ear (mainly ‘cause the batteries were always running down, lol, so that was the only way I could hear it) , and every Sunday afternoon I’d be found on the couch watching MTUSA.  This was an American music programme presented by Irish chap Vincent Hanley that just...