Eoin Butler

Published: Evening Herald, April 2010

The Bull & Castle

It’s the last outing for this column. Aidan and I are celebrating at the Bull & Castle in Christchurch. We’re joined by our friend, Johnny, briefly home from the States. “Butler pays for everything, by the way,” says Aidan, as we take our seats. “Why?” I ask. Aidan snorts. “I’ve given you enough fucking material,” he says. “You’re lucky I don’t sue ya for commission.”

He has a point. Read the rest of this entry »

Student hack bites back!

If there’s one thing this blog is fond of doing, it’s recycling old material. And the hardiest of hardy perennials in that respect is this wildly inaccurate perhaps-not-entirely-definitive profile of me written, in 2005, by a young student journalist from DCU. No matter how many times I post it, it never fails to raise a chuckle. But now the hapless anonymous author has stepped forward to answer his critics. Read the rest of this entry »

There’ll be shlaps…

The phone is tapped.

The bed is bugged. And that ice cream van outside ain’t selling too many ice creams. So I’ll get to the point. I’m with the East Mayo Boys, outta East Mayo. You might not a heard of us, but we’ve heard of you. We’re hip to every scam. Wise to every scheme. Abreast of all the latest developments on the street. Oh yeah and we move fast, constantly changing our underwear to avoid detection by the authorities. You might say we’re the best. Read the rest of this article here.

She Said (2010)

New adventures in babysitting (contd.)

Evolution has contrived to make the sound of a crying baby one of the most unpleasant in nature. The more piercing the child’s shrieking, the harder it is to ignore. The harder to ignore, the more attention is lavished upon the child and, hence, the greater chance it has of surviving into adulthood. In a small apartment, it’s like having a car alarm going off in the living room for hours at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

Perusing the Sunday papers, something suddenly strikes me…

I hate the Sunday papers. The first six days of the week, newspaper articles tend to begin with sentences like ‘The government has announced…’, ‘Sources in Timbuktu report…’ or ‘Grave robbers in Ballyjamesduff have stolen…’ But come Sunday, all that goes out the window. Suddenly, it’s all ‘Is Bebo turning our children into vampires?’ or ‘Can worrying about my bum give me the plague?’ Read the rest of this article here.

Miscellaneous Amusing Items I’ve Come Across #31

Provided they meet certain criteria, obviously… Read the rest of this entry »

So I hear you’re a racist… Is this the new thing?

“Ah Christ… Who told you?”

“I met Tina in Tescos the other night.”

“For fuck’s sake… He was a Malaysian fella in a Malaysian restaurant wearing a black shirt… Anyone could have made the same mistake.” Read the full article here.

Pakistan and India: armed and fabulous

The India-Pakistan Wagah border flag-lowering ceremony, as witnessed by the BBC’s Sanjeev Bhaskar.