Anthony Neeson began his career in journalism with the Tyrone Times in Dungannon in 1995 before freelancing with Belfast daily and Sunday titles in both news and sport. He joined the Andersonstown News as Sports Editor, before moving across to the News Desk as a reporter, eventually becoming Deputy Editor. Anthony also spent time as Deputy Editor of Daily Ireland and was appointed Editor of the Andersonstown News in 2016. Anthony is also the Ireland correspondent with the Irish Echo in New York.
Famed chef Niall McKenna will be back in his native West Belfast later this month to address the West Belfast Small Business Roundtable.
ONE of the most memorable images of recent Irish history was the release of the Guildford Four. Wrongly convicted of the IRA bombings of Guildford and Woolwich in 1974, the three West Belfast men, Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon and Paddy Armstrong, along with Paddy’s English girlfriend Carole Richardson were sentence to 35 years in prison.
SDLP Leader Claire Hanna has welcomed Taoiseach Micheál Martin's call for greater clarity on the circumstances that would trigger a referendum on Irish unity.
Mary-Elaine Tynan Don Wycherley The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong Mum from the Glen Road, all siblings were born in Belfast, she grew up in Dublin, spent her childhood in Belfast and Cushendall. She says that although she sounds like a Dub, she’s a Belfast woman. I went to school in Dublin and I had a music teacher who was single at the time who then just after I left school married Paddy Armstrong. I became a teacher years later and ended up working with her but I was also writing at the time (I worked with Paddy’s wife Caroline)> Gerard Conlon died in 2017 ? and basically I interviewed Paddy (didn’t really trust the media) Paddy was very media shy, he’s not like Gerry and Paul, he’s a very shy person. When Paddy got out of prison, he couldn’t cope. He was too afraid to go back to Belfast because he was afraid that someone was going to put a bullet in him because he thought that people still thought that he was guilty because what the British judicial system did when they got out they started a whispering campaign that they got out on a technicality. So Paddy was really media shy, so when I met up with him, so when Gerry Conlon died his wife said to me the media are starting to ask for interviews, and I was working for the Sunday independent at the time and she said would you interview him and I said of course, and it was the first interview he did in about 20 years. Based on that we decided to make a documentary, I was working with RTÉ radio at the time (think it was the 25th anniversary of their release).To make the doc we went back to England and went back to Guildford where he had never been until he was arrested, we went back to London where he had been squatting, we went back to the Old Bailey, and we formed a really strong relationship and on the basis of that he asked me to write his memoir and I said no way, I can not take the responsibility, it’s too important a story and I don’t feel qualified to do it. (Agreed) worked on it for the next year and it was a really hard process because Paddy is so shy and only tells the funny stories. He only likes to talk about making prison hooch, having the craic and all the mad stuff, he doesn’t want to talk about the dark stuff like being put in solitary. So it ended up I’d have to interview people who he was in prison with like this guy called Ronnie McCartney who was an IRA man from Belfast who was in prison at the same time at Paddy and was very good to Paddy. The IRA lads were very good to Paddy because they knew he wasn’t one of them and they also saw how soft and gentle he was. Paddy nearly got himself into a lot of trouble in prison because he was a target, you know. He was so shocked when he was in prison, he hadn’t a clue how to cope, so they looked after him and Ronnie in particular looked after him. So I interviewed people like Ronnie for the book. (Also interview Paddy’s solicitor Alastair Logan and prisoner officers._The play is based on the book. So the play we picked key moments out of the memoir and they’re dramatized. I was approached to write a play for the 50th anniversary. I had no idea how to write a play. When I got asked by a local theatre in Clontarf in Dublin. Friend who works for RTE helped her write the first draft and after that I looked for an actor and I had only one guy in mind and it was Don Wycherley because I saw him on the staff in The Abbey and he eventually agreed to work with me on it and he was very non committal and we began working through the draft we had and he read the memoir twice and he felt very strongly that this was a story that could be told on stage, And he and I worked on it and rewrote it together over a year and we ended up with the stage play two years ago that became the play that has now been touring for the last two years. Everything in the play, even though they’re dramatized, they’re Paddy’s words.If people are afraid that it’s going to be grim and dark, it is that, but it is also really funny, because Paddy is hilarious. He’s got that black Belfast sense of humour. Don plays all the various different people through the eyes of Paddy. I think it works really well as a one man show.I felt such a responsibility to tell Paddy’s story, to do it justice after such an injustice was done to him. I also wanted people to remember him and know him in a way that most people don’t. They felt like they know Gerry through In The Name of The Father and through various other things that Gerry did over the years. They didn’t know Paddy and I wanted them to know Paddy, the man who had this awful injustice but is so much more than this. He is hilarious and forgiving and kind and he’s loving. People have been so moved by it. We had people last night who have seen it for the third and fourth time. We’re going back to the Lyric because we sold out last time in the Naughton Studio, we are bringing it back to the main stage. (Been around Ireland and England with Paddy’s story, going to US and Edinburgh next year.) Dublin audiences, unless they’re from the North, it’s a story to them and they invest in it as a piece of theatre and they love it. Northern audiences sometimes they are watching something that they remember. Northern audiences they go quiet and they first show in the Lyric it was really disarming because Don, who is on the stage, he’s talking his energy from the audience, and he’s going ‘they’ve gone deftly silence, they don’t like it’ but they’re listening intently and they’re feeling it and they’re remembering, but they laugh in the right places and they gasp in the right places, but the feelings are different and the experiences are different and they jumped up at the end and gave an amazing response. But in England it’s a different experience again because often there are people who went through what it was like to be Irish in England in the seventies. And they’re kind of retraumatised. One woman told us that she was in London when it all happened and she was walking by a park and she got pulled into the park and got raped. She had red hair and freckles and looked very Irish and the Irish were persona non grata at the time so she couldn’t go to the police because she felt that she wouldn’t be believed and she said that was what it was like to be Irish in London in the seventies and eighties. You couldn’t be safe being Irish so she never reported that crime. She said I know this play is about Paddy but it is also about what it was like to be Irish at a certain period in history. And she said this has given me comfort.To me it has been the greatest honour of my career to tell this story because it means different things to different people and it’s a true privilege and I ask people to come and see it.
An Ardoyne residents’ group has rubbished claims by a DUP MLA that it was involved in talks with the Orange Order to facilitate parades through the district. The claim was made by North Belfast MLA Philip Brett on BBC Radio Ulster’s Talk Back programme. Between 2016 and 2024 the Parades Commission ruled that the July 12 return parade could not pass Ardoyne Shops. During the interview Mr Brett claimed that after “discussions between the Orange Order and resident and Political representatives” that for the past two years return parades have taken place on July 13. “That was a result of dialogue, discussion and compromise,” he added. Crumlin Ardoyne Residents Association rubbished the claims. In a statement the group said: “For the record, CARA made it clear to the Parades Commission that we are against any such return parades and specifically the parades on 13thJuly 2025 and 14th July 2026. “In spite of this, the Parades Commission chose to allow the Orange Order to parade up the Crumlin Road between the Nationalist areas of Mountainview and Ardoyne.
TRIBUTES have been paid to Lenadoon man Paddy Elliott who passed away on Monday. Paddy was the husband of the late Sally and father to Pearse, Eamonn, Brendan, Kevin, Sean, Sarah and Ciara. He died in hospital surrounded by his family. A life-long republican and Gael, his son Pearse led tributes to his father on social media. “He ran his race and fought the good fight,” wrote Pearse, “Every day was a life lived and on his own unique terms with our father Paddy Elliott who has passed one day before his 83rd birthday. “He hurled into his 50s and won an All-Ireland silver double's handball championship with Johnnsy Dempsey after a quadruple by-pass. According to those that would know, he was unbeatable on the cobbles and gable walls at street handball with Young Turks twenty years younger than him because he had a kill shot that would hit the last brick in the gable wall."
North Belfast MP John Finucane has said that today's High Court judgement "has not determined that an Orange Order parade should proceed down the Garvaghy Road".
IT’S hard to believe that Pulling Moves was on our screens 23 years ago.
SETTLER violence in the West Bank is part of an Israeli policy to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian territory, according to an Israeli human rights activist who was in Belfast this week.
A POIGNANT ceremony took place on Sunday at Milltown Cemetery to remember the life of Con Neeson on the 50th anniversary of his murder. Con, who was 49, was brutally attacked by the Shankill Butchers on the evening of August 1 1976 after he made his way to his Clifton Crescent home after earlier that evening calling out the numbers at a bingo session at St Kevin’s Hall. He died in hospital in the early hours of August 2 in the Mater Hospital. On Sunday members of the wider Neeson family gathered for a ceremony at his grave in Milltown Cemetery where his nephew Pat spoke about Con, and musician Gerry McCabe sang a number of songs associated with the father-of-two – Isle of Innisfree and Danny Boy. Pat said that 50 years on from his murder Con is still remembered by his family and friends. “Con was known as the Quiet Man," he said, "long before the film was made. He probably owed the title to his two older brothers, Charlie and Davy. Let’s be honest nobody could a word in between those two. Con was a founding member of the National Club when it opened in Berry Street before moving to Queen Street. He had a passion for billiards and snooker. “He was a community worker long before the job was created and he did it for free. The old saying that he was one of life’s true gentlemen was certainly true about Con, he put himself out for everyone, regardless of their background. He loved music and dancing.” Pat added: “Con’s greatest love was his family. His wife Jean, his daughters Margaret and Rose, his brothers Charlie and Davy, his sisters Elizabeth, Mary and Sheila, his nephews and nieces. Many of us have fond memories of his kindness and generosity.” Wreaths were laid at Con’s grave from the Neeson family in Belfast and Canada.
KEEP ON TRUCKING: A powerful delegation from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, led by President Sean O'Brien, was in West Belfast this morning to visit Áras Uí Chonghaile — the James Connolly Centre — and meet with the leadership of Ireland's 'Strongest Union' SIPTU.
IS a united Ireland inevitable? No, according to SDLP leader Claire Hanna, who added that it needs to be worked at. Former Ulster Unionist councillor Linzi McLaren believes that a united Ireland is inevitable but not immediate. The only panellist who agreed with the question during the Féile an Phobail debate at St Mary’s University College was Newtownards writer Claire Mitchell, who contended that a united Ireland is indeed inevitable.
TWO North Belfast actresses are set for the Lyric stage this Friday in Marie Jones’ The Blind Fiddler. Kerri Quinn and Sarah Reid join a stellar cast including West Belfast actors Paddy Jenkins and Antoinette Morelli and Terence Keeley, as well as Ian McElhinney and Richard Clements. With traditional music at the heart of the play – and with Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in town – the ensemble on stage is complete by renowned trad musicians Cathal Hayden and Máirtín O´Connor. The drama/comedy is inspired by a true story and follows Kathleen Gormley from her childhood, raised above a pub in working-class Belfast, which was an oasis for traditional music during the dark days of the Troubles and explores family, memory and cultural identity. With Matthew McElhinney directing we can expect the unexpected as music and drama collide on the Lyric stage. Kerri Quinn is a familiar face on our television screens including Coronation Street and Hope Street and has just recently finished filming in Twinbrook writer Michael Magee’s Close To Home which is due to be screened on Channel Four. “Working on this play is like having a bit of craic with your mates, because we all know each other, with Antoinette, Paddy and Terry – we are all good friends and have worked with each other at different points of our careers. “I love Marie’s writing. She has this earthiness about her and the comedy within it, but it’s a beautiful, heartbreaking story. The first time they did this play it was an hour and twenty minutes straight through but now it’s been expanded so much more and even the set alone is mammoth and with live musicians.” As a former Irish dancer, Kerri says that for the play to be taking place during the Fleadh “is just amazing”. “The music in the show is so powerful and so beautiful, and we’ve got a stellar cast. It’s going to be great.” Sarah Reid is making her main stage Lyric debut in the Blind Fiddler. She is well-known across the local theatre scene for her extensive work in independent, contemporary, and community-driven dramatic productions. Now living in England, Sarah says she’s excited to work with the cast and learn from their experiences. “Being able to work on a Marie Jones play – I have never had the opportunity to do that – it’s very exciting and I’m very excited to be home for the summer. I always wanted to do a show that was based on a working-class family because that’s what I’m from and to have it centred around live music and Irish identity – and music is very big in my family and my daddy is a self-taught saxophone player and my mummy’s side of the family have dabbled a little bit in the bodhran or lilting so there’s something really nice about coming home and being able to showcase elements of my everyday life and my family’s history and being able to present that on stage and so I’m really excited about it.” Sarah says her friends from England are flying into Belfast to experience the Fleadh for the first time. “It’s a really special moment in time and I’m really honoured to be part of it.” During the interview musicians Cathal Hayen and Máirtín O’Connor were arriving to put the actors through their paces. Sarah said the audience will also be impressed with the set design on stage”.“There are so many layers to it, so many surprises, so many opportunities to go from the past and the present. You are looking at pre-Troubles from 1969 right through to you meet my character just after the Good Friday Agreement, so there’s a big span of time that you are transported through time, and through memory and through real life for the family. But I’m really excited for people to come and see it.” The Blind Fiddler runs at the Lyric from July 31 to August 16. Tickets available https://lyrictheatre.co.uk/whats-on/the-blind-fiddler#block--130011184
Belfast-Boston links will a fillip next month when the CEO of Massport — the Massachusetts Port Authority - visits Belfast with his top team.
For the first time, the South's powerhouse economic agency tasked with attracting foreign investment, the Industrial Development Authority, has been told by the Irish Government to act on "a shared island basis" when implementing strategy.
