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LIAM PAYNE, ONE DIRECTION AND X FACTOR: END OF AN ERA. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  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 so-called
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THE MANCHESTER REVOLUTION, BRITPOP AND THE OASIS REUNION: WHY I’M STILL MAD FOR IT AND ALWAYS WILL BE. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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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 pla
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SELF-HELP BOOKS: HOW MUCH DO THEY REALLY HELP? BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  SELF-HELP BOOKS: HOW MUCH DO THEY REALLY HELP? BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Millions of self-help books have been sold since the dawn of publishing, and I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if most of the sales have been transacted since the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when it suddenly became vitally important that people be aware of and look after their mental health. The twin industries of ‘mindfulness’ and ‘self-care’ suddenly exploded and, now, here we are in 2024 and nearly every bookshop now has its own vast ‘MIND, BODY AND SPIRIT’ section. But do we really need all of these books in our lives? And how did we ever manage before them? Are they a load of old bollocks, or do they really work? As in, do they really help us to lead happier, more productive and fulfilling lives as happier, more confident people? I recently ‘self-helped’ by giving a big bag of self-help books away to charity. I had too many of the kind I just knew I would never read, books written by professors and scientists who u
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A TOXIC CULTURE IN FOOTBALL: A WOMAN SPEAKS OUT. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  A TOXIC CULTURE IN FOOTBALL: A WOMAN SPEAKS OUT. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Okay, okay, I’m not a man. I don’t have a willy and balls, I have the other thing. But I’m the mother of a young man, so I think that might just give me the right to talk about one of the things normally seen as a mostly male preserve: football. Yes, in the past couple of years, women’s football has suddenly become a big thing and women are gaining recognition left, right and centre for it and other sports. There are female pundits on the television now and I think even women referees in actual football games where men are playing. Fair play to them all, especially the referees, because that would be scary, being the only woman on a field full of angry, sweaty men all barging into one another while you're trying to make note of who’s fouling whom, but don’t tell me that men don’t secretly still consider football to be their own personal stronghold and that ‘birds’ have no place in it. I’ve talked befor
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LIFE LESSONS FROM LOVE ISLAND, or, THE JOEY ESSEX EFFECT. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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LIFE LESSONS FROM LOVE ISLAND, or, THE JOEY ESSEX EFFECT. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Oh God, I love LOVE ISLAND. I love watching it, discussing it with my kids afterwards, thinking about it when I go to bed and then going on Twitter when I wake up to see what the millions of fans thought about the previous night’s episode. It’s not even my guilty pleasure any more; I’m quite open about that the fact that I practically live for it during the months of June and July.  We’ve reached the halfway mark in the show and it’s making me reflect on the morals and ethics (and carnal forebearance?) of some of the contestants. Well, one of the contestants in particular, a tanned, muscular thirty-three-year-old bloke called Joey Essex. Sound familiar? That’s because he is familiar. He’s been a reality television star since 2011, when he appeared on popular television show, THE ONLY WAY IS ESSEX. Since then, he’s been on pretty much every reality television show except THE X FACTOR . He has his own r
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A LETTER TO THE EDITOR: SUSPENDED SENTENCE FOR SOLDIER WHO VICIOUSLY ASSAULTED YOUNG LIMERICK WOMAN. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  This is the transcript of a letter I sent to the Irish Times newspaper on 21/06/2024. A LETTER TO THE EDITOR: SUSPENDED SENTENCE FOR SOLDIER WHO VICIOUSLY ASSAULTED YOUNG LIMERICK WOMAN. Dear Editor, I am disgusted and appalled at the ridiculously lenient ‘sentence’ handed down to soldier Cathal Crotty this week by Judge Tom O’Donnell. In May 2022, Crotty severely battered Natasha O’Brien on a Limerick street because she attempted to stop him shouting homophobic slurs at fellow passers-by. ‘Two to put her down, two more to put her out,’ Crotty boasted  on social media  after the attack. This is not a man, this is a despicable coward and bully. What happened to Zero Tolerance of violence against women? What is the point of Gardai and government ministers urging women to ‘come forward’ and report their rapes and incidents of domestic violence or street violence at the hands of men if the men then get off scot-free? What kind of deterrent is that? What message does it give the abu
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IT COMES TO US ALL... BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  IT COMES TO US ALL… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I recently discovered that a man I knew slightly but really liked and was looking forward to getting to know better- we’ll call him Dave- had died, just two days after I last saw him. I did that thing that pretty much everyone does when they hear that someone they know has died. I said to the person imparting the news: Oh, but how can he be gone? I’d only just seen him and talked to him two days earlier…! As if that could somehow make someone immune from death. I was stunned at the news and really, really sad at the loss to the world of such a decent, gentle kind-hearted soul, someone who adored animals and wildlife, music and poetry (he’d written countless poems himself) and chatting to people and having a laugh. He’d been cut down in his prime as well, having not even reached his fiftieth birthday. I’ll say it again, it just made me so sad, thinking about how he might have had plans left undone and wishes and dreams left unfulfilled.
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