The talent spotters (176, Sep 2017)

It’s a new start for Banter as we kick off our autumn/winter series. After a run of eight remarkable years with the Bodytonic family in the Twisted Pepper/Wigwam and MVP, we up sticks and move to a new Dublin home. Massive thanks to Bodytonic chief bottle washer Trevor O’Shea for being a sound partner and (occasionally) proper pain in the hoop during this time – we would not have done this without him and his absolutely fantastic team of people.

The new home for Banter’s regular run of shows in the capital will be The Liquor Rooms on Dublin’s Wellington Quay right next door to the Clarence Hotel. We’ll be hosting events there over the next few months and making ourselves at home in a venue where we once spent a lot of time when it was called The Kitchen (the deja-vu is something else).

Our first Banter at the Liquor Rooms will focus on the talent spotters, the people who find and spot new talent when it comes to writers, musicians, actors, theatre-makers and sports people. Just what do these folks look for when they’re assessing and gauging the pack for the individual or individuals who will stand the test of time? What’s the tipping point between hard work and genius? What’s the hardest part of the developmental process? And what about the ones who got away?

Our panel: Sarah Davis-Goff (Tramp Press – Mike McCormack, Sara Baume), Ken Allen (Faction Records, James Vincent McMorrow, Jape etc), Jenny Jennings (Thisispopbaby, Riot etc) and special guests to be announced.

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The details: Banter on talent spotters takes place on Wednesday September 27 at The Liquor Rooms, Wellington Quay, Dublin 2. Doors open at 6pm and the event kicks off at 6.30pm-ish. Tickets can be booked here, including a limited number of early bird tickets. Proceeds will go to the Peter McVerry Trust.

Diary dates: other events in Banter’s autumn/winter calendar at The Liquor Rooms will include the constitution at 80 (October 25), imposter syndrome (November 29) and our infamous Review of the Year (December 6). Tickets for all of these will go on sale shortly.

The wrap is singing in the rain

(1) ICYMI: introducing The Rattler, a new regular-ish column for RTE Culture about music, culture, stuff and all that jazz. The first instalment kicks it with various mavericks including Chuck Berry, the people behind the Voyager space mission as seen in The Farthest, Screaming’ Jay Hawkins, Little Richard, Nina Simone and Mister Please Please Please as in the following film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lZZ_FCn9PY

(2) Fashion department: the rise and rise of streetwear brand Supreme, from a shop staffed with extras from Larry Clark’s Kids to collaborations with Louis Vuitton. Limited edition exclusives: a photo essay of New York’s new geeks

(3) If Banter was a magazine, it would be Grand Royal. A fond tribute to the magazine established by the Beastie Boys where an air of anything goes ruled the roost.

(4) 75 of the best verses from Jigga. “Yeah, I sampled your voice, you were using it wrong”

(5) From the podcast archives: the GAA season has given us some great drama this summer, but would the Austin Gleeson helmetgate shenanigans, that last gasp Joe Canning point or yesterday’s heavyweight set-to in the rain at Croke Park make it into the great GAA novel? Recorded at CrinniĂș na CĂĄsca at The Printworks in Dublin Castle, here are Irish Examiner sportswriter Michael Moynihan, writer and co-editor Banshee literary journal Eimear Ryan, novelist and Morning Ireland presenter Rachael English and chief sportswriter with the Daily Star Kieran Cunningham talking about the plot and characters who might feature in the great GAA novel.

 

(6) Before we had a Taoiseach who used to stalk the Canadian prime minister, we used to have a Taoiseach who was a fan of the high five. Here’s the story behind how Los Angeles Dodger Glenn Burke came up with the gesture in the first place

The wrap is looking for a sweeper system

(1) Every Friday morning, I add 10 tracks to the 12345678910 playlist. They could be new tunes or vintage tracks, recent finds or old favourites, just ten tracks which made sense to me in the previous week. Last week’s bunch went from mighty new-school bad ass Stefflon Don and the righteous Max Romeo to the incomparable Sandy Denny and quiet-LOUD-quiet troubadour Isaac Gracie. Dig in.

(2) From Vapor Wake dogs that screen hundreds of people at once to invisible anti-drone walls, the latest innovations that claim to be the future of venue and live music security. Face-mapping is mentioned in the piece which is a reminder of this New Yorker piece on the London detectives who never forget a face.

(3) The 2017/18 football season across the Irish Sea kicked off in earnest at the weekend. While you could enjoy such opening day Premier League fare as Huddersfield Town’s heroics and Chelsea’s woes, it’s really the season when the overall mood is pretty meh. Given that the dominant pre-season story has revolved around escalating transfer fees,  you’re dealing with a sport which is now as romantic and dramatic as a balance sheet. A very good blog post by Ciaran Tierney about the politics of tribal loyalties when it comes to sport in this country is worth reading in this regard.

(4) “Today the Voyagers are 10 billion and 13 billion miles away, the farthest man-made objects from Earth. The 40th anniversary of their launch will be celebrated next month.” An excellent piece of writing about the engineers and explorers who worked on the Voyager mission. And if you have’t done so already, go see The Farthest, Emer Reynolds’ superb and fascinating documentary on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

 

(5) The art of colour: how Pantone comes up with new colours. “Twice a year, Pantone representatives sit down with a core group of between eight and 12 trend forecasters from all over the design world, an anonymous group of international colour experts who work in product design or fashion, teach colour theory at universities, or are associated with institutions like the British Fashion Council. They gather in a central location (often London) to talk about the colours that seem poised to take off in popularity”

(6) “As people are bombarded with more and more entertainment options, quality has become a determining factor for a movie’s success. And moviegoers use Rotten Tomatoes to select films the same way they turn to Yelp to determine what restaurants they visit.”

 

Banter Stories At Another Love Story (172, Aug 2017)

Banter is as pleased as punch to make our debut at Another Love Story – and our debut in Co Meath – on Friday August 18.

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For our first outing at the festival, we’ll be hosting Banter Stories, a series of one on one interviews with some very special guests whose work we admire a lot.

Ruth Fitzmaurice is the author of I Found My Tribe, one of the year’s most magical and moving memoirs which is gathering rave reviews and notices. An urgent and uplifting letter to a husband, family, friends, the natural world and the brightness of life, it’s a call to all of us to love as hard as we can, and live even harder. (9pm-9.45pm)

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Aoife Dooley is yer wan who taught us How To Be Massive. What began as a web series on life on Dublin’s Northside has become a whole new lease of life for the illustrator, including the How To Be Massive book and the forthcoming guide to How To Deal With Poxes On A Daily Basis. Aoife recently started doing stand up comedy and has already performed at the Vodafone Comedy Festival and supported PJ Gallagher. (8pm-8.45pm).

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The wrap is up for the Rossies

(1) Because the first series of Master Of None was such a joy, I was slightly wary about jumping into the new season in case it didn’t live up to high expectations. Man, I’m such a  doofus: if anything, the show is even more of a sweet, fascinating, funny, sharp and on-point treat on second outing. The opening episode is breath-taking (“allora!”), but the sixth one is next level and makes you wow about Aziz Ansari’s smarts. One of the most striking things about the show is its use of music and this piece is a good deep dive into that process (soundtrack below)

(2) Well, it beats the CĂșl summer camps…The future of summer camps is the SocialStar Creator Camp, “three days of intensive influencer workshops focusing on monetization, branding, and the basics of shooting and editing video, all aimed at kids in their early teens to mid-20s”.

(3) We did a Banter event at the recent International Literature Festival Dublin about media in an era of fake news. In the latest Bantercast, hear our panelists Kevin Donnellan (UK editor, Storyful), Lois Kapila (co-founder and managing editor, Dublin Inquirer), Jane Suiter (School of Communications DCU and Director of the Institute for Future Media and Journalism) and Cathal McMahon (Irish Independent) discuss everything from Trump and The Liberal to clickbait and the Jobstown trial.

(4) Fashion department: how special collections of music tour merchandise have become one of the newest and fastest-growing subsectors in the fashion world; the latest evolution of the band t-shirt

(5) What happens when your superfans abandon you? “In the old days, fans would find like-minded, similarly obsessed people through fan clubs you could join by mail. But online discussion boards and social media have since expanded super fans’ opportunities to find community. One major difference, though, is that social media has a greater expectation of participation. Thus, the job requirements, so to speak, of stans have grown, especially when it comes to defending their idols from the deluge of backlash such technology allows.”

(6) Berghain by the numbers

Banter at Bullitt: the Pride edition (170, Aug 2017)

We’re delighted to head back to the Bullitt Hotel in Belfast for our latest event and that this event coincides with the city’s Pride Festival which will run from July 28 to August 6 across the city. You can check out the full action-packed programme of events here.
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Diverse, equal and proud: Belfast Pride Festival puts the city’s best side out every summer. But when it comes to LGBT rights all year round, how are things really in Northern Ireland? A Banter discussion with Una Mullally (journalist, author and broadcaster), Gavin Boyd (Rainbow Project) and Ellen Murray (trans youth worker and activist) on the state of the gay nation and what’s to come in terms of same sex marriage, gender identity, the political landscape, trans rights and much more.
The details: Banter’s Pride edition takes place at the Bullitt Hotel on Wednesday August 2 at 6.30pm. More information here.

The wrap witnessed the great fruit fly massacre of 2017

(1) We have written before of our fondness for Edgar Wright’s fantastic Baby Driver. It’s a sign of the times that great movies now produce the opportunity for so many diverse think-pieces and features – see what happened with Moonlight earlier in the year. Here’s Wright talking about the music in the film and here’s a fascinating piece, complete with film-related link, about the iPod. And, sure why not. here’s the soundtrack

(2) The joy of trailers: “So often people hear that word “trailer” and their minds follow with “trash.” Maybe it was growing up going to my grandfather’s or maybe it was growing up with a trailer park just across the road, but as a child I don’t remember ever thinking that I was better than the kids I played with because I lived in a house and they lived in trailers. It wasn’t that I was oblivious to class. I recognized some folks had more than others, that I had a little more than them, and the rest of the world had a lot more than any of us. I recognized class. It’s just that I don’t remember ever equating class to a person’s worth, and I count myself lucky for that. We all rode the same bus and went to the same school. We bickered and fought, made up secret handshakes and loved each other like brothers and that’s just the way it was, kids being kids.”

(3) Confession time: I’d never heard of George Strait before I read Kelefa Sanneh’s fascinating profile of the country star for The New Yorker. It does what all great profiles should and makes you invested in a narrative which you’ve never come across before.

(4) Some day, I’ll tell you some of my favourite Tom Zutaut in Ireland stories, but here’s the legendary A&R man who signed Guns N’ Roses talking about the making of “Appetite For Destruction”. Bonus Roses: an interview with the band’s first manager Vicky Hamilton.

(5) We’re giving this great read on how music reviews have leaned on grades and stars four out of five. More pop culture numbers: the 100 greatest props in movie history and the stories behind them

(6) Inside Jack White’s record pressing plant in Detroit: “Technologies come and they go, replaced by something cheaper and faster. But what if the old technology—the slower, more expensive one—is better? What if it’s worth preserving, even if preserving it won’t stop the forward march of the new stuff? What if it’s still relevant? You can complain about the new technology, and you can reminisce about the old. You could write an op-ed. But is there anything a person can do to stop, or at least slow, a cultural shift?”

Banter at Beatyard 2017 (171, Aug 2017)

It’s time for Banter’s annual trip to the seaside. With a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other, we take the Beatyard bus to Dun Laoghaire on August 5 and 6 for a weekend of pow-wows, conversations and encounters. Here’s what to expect at Banteryard 2017

SATURDAY

1pm – meet the family – an encounter with Rusangano Family

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The Rusangano Family story keeps getting better and better. After a year in which they released their “Let the Dead Bury the Dead” album and scooped the Choice Music Prize for it, Godknows, Murli and Mynameisjohn join us at Banteryard to talk about the current lie of the Rusangano land, how things have changed since their first appearance at Beatyard in 2015 and what comes next

6pm – meet the legend – an interview with Larry Heard

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We talk house music and more with a man who was there when it was all coming together. Larry Heard is the producer behind such seminal house tracks as “Can You Feel It” and “Mystery Of Love”, a musician who has spent his lifetime creating sweet, warm, soulful tracks. A pleasure to welcome Larry to Banter and hear his take on life, music and everything else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeiH9Mm0E5Y

SUNDAY

1pm – UCD Psychology of Media Entertainment Lab

One of the big hits at Banteryard 2016, our friends from the UCD Psychology of Media Entertainment Lab return with more examples of and experiments in how we engage, interact and behave in our everyday lives with technology, media, art and fiction

2pm – The Banter guide to starting a rocking food business

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Just what do you need to know about opening your own food business? We’re joined by Colin Harmon (3FE), Conor Duggan (Box Burger) and Sandy Wyer (Forest Avenue) to hear how they went about the job in hand.

4pm – Oh My God What A Complete Aisling!

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The most notions Banter ever as we welcome Aisling to Banteryard.  Ahead of the publication of their debut novel about the life and times of a girl from down the country in the big smoke, Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen talk to us about all things Aisling and especially what she would make of Beatyard.

Robert Webb on How Not To Be A Boy (174, Sep 2017)

What are the rules for being a man?

Don’t Cry; Love Sport; Play Rough; Drink Beer; Don’t Talk About Feelings

But Robert Webb has been wondering for some time now: are those rules actually any use? To anyone?

Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from losing his beloved mother to becoming a husband and father, Robert Webb considers the absurd expectations boys and men have thrust upon them at every stage of life.

Hilarious and heartbreaking, How Not To Be a Boy explores the relationships that made Robert who he is as a man, the lessons we learn as sons and daughters, and the understanding that sometimes you aren’t the Luke Skywalker of your life – you’re actually Darth Vader.
Robert Webb Cover

 Robert Webb has been a male for his whole life. As such, he has been a boy in a world of fighting, pointless posturing, and the insistence that he stop crying. As an adult man, he has enjoyed better luck, both in his work as the Webb half of Mitchell & Webb in the Sony award-winning That Mitchell & Webb Sound and the Bafta award-winning That Mitchell & Webb Look, and as permanent man-boy Jeremy in the acclaimed Peep Show. He also played Bertie Wooster in the acclaimed West End run of Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense. Robert has been a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and the New Statesman, and now lives in London with his wife and daughters, where he continues trying to be funny and to fumble beyond general expectations of manhood.

“Quite simply brilliant. I (genuinely) cried. I (genuinely) laughed out loud. It’s profound, touching, personal yet universal 
 I loved it”
J.K. ROWLING
“Takes us deftly from hilarity to heart-stopping hurt 
 A truly great read, full of heart”
DAWN FRENCH
“Written with wit and clarity, How Not to Be a Boy is a funny, rueful, truthful book. I enjoyed every page”
STEPHEN FRY
“A witty, honest coming-of-age story with a subtext that tackles masculinity and manhood. Webb has a storytelling skill many would kill for”
IAN RANKIN
“Timely and candid, told with great humour, warmth and compassion. A much-needed contribution to the vital conversation about the damage gender can do”
JUNO DAWSON

The details: Banter and Aiken Promotions present Robert Webb in conversation with Sinead Gleeson about his new book How Not To Be A Boy and other matters on Saturday September 16 at Vicar Street, Dublin. Doors open at 11.30am and the interview begins at 12 noon sharp. The interview will be followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing. Tickets go on sale on Friday at 9am.

The wrap wants to still be on a beach in Donegal

(1) What do you mean you’ve never heard of Camille? Long before Christine & The Queens captured the high ground when it came to beautifully wonky pop, Camille Dalmais was the go-to woman for that sort of idiosyncratic fare. Over five albums, Dalmais has created bright and bold pop songs where leftfield pop sensibilities and experimental notions got merry with wild abandon. Her latest release is “Oui” and, if you dig what you hear, there is a hugely enjoyable back catalogue to investigate and be smitten by.

(2) Margaret Moser has lived one heck of a colourful life. Find out more about this long-time champion of keep-Austin-weird musical high jinks in this lovely profile by Joe Nick Patoski and this selection of pieces she wrote during her tenure at the Austin Chronicle.

(3) The story behind the current boom for building new mosques in Erdogan’s Turkey

(4) Nina Simone in Liberia in 1974: ““Within a few weeks I felt as if I had been living in my house on the beach all my life. . . .They said I was wild. I wore nothing but a bikini and boots all day long and danced about with the weight gone from around my shoulders.”

(5) Anyone for a new music app which might be actually useful? Introducing Stationhead, the app which turns your Spofity accoung into a radio station. Here’s the Billboard skinny on it – if you want to tune into something for the crack, check out byjimcarroll

(6) Perhaps Stationhead and the like will see an end of acts traipsing from radio stattion to radio station in search of attention and bad coffee? Excellent piece about the radio tours new country acts have to endure

Nature and me: how nature influences our lives (173, Aug 2017)

Aimed at preserving and promoting Ireland’s natural, built and cultural heritage, National Heritage Week runs across the country from August 19 to 27 and Banter is delighted to be part of this year’s event.

We’ll be hosting a discussion which looks at how nature influences our life, work and the world around us. Poet Mark Roper, Birdwatch Ireland’s Niall Hatch, educator Grace Garde, Dublin city councillor Claire Byrne and author (In Sight Of Yellow Mountain: A Year In the Irish Countryside) and actor Philip Judge will talk about the value of nature, wildlife and heritage to how they live and work.

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Banter on nature takes place at the National Print Museum (Beggars Bush Barracks, Haddington Road, Dublin 4) on Thursday August 24. Doors open at 6pm and the discussion begins at 6.30pm. Tickets are available here and all proceeds from the event go to the Irish Peatland Conservation Council.

Many thanks to Niamh Donnellan and Niamh Reynolds at the Heritage Council and Gretta Halpin at the National Print Museum for their assistance with this event.

 

The robots are coming (169, July 2017)

What will your job look like in 2027? More to the point, will you and your workmates have been replaced by robots?

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On our next visit to the Bullitt Hotel in Belfast, we talk about the future of work. The groundbreaking developments in technology and artificial intelligence will inevitable mean many changes, not least for Belfast workplaces in the years and decades to come. Are any our jobs safe from the robots? Indeed, will Banter in 2027 just feature a bunch of robots having a chat about pesky humans?

The details: Banter talks robots at the Bullitt Hotel in Belfast with Adrienne Hanna from Right Revenue; Kevin Curran, Professor of Cyber Security at the University Of Ulster and Philip Brady from Citibank. It takes place on Wednesday July 5 from 6.30pm and admission is a fiver.

Banter returns to Bullitt on Wednesday August 2 during Belfast Pride Festival to talk about LGBT life in Northern Ireland in 2017.

The wrap is staring at the sea

(1) The new Lorde album “Melodrama” truly is swell. I interviewed her recently – it’s the only interview I’ve ever done on the phone from a supermarket car park and it was a first for the interviewee too – and found her to be smart, sharp and savvy. As with our previous encounter, she also gave me some ace book recommendations.

(2) What’s it like when your job involves people shouting at you all day? A foreclosure agent, hospital nurse, restaurant manager, retail worker, security guard and call centre worker tell their stories.

(3) There’s been a lot of comment, speculation and what-have-you about Amazon’s bid for Whole Foods. Here’s a great profile of Whole Foods’ dude John Mackey compiled while that deal was going down.

(4) On the buses: “on any given Friday or Saturday night, the loudest and most public displays of bounce music come from eye-catching, brightly painted party buses. Over the past 12 years since Hurricane Katrina, the owners and operators of these buses have created their own thriving industry around bounce music in New Orleans.”

(5) Anyone for some playlists? The Dowsers collects the best of the thousands of playlists produced every week and tells you what they love and don’t love about them.
(6) If New Orleans has bounce, Washington DC has go-go. Superb long-read by Ericka Bount Danois about the rise, fall and afterlife of the Chocolate City sound.

The wrap is picking strawberries in Wexford

(1) It’s coming up to that time of the year when those best-of-2017-so-far lists will begin to appear. We live in an age of lists – like, hello – so it’s inevitable that lists marking the halfway point in a year are flourishing. One of the albums we’ve enjoyed most in 2017 has been “The Navigator” from Hurray From the Riff Raff. Here’s an interview with the band’s fascinating frontwoman Alynda Segarra and, if you want to check them out, they play Whelan’s, Dublin on October 19 next.

(2) The last post: what’s involved in planning one of those massive funerals which dominates the news cycle? Great read on what was involved in putting together Muhammad Ali’s funeral last year; why hearing Sabres of Paradise’s “Haunted Dancehall” on daytime BBC Radio One is a sign that the queen of England is brown bread; check out James McBride’s excellent Kill ‘Em And Leave for the inside story on what happened after James Brown died.

(3) Were you a fan of Ben Benjamin’s excellent Superbad web art site back in the 1990s? It’s still going as are a host of other sites which enjoyed some time in the viral limelight

(4) It was Biggie all the way at yesterday’s Hot 97 Summer Jam as the 82,500 in attendance marked 20 years of Notorious B.I.G (some attendees marked it in ways they didn’t probably expect). Here’s a piece on the long shelf life of hip-hop’s annual trend setting festival.

(5) On the road: how live music business transport firm Sound Moves keeps the show on the road. In the air: spending a week flying across the United States

(6) The art of the album review in 2017: “in the 1700s, a now extremely dead philosopher named David Hume pioneered the concept of the standard of the “ideal critic.” Despite having never listened to Lil Yachty, SoundCloud Rap, or even a single Red Hot Chili Peppers song, Hume had a pretty solid idea of what makes a good critic: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice.”

StoneyBanter (168, June 2017)

How could we say no to this one? The Stoneybatter Festival takes place across Dublin 7 from Friday June 23 to 25 and they’ve kindly invited Banter to come along to be part of the proceedings.

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We’ll be joined by Dublin 7 residents Annie Atkins (graphic designer and prop maker extraordinaire for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Bridge Of Spies and many more), Colin Murphy (journalist and playwright The Guarantee, Inside The GPO etc) and Radie Peat (musician and singer with Lankum and Rue). They’ll talk to us about their work, creativity, inspiration and how both historic Dublin and the contemporary city inform what they do.

The Banter pow-wow will be followed by the JuJu Club Strikes Back, with Stoneybatter’s own Claire Moloney return to the DJ booth with some tunes alongside Jim Carroll (fresh from the DJ retirement home) and Luke McManus.

StoneyBanter takes place at the historic Clarke’s City Arms (Prussia Street, Dublin 7) on Friday June 23 from 8.30pm and admission is a fiver on the door. Big, big, big thanks to Luke for all his help with this event.

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Banter at Bloom 2017 (166, June 2017)

We’re very happy to be returing to Bloom, the biggest festival in Ireland, which rakes place in Dublin’s Phoenix Park next weekend. Bloom kicks off on Thursday and Banter will be in situ in our tent in the Food Village on Saturday, Sunday and Monday with a clatter of colourful and fascinating characters for you to meet. Here’s the line-up.

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11am – Nutrionist in the house

Daniel Davey is a performance nutrionist with the Dublin senior footballers and Leinster rugby players, a presenter of TV3’s Doctor In the House and co-founder of online nutrition site FoodFlicker. At Banter, Daniel talks about the role of nutrition on health and well-being and lessons to be learned from the fields of play.

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Noon – How do you become the tidiest town in Ireland?

In 2016, Skerries won the award for tidiest town in the country. Maeve McGann and Anne Doyle from the Skerries Tidy Towns Committee tell us about the work, challenges and triumphs which go into running a successful tidy towns’ campaign.

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1.30pm – Questions and answers with the Bloom gardeners

Do you have a query for the Bloom show gardeners? Here’s your chance to ask them as Maeve O’Neill and Alan Rudden join us to answer your questions.

2.30pm – And now the weather


The ins and outs of the weather business and its impact on the national mood with Head of Forecasting at Met Eireann Gerald Fleming and presenter Karina Buckley.

3.30pm – The humans of Bloom

There are thousands and thousands of people at Bloom and is one of them. We get the lowdown on life and everything else from Irish Country Living editor Mairead Lavery

4.30pm – Meet the boss

Bloom would not exist with Bord Bia. The new head of the state agency promoting Irish food, drink and horticulture is Tara McCarthy and she joins us to talk about her job.

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11am – Food on the edge

Besides running such great Galway restaurants as Aniar and Cava, JP McMahon is also behind the annual boutique food gathering Food On the Edge. He’ll be at Banter to discuss his life, career, restuarants and the growth of Food On the Edge.

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Noon – The Irish astronaut

Niamh Shaw is an Irish scientist, engineer, performer and artist who also plans to get into space in the next few years. She joins us at Bloom to talk about work around creating interest in science, the need for more youngsters to take up STEM subjects and her very own space program.

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1.30pm – Questions and answers with the Bloom gardeners

Do you have a query for the Bloom show gardeners? Here’s your chance to ask them as Brian Burke joins us to answer your questions.

2.30pm – Draw With Don

Don Conroy is the man who taught the children of Ireland how to draw owls when he was the resident artist on The Den. We hear about his life before and after the Den – and there may be even a drawing lesson

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3.30pm – My Lovely Horse Rescue

Cathy Davey may be best known as the singer-songwriter behind a string of hits and albums, but she’s here to talk about My Lovely Horse Rescue. Since 2012, Cathy’s charity has helped to recue, retrain and rehome unwanted, abandoned or surrendered horses, donkeys and ponies in Ireland.

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4.30pm – Cats vs dogs

Why do people love their cats and dogs so much? We’re joined by Roz Evans from Phibsboro Cat Rescue and Catriona Birt from Dogs Trust to talk about their four legged friends

MONDAY JUNE 5

11am – Gardening for good

More than 50,000 people in Ireland are living with dementia and Elaine Keane, Director of Clinical Services at TLC Nursing Homes, and Sinead Grennan, CEO of Sonas apc, talk about how creating a garden which would be a peaceful space for them and their families resulted in the Bloom Dementia Friendly Garden.

Noon – Anyone for spuds?

Ireland has had a long and illustrious history with the humble potato. Restaurant critic and food writer Catherine Cleary talks us through our relationship with the tuber.

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1.30pm – Questions and answers with the Bloom gardeners

Do you have a query for the Bloom show gardeners? Here’s your chance to ask them as Niall Maxwell and TĂŒnde Szentesi join us to answer your questions.

2.30pm – Cavanman of the Year: Neven Maguire

We are very happy to welcome back one of the most popular visitors ever to the Banter stage at Bloom. Neven Maguire joins us with more warm tales and sage advice from Blacklion and beyond.

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3.30pm – What are you eating?

Aoife Hearne is the dietician on Operation Transformation. She joins with her advice on eating well without resorting to fad diets – and some insights into why the TV show still pulls in a huge audience.

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4.30pm – A guide to gins

We bring together some of the premium gin makers showing their wares at Bloom 2017 to tell us just why the drink is enjoying such a buzz at present. Our ginfluencers: Peter Mulryan (Blackwater Distillery), James McKenna (Listoke Gin) and Keith Malone (Mor Gin).

Tickets for Bloom are available here.

 

The wrap’s brother knows Karl Marx

A list of things for your reading, watching and listening pleasure. Updated every week.

(1) The old dogs for the hard road. The arrival of a new Coldcut album “Outside the Echo Chamber” is a reason to be cheerful, with Matt Black and Jon More joining forces with On-U Sound sonic professor Adrian Sherwood for a thrilling dub odyssey. There are a crew of guests like Roots Manuva, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Junior Reid, Ce’Cile and Chezidek onboard to ensure heavyweight stylings, while the presence of On-U Sound veterans Skip McDonald and Doug Wimbish highlight the project’s bass throughline. A joy.

(2) Are you one of those people who always – always – picks the wrong queue in the shop or supermarket? Here’s what a mathematician has to say about the right queue.

(3) If you only watch one documentary this week about a bodybuilding, well-dressed political operative with a Richard Nixon tattoo, it’s likely to be Get Me Roger Stone. Get the skinny on the dirty tricks dandy here and then dive in.

 

(4) One of our favourite past Banter guests is 3FE dude Colin Harmon. He’s got a new book out at the moment called What I Know About Running Coffee Shops and it is, as you’d expect, what Colin knows about running coffee shops. He joined us at Banter at Bloom 2016 to talk about why he gave up a career in investment funds to dedicate himself to coffee.

(5) It’s not just Dublin which is going through property hell at the moment. Anna Minton reports on London’s property squeeze which is causing affordable housing to be replaced by luxury apartment towers and, like Dublin, pricing people out of the city.

(6) Reading recommendation of the week: Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011, Lizzy Goodman’s fantastic oral history of the Big Apple’s musical rebirth in the early years of the 2000s.

Is there life beyond Van? (167, June 2017)

We are delighted to bring Banter to Belfast in June for the start of a monthly residency at the Baltic bar at the impressive Bullit hotel in the heart of the city.

For Banter’s first outing at Bullitt, we’re looking at the sound of the city and asking just what is the current state of Belfast’s musical nation. Many people may still associate the city with past glories like Van Morrison, Good Vibrations and SugarSweet, but the city’s musical machinations move to a much different beat in 2017 as seen by the excellent AVA festival which takes place in early June.

Banter host and producer Jim Carroll will be joined by Sarah McBriar (director and creative producer of the AVA Festival), Jonny Carberry (resident DJ and music creator at Bullit) and Stuart Bailie (music journalist and co-presenter of Across the Line) to discuss what the future sound of Belfast will be, should be and could be.

The first Banter at Baltic at Bullitt Belfast takes places on Wednesday June 7 at 6.30pm. Admission is ÂŁ5 and tickets can be booked by emailing [email protected]

The wrap is not talking about hurling today

A list of things for your reading, watching and listening pleasure. Updated every week.

(1) If you were one of those who thrilled to Jlin’s superb 2015 debut album “Dark Energy”, you’ll want to be all over her new one “Black Origami”. One of the albums of the season – a fine piece by Hua Hsa on artist and record here

(2) Fashion department: from Asos to Boohoo, inside the world of fast fashion. Not included in sale: a day in the life of Stephanie Shepherd, Kim Kardashian’s wingwoman

(3) It’s Monday which means back to work for the majority of the population, but here’s some pushback on the idea of cool open spaces: why cool offices don’t always make for a happier workforce and inside the offices where everyone is a DJ. On the other hand, you could be looking with envy at the new Apple campus. Meanwhile, for anyone hunkering to quit the office, here’s a great long read on the present and future of the gig economy.

(4) You’ll find my radio essay on the history of the Rough Trade record label for RTE Radio One’s Arena here. That includes a mention for The Strokes and there’s an excellent oral history of the band here.

(5) Is there a doctor in the house? Five medical procedures that are no longer performed

(6) Speaking of oral histories, a superb piece of work on the Game Day episode from the first series of The Wire.

Banter Shorts & Virgin Media (163, May 2017)

As part of their Full Stream initiative, Virgin Media will be screening three top class cult films from their catalogue at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin on Saturday May 13.

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It’s a chance for folks to experience Back to the Future, The Big Lebowski and Pulp Fiction in luxe surroundings with bold cinematic sound and a custom-built screen and lighting rig

Before each screening, we’ll be hosting a Banter Short coversation about various entertainment related topics

(1) We’re all cults now (before Back to the Future, 1pm)

Believe it or not, there’s now an audience out there for the strangest of shows thanks to out always-on consumption culture. We talk to Valerie Loftus from The Daily Edge about how the weirdest and most off the walls shows now build and develop their fanbases

(2) TV is the new film (before The Big Lebowski, 4.15pm)

The creator of hit show Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope, Stefanie Preissner, and director of programming at TV3, Bill Malone, talk about how the new crop of writers, directors and makers want to work in TV rather than hawk their work to Hollywood

(3) A new world of entertainment awaits (before Pulp Fiction, 7.30pm)

What is coming down the tracks and into your gaff in the next few years? A conversation with TV3 Head of AFP Patrick Kinsella about how new technology, from VR headsets to new ways of packaging entertainment, is going to change your viewing experience

Admission is free but tickets must be booked in advance and are available here