Jess What We Wanted 🏆☘️

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic is back. We are Post-Paddy’s and Post-Oscars, getting ready for the weekend by delivering news and views of the Irish to your inbox. The Craic is the weekly newsletter from Shift, our app for connecting the global Irish and culturally Irish. Want Shift? Find it here. Want someone you know to have The Craic weekly? Ask them to input their wee email here.

News from Home

She Did It. It was the least surprising award of the evening, but Jessie Buckley got the Oscar and Ireland cheered. Jessie is the first Irish woman to win the Best (leading) Actress award, and the second Irish woman, after the great, great, great Brenda Fricker, to win an acting Oscar. We said earlier in the year that she would become a household name, and, well, we were right.

More Oscars? Martin McDonagh – the Irish writer and director behind the likes of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin – has dropped (as the kids say) the trailer for his sixth film, Wild Horse Nine. McDonagh’s films have 17 Oscar nominations thus far, and with a cast that includes John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Tom Waits (oh yes!), and Sam Rockwell, we think we might be talking about the “O” word come awards season next year.

Rugger. Ah well, we didn’t win the Six Nations Championship, but we did get the Triple Crown (that’s the trophy you get for beating the English, Scottish and Welsh). It came down to the wire, though, with Ireland needing England to beat France in the final game. That put us all in the rare aul situation of cheering for England – even Gerry Adams was doing it – and, to be fair, the English lads tried their best, just coming up short in a thriller.

In Troy We Trust. But hey, the sport keeps coming: Thursday it’s the turn of the Irish football team to raise - and, probably, end up dashing - our hopes. We have the first World Cup Playoff game against Czechia, and if we win that one, we’ll be playing Denmark or North Macedonia next Tuesday. Win that, and, well, you’ll never hear the end of it because the Boys in Green will be going to the World Cup for the first time since 2002.

Paddy’s Fallout. Not much to report on about St Patrick’s Day shenanigans, aside from some funny business in the White House, but the BIG story back home was a float that passed through parades across several counties on the west coast. The float was themed on the Epstein Files, complete with women being chased around a bedroom by men in wigs. It was rightly condemned for making light of the obscenities, not to mention the float’s presence at family-oriented parades. We understand making political points, but what were these guys thinking?

The Craic Recommends. We’re massive Katie Boyle fans here at Craic Towers, so we were delighted to see the Irish comic make her debut under the lights on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon this week. In fact, Katie is the first Irish female comedian to appear on a Tonight Show stand-up slot. Katie’s show deals with the travails and funnies of Irish ‘expatism’ better than any comedian we’ve ever seen. The good news is that we’ve had a look at Katie’s upcoming tour dates, and she’s basically crisscrossing America over the coming weeks and months. Come get your tickets here.

The Irish Influence

Jessie Buckley obviously got the Oscar headlines over here, but there was another milestone for Irish film-making – Richard Baneham became Ireland’s first three-time Oscar winner, scooping his third statuette for Best Visual Effects for Avatar: Fire and Ash. Baneham’s filmography is incredible, having served as the main animator on movie series such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia. You can see in the video below he’s a real whizz, but is he truly the first Irish triple winner? Hmmm, Daniel Day-Lewis has three Best Actor wins, yet there is a little debate over who should really claim him. DDL is proud of his Irish heritage, lives here, and has dual Irish-British citizenship, but we also understand he was born and raised in England. So, to all our British friends, let’s just say we can share him. Fairs? Fairs.

Cúpla Focal

Cónocht an Earraigh – Vernal/Spring Equinox. It’s March 20th, so that means we should technically have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of nighttime here in the aul Nordie Hemisphere. The Ancient Celts and Early Christians put a lot of stock in these turnings of the seasons, and there are even links to the feast of St Patrick. This article from Irish Central explains some of the interesting facts and theories behind it all.

Blast from the Past

Zombie by The Cranberries was released 32 years ago – in September 1994, to be exact. So, it’s not exactly an anniversary, but we wanted to highlight it because it was voted the No. 1 Irish song in history in that Today FM poll we told ya about last week. No quibbles about the result – Zombie is considered an angry masterpiece. The song very much belongs to the late Dolores O’Riordan, who penned it about the killing of two children in an IRA bombing in England a year earlier, while simultaneously leaving its meaning open to the interpretation of the listener. Its emotional depth, and its pain and anger tinged with resolve, can just as easily be applied to the horrors of today. That’s why Zombie is timeless. Oh, and just look at the view count for the official video on YouTube: 1.8 billion - billion with a “B” - and counting.

And One Last Thing….

First up, we hope you all had a wonderful Paddy’s Day/Week/Month so far! This week is extra special now for us too. It’s a Shift anniversary! 🎂 In a Lennon-meets-McCartney sliding doors moment, Blood (Patrick) met Murphy (Paul) two years ago this week, and the world would never be the same again. Ok, perhaps it was not that momentous, but the two lads meeting and striking up a friendship led to Shift, and two years later, we have thousands of people signed up to the app for the global Irish and Irish-ish. We are all, with the exception of the annoyingly youthful Vivienne, a little older, grayer, and (inexplicably) hairier, but you know, it’s been well worth it. Here are a few pics of what we got up to the last few weeks as the team continues to build out the app while having the absolute craic, with all you Irish and Irish-ish.