During my two weeks in i105-107 (I was there for a week of college work experience, but stayed longer out of choice), I was working on news – this involved writing copy, doing interviews (including Eddie Hobbes!) & editing down clips from them, doing vox-pops and putting packages together (including voicing them). They liked the packages well enough to actually air them during the main (12.45pm) iWitness news bulletin… which was nice

Here’s some of them:

“Brief History of Willie O’Dea” package for iWitness News by niallok

“Love is…” package for iWitness News by niallok

I meant to post this on Sunday… Dundalk man Jim Corr’s appeared last weekend on RTÉ’s new Saturday Night Show (hosted by that appalling Cork man Brendan O’Connor). Crap name for a show? Maybe… but at least it’s not “The Brendan O’Connor Show”…

And yes… Jim’s still bonkers… and he’s still going on about the New World Order stuff that he ranted about on the Last Word almost two years ago ahead of the first Lisbon Treaty. He’s still in way out of his depth and still abusing his fame and celebrity to spread this stuff and (repeatedly) promote his activist shite peddling web site.

I mean SURE… he’s entitled to his opinion and he’s certainly entitled to express it if he wants to… (although I believe RTÉ gave him way too much airtime here and any other presenter would have pulled him up on a few points far better than O’Connor could) – but if you’re to believe him, you’d have to believe the following:

“D’ya think that was faked by RTÉ to make their ‘Big Freeze’ report more entertaining?” asked a friend and co-worker of mine, after a Dublin pedestrian was shown on the national broadcaster’s Six-One news programme falling on his arse on an icy footpath, walloping his head in the process.

“No, no I don’t,” I said… And I didn’t. (…primarily because he’d walloped his head in the process…) Still though… eh?

Play him off, Keyboard Cat!

I’d been meaning to blog more recently… had plenty to say… plenty going on. It’s been suggested to me, however, that I don’t go talking online (facebook particularly… here too) specifically about the incident a week ago which led to me having a black eye over the time since then – and it’s been suggested for all the right reasons.

I am going to follow that advice to some degree and not go into any real detail about it. Of course, the minute details of the incident itself aren’t for public consumption as they’re quite personal and it’s not in anyone’s interest really that they be divulged publically. All that needs to be said is that I had a disagreement with someone, he expressed himself physically… and I didn’t get the chance to respond in kind.

Oh… and that I’m fine now!

Well you may know by now that they did it in the UK… In a testament to the power of the Internet, a facebook campaign has succeeded in usurping the X Factor from the Christmas No. 1 slot and installing the most unlikely replacement in the shape of definite song of the moment “Killing in the Name” by Rap metal supremos Rage Against The Machine at the top of the UK “Singles” Chart. Scott Mills announced it just before 7pm on BBC Radio 1’s Chart Show.

The (digital only) sales of the song outstripped second place Joe McElderry’s “The Climb” (which was also available on CD for the last few days) by over 50,000 making it the first download-only Christmas No. 1 and the biggest electronic sale of a song ever in the UK. (David has the figures here).

This isn’t being seen as just a victory for Rage Against the Machine or their song – or even for rock music itself. Moreover, it’s a clear message being sent to Simon Cowell and the whole manufactured TV “talent” competition establishment that has dominated the charts and removed the unpredictability and fun of the pop music charts and the institution that is the Christmas No. 1.

That message seems to have been along the lines of “no thanks, we’d rather have real bands playing real music that they wrote and performed themselves” – and the choice of song to represent that message was a well made one. In other words… “Fuck you, Cowell.. we won’t do what you tell us!”

Here’s the guys in their recent BBC Radio 5 appearance (before the chart was announced) – where they talk about the battle for the No. 1 spot, Simon Cowell & The X Factor, – and play the song itself (featuring various inclusions of the famous “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” line at the end).

UPDATE: The band are now promising that they WILL come to the UK to play a free gig there to celebrate this No. 1 – and they are giving a huge chunk of the proceeds from the downloads of the song directly to the charity “Shelter”.

Meanwhile, the race is still on for the Christmas Number One spot here in Ireland – the chart here being announced on Thursdays – so that’ll be Christmas Eve, this year.

You can do your bit by downloading it on iTunes (as I have done) or eircom music store. The X Factor single’s chances are possibly stronger over here than they were in the UK, unfortunately, as it will have been available on CD for longer than it was there – but you never know!