Sandra Harris Writes

  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 ...

  MISSING YOU ALREADY, WORLD CUP 2022…! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Aw. I feel bereft today. The 2022 World Cup ended yesterday, the eighteenth of December, and now all I have to look forward to is Christmas with its tons of great presents, the FATHER TED Christmas special on telly and more delicious grub than you could shake a stick at. As I said, aw…! The four weeks of exciting football and football excitement really took my mind off the pelting rain, the freezing cold, all the talk of future gas shortages and the sight of people on the News stocking up on little primus/camping stoves from the ‘outdoors’ and camping shops, just in case we’re facing into a new, Putin-led Armageddon. 2022 hasn’t exactly been the greatest year ever for good news, has it? It was the year Russia declared war on Ukraine, and we here in Ireland should know this because we’ve taken in about 65,000 Ukrainian refugees to date. We still have killer virus COVID-19 with us; I presume Monkeypox hasn’t gone awa...