Acting the Maggot 🍔✈️

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic returns with a sense of glee as we trundle towards good ol’ April. We’re here with news and funnies covering the Irish at home and abroad. Like this bit of craic? Ask your mates to sign up here, le do thoil.

News from Home

Your Order’s Gonna Be a Bit Late. Look, this could happen to anyone (okay, not everyone; a few people), but there is something quintessentially Irish about what happened to Oisin Lenehan this week. The 29-year-old had just moved to Melbourne, Australia, and decided to order an Uber Eats takeaway. Only problem was he ordered his fast-food feast to be delivered to a former address almost 10,000 miles away in Dublin. Oisin’s attempts at getting a refund have gone viral, with some reporting that he has been inundated with requests for dates. Seems like the type of man who won’t forget birthdays and anniversaries.

Turning the Tables. Few Irish business figures get as much stick as Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary. He’s become a Mr Burns-esque figure people love to hate. Why? Because no-frills airline Ryanair, famous for its penny-pinching, would charge you for using the bathroom if it could. Anyway, some cheeky restaurant staff decided to get their own back when O’Leary visited their establishment, charging him for the “extra leg-room” at his table. O’Leary did see the funny side.

Kids Are Alright. There are some green shoots for the Boys in Green (Ireland’s down-on-its-luck national soccer team) and faint hopes we might qualify for the 2026 World Cup. Yet, we must give a shoutout to the Ireland U17 team, which qualified for its first-ever World Cup. The youngsters will head to Qatar for the tournament in November, and let’s hope they inspire the older lads because some of us fans really, really want that North American road trip next year (providing Trump lets us in 😉).

Dark Future. One of Northern Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions – The Dark Hedges – faces an uncertain future. For many, it was just a particularly scenic piece of roadway surrounded by trees. Game of Thrones changed that, as it was used as the location for the King’s Road. The trees got battered by the recent Storm Eowyn, and they are also coming to the end of their natural life. A new plan is in place to conserve the site and hopeflully ensure GOT fans keep coming to spend their touristy bucks in good ol’ Norn Iron.

The Irish Influence

It’s fair to say that Frances Black isn’t too well known outside of Ireland, at least not to people unfamiliar with terms like fax machine and landline. Anyhow, Black was a popular folk singer, gaining a lot of domestic success in the 80s and 90s alongside her more famous sibling, Mary. Later, she turned to politics, getting elected to the Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate) in 2016. Now, the question is, why are we telling you about this relatively obscure former singer and low-key politician in our Irish Influence section? Well, the rumor mill is in overdrive that she is going to run for President. She is appearing on the Late Late Show tonight, and political insiders think she will announce her intentions to Paddy Kielty on Ireland’s biggest talk show.

Cúpla Focal

It's like all our birthdays have come at once for Cúpla Focal this week: Eight Irish-English words/phrases have been added to the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). They are acting the maggot (to act foolishly), spice bag (a dish made of chips, curry, spices and chicken goujons), debs (slang term for debutante ball), blaa (a type of bread roll), ludraman (lazy person), morto (extremely embarrassed) mineral (soft drink; soda) and class (brilliant).

Blast from the Past

In late March 1970, Ireland won its first Eurovision Song Contest. Dana’s victory with  “All Kinds of Everything” would be the first of seven victories for Ireland (a record now shared with Sweden since 2023). Now, something funny happened around the mid to late 1990s. Ireland had won the contest in 1992, 93, 94, and 96, meaning they had to host the contest each subsequent year after winning. Suddenly, our entrants got a bit shite. The conspiracy theorists (and The Craic is among them) opined that Ireland was deliberately sending poor entrants because they didn’t want the expense of continuing to host Eurovision. Anyway, we COULD show you a video of Dana’s win on this special dana-versary (sorry), but we couldn’t ignore the chance to share the best parody of the whole 90s Eurovision conspiracy – the inimitable Father Ted.

And One Last Thing….

In Ireland, the clocks go forward late tomorrow night (or early Sunday morning if you want to be pedantic). People like to grumble and ask what’s the point of the old daylight saving time in this day and age, but spare a thought for the lads working at the Irish Museum of Time, Waterford. They have around 1,000 timepieces to adjust over the weekend, many of them rare artifacts that require surgical precision. Some of the clocks are worth a fortune, too, so you wouldn’t want to be acting clumsy. We know it sounds like a “boring dad” type place to visit, but it’s one of the “Waterford Treasures” – part of a collection of attractions in one of Ireland’s most underrated cities. If you’re down that part of the island, it’s worth popping in. You can bring your old Casio Calculator Watch and get it valued.

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