LOL: L AST ONE LAUGHING UK We've been here before . Ten comedians - five men and five women - are cooped up in a ' Big Brother ' style set for six hours in a competition to see who can keep a straight face while their rivals engage in quips or antics. Laugh once and you get a yellow card signifying you're on probation. Do it a second time, you receive a red card and are out. The comedian who lasts the longest without laughing wins. As anyone who saw 'LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland' last year with Jason Byrne, Aisling Bea, Amy Huberman and Deirdre O'Kane will know, it can be sometimes surreal, surprising, crude at times but also often very funny. Versions of the show invented in Japan have been made in France, Colombia, Canada, South Africa, Iran, Australia, Italy, Germany, Nigeria, Mexico, Russia and Brazil. Hosted by Jimmy Carr, the British version features household names like ' This Country ' star Daisy May Cooper, Joe Lycett, Bob Mortimer and ...
BLUE ROAD - THE EDNA O'BRIEN STORY If you were to ask Irish people in which field the island punches above its weight, a lot of people would undoubtedly say literature. With four Nobel laureates, five Booker Prize winners and a constant flow of literary talent, there's a lot of civic pride on both sides of the border about the international impact of its poets, playwrights and authors and their best works. Writers like Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Sally Rooney, Colm Tobin, Anna Burns, Conor McPherson, John Banville, John Boyne, Maggie O'Farrell, Sebastian Barry, Joseph O'Connor, Louise Kennedy, Claire Keegan and Enda Walsh are carrying on a proud tradition. Before them, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Patrick Kavanagh, John Millington Synge, WB Yeats, Brian Moore, John McGahern, John B Keane and Frank O'Connor blazed a trail. But so did Edna O'Brien who brought an authentic female voice t...