Liam fay why are you still with him

Your subscription will end shortly. Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your access to the most informative and considered journalism in the UK. Accessibility Links Skip to content. Menu Close. Log in Subscribe. He recounts numerous incidents where Morrison blanked out friends and former musical associates, and paints a picture of a self-righteous, fiery soul who let nothing, not even personal relationships, stand in the way of his musical ambition.

He details Morrison's unlikely, and amazingly resilient, relationship with former Miss Ireland Michelle Rocca with a wry eye, noting the irony of a famously reclusive and unsociable star stepping out in Dublin high society and courting the gossip columns - a long way from his stilted upbringing in post-war East Belfast. Summing Morrison up, Rogan attributes the following admission to the singer: "I'm not a nice person.

I don't expect anyone to say I'm a nice guy. I think I'm a loner. An early acquaintance of Morrison's, Anne Denvir, had a different view of Morrison's gruff, unfriendly demeanour: "He was always a little shit and he still is. Rogan's premise is that Morrison's upbringing in staunchly Protestant, sectarian East Belfast has informed his life, his music, his work ethic and his intractable personality. His musical purism, his uncompromising stance as a performer, his abrasive attitude and his paranoia about the media and the music industry, are all born of the siege mentality that permeates Ulster unionism.

Rogan goes so far as to compare Morrison to that other East Belfast firebrand, Ian Paisley, seeing no coincidence in the fact that young Morrison passed Paisley's house at the bottom of Hyndford Street on his way home from Elmgrove Primary School in Beersbridge Road.

To his mind, Morrison and Paisley are two sides of the same threepenny bit - even Morrison's cadence on such songs as Rave On, John Donne resembles Paisley's high-decibel demagoguery.

But, unfortunately for Kenny, his dramatic inflation of the annual minimum wage plays straight into the perception that he hasn't a bull's notion about the meagreness of the incomes on which some people must survive.

In fairness, however, Kenny's performance was not the worst display of government disconnect. The owner of that accolade was Joan Burton. The most comically convoluted manifestation of the government's keep-it-simple policy is the proposed Water Forum, a talking-shop which will "advise Irish Water on service expectations and provide valuable feedback on investment priorities".

Ironically, the Water Forum is to be modelled on the Constitutional Convention, a wheeze which is remembered - if it's remembered at all - as the official death knell of the Coalition's much-vaunted promise to herald a democratic revolution. There is a complicated set of reasons why public confidence in the Government is now completely gone and why the concessions on water charges are widely seen as too little too late. However, there is also a simple explanation.

The crux of the matter is competence and the fact that the Cabinet is almost devoid of it. Now, it's the only thing we can see and most of us are heartily sick of it.

Amid the bluster and theatrics of last week, Kenny did have one moment of memorable clarity and sage simplicity. He was attempting to question the motives of some of the protesters but, inadvertently, he hit the nail on the head.

Opposition to water charges may have been the primary focus of public dissent but the mass demonstrations were also an expression of angry exhaustion by a general populace that has taken all the austerity it's going to take.

Next spring, millions of Irish addresses will be assigned new seven-digit postcodes. Apparently, some southside Dubliners are emotionally attached to their postcodes. Scorn not their simplicity. Close Bob Geldof. We spent much of our encounter discussing his state of well-being, both physical and mental, and It soon became obvious that he was not a man without deep regrets. Still, as the hours passed by, and the reminiscences began to flow, his mood brightened considerably.

What follows is a story which Rory related that aftemooon with considerable relish. He was anything but a name-dropper. Indeed, one would need a very large crowbar to prise any recollection from him that was not essentially self-deprecating. Nevertheless, there was something about this specific yarn which seemed to tickle him mightily: It was , a year or so after Rory had played alongside Albert Lee and Peter Frampton among others on Jerry Lee Lewis' legendary London Sessions.

The concert began equably enough and the audience were really starting to get into it when who should walk into the auditorium but one John Lennon. We'll let the master himself take up the tale. He started to do the 'Jerry Lee Rag' but everybody was still looking up at Lennon and whispering about him.