Sorry, I meant ‘The Leopardstown Inn’. Now this isn’t shameless promotion (shameless self-promotion, yes) at all here, if you have never been to this pub, do it now. There’s no other pub in the country like it. We were speechless on the tour. And believe me, it is a tour. Anyhoo, here are two new radio commercials I’ve written and produced for The Leopardstown Inn that centre on this very idea. Have an aul listen.

As an aside, the name Leopardstown has always intrigued me. When I was a kid I had the romantic notion of big cats roaming the savannahs of South County Dublin. Working on this gig I learned that the name has evolved. In Irish its name is Baile na Lobhar, meaning ‘Town of the Lepers’, which refers to the leper colony that was once ensconced there. Nice. I suppose lepers need a pint every now and then too.

“Big Questions”


“Unique”

I need to go find me a lift and try this out. Pity buildings with lifts in Dublin have an average of about four floors. Did you know that our two tallest buildings have 16? Skyscrapers me hole.

The Samsung Wave HD is a pretty smart phone, as smart phones go. When it came to developing an idea for it, I asked the question, “Why do people (like me) who do not have iPhones, not have one?” When I thought about it, as cool and as tempting as they are, I found they had no real relevance for me.

So there, the idea needed to give a relevance to all those people who haven’t stepped into the era of the Smart phone and the world of Apps yet. It must then follow that, relatively speaking, when it comes to phones these guys are living in the dark ages slogging it out.

An idea was born. That idea being that after all the phones they’ve had to put up with over the years, and the way in which their lives have suffered due to the lack of Apps in their life, the Samsung Wave HD is something they owe themselves.

The Samsung Wave HD is the phone they deserve.

When we were briefed on this initially the client was looking at two, maybe three, radio scripts to be recorded.
They liked it so much that we ended up making six.

They’ll be airing at various stages from the start of July and on throughout the year. Have a listen.

“You deserve it”



“Irish Rugby App”



“TV Remote App”



“Entertainment.ie App”



“Georgina Campbell App”



“Gaelfón App”

The Excuses campaign for TV licence has gone into extra time with these two new spots I wrote and produced last week. Only when I recorded them did I and everyone else in the room realise what a dark and yet light-filled corner I must have been kneeling in when I wrote them.

“Terrible Gift”


“The Thing”

Did like a bazillion of these for the Licensed Vintners Association’s sponsorship of segments on 98fm. Few of them turned out real nice.

The Movie Minute

Cúpla Focal

Sports Break

So I finished the first draft of me book. 92 thousand odd words. It’s a bit of a mess but I had to get it finished. Now the really hard part; doing the second pass and ironing out all the creases. I’m not good at ironing in the real world, so I hope I haven’t made a poor choice of metaphor.

One really has to get one’s blogging shit together, doesn’t one? Haven’t posted since God was a boy and it would look to the untrained eye like I’ve been staying in bed the past few months. That untrained eye would be half-right. My brain has been having of a bit of duvet day, even though I have actually been working away.

So on what you ask? Well here’s a bit of a round-up, because I’m working on a whole lot of nice stuff at the moment and by the time I get the post that, this lot may be truly irrelevant.

First up, a bit of radio I did for McDonald’s breakfasts, the idea being that by dropping in for a McMuffin or something, you’ll be starting your day in a happy place, even though you’re probably ten minutes away from a world of shit.

“Car Trouble”

“Tax Returns”

Now we move on to the current brand campaign for RTÉ 2fm, which was only a couple of weeks out in the public domain when Gerry Ryan unfortunately passed away. It’s a shame because the pieces of the campaign that related to him were some of the strongest. This is the commercial that was intended to run in cinema only, which we will have to take another look at in some way obviously as Ryan Tubridy takes over the mantel.

“Market”

Here are some of the 6 sheet outdoor executions from the campaign.

These are the bus cards. Bit more meat in them wordcount-wise, but then we have the audience trapped, I mean captive, don’t we?

With Rick O’Shea’s huge twitter following, it seemed apt for his show to take the bus backs with this one.

At one stage I didn’t think I had enough story to make it to 50,000 words. The way it’s sprouting at the moment I think I’ll be doing well to keep it under 100.

Get up the garden.