Callely has paid a higher price than a prison sentence

Ivor Callely was first elected as a TD in 1989, the year I joined Northside People. He was a great man for feeding stories to his local paper, always making sure you knew that he was giving you the 'exclusive' first and at the expense of the national media.

The first time I met him was on Bull Island causeway in the heart of his Dublin North Central constituency. I was working on a story about a proposal to breach the causeway to prevent silting in the bay. Naturally, Callely was giving me the lowdown first. If memory serves me correctly, he pulled up that day in a Merc. A lot of flash for a mere backbench TD but each to his own, I suppose. Dapper as always, he was smartly dressed in a suit, which was pretty much how you'd expect your local representative to look.

•Ivor Callely pictured in his office just after his appointment as Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, June 2002. PHOTO BY DARREN KINSELLA

Callely seemed to subscribe to the theory that to be successful, you had to appear successful. It would be at least another decade before he would be appointed a junior minister but that day he already looked the part. Seemingly, in Ivor Callely's mind, being a local TD was simply a dress rehearsal for greater things to come.

His stated ambition to one day become Taoiseach was not as fanciful as it seemed. Callely was one of the biggest vote-getters in the country and was nothing short of a local legend with his constituents. He had a reputation as a hard worker; a fixer; a politician who got things done. He was a familiar face on the funeral circuit.

But 'Ivor the Engine' was viewed with suspicion by his political rivals. The late Sean Dublin Bay Loftus once told me in no uncertain terms that he had little time for him. Unsurprisingly, Callely was seen as a constant threat to the Haughey political dynasty. His critics dismissed him as a delusional dreamer with ideas above his station.

But it was impossible for Bertie Ahern to ignore such a consistently strong performer in elections and Callely finally got the nod in 2002 when he was given a junior ministry at the Department of Health. He was later moved to the Department of Transport before it all came crashing down spectacularly over a free paint job to his Clontarf home by a developer who had carried out work for the Eastern Health Board in the early 1990s, when Callely had served as chairman.

From this point onwards, his political career descended into chaotic freefall. In the wake of his resignation from ministerial office, Callely's star was on the wane and his once-loyal constituents dumped him as a TD in the 2007 General Election. Bertie gave him a dig-out by appointing him to the Seanad but this would turn out to be Callely's undoing. His tenure as a senator was dogged by a long-running expenses controversy that ultimately resulted in his jailing this week for making fraudulent mobile phone claims.

Ivor Callely, now aged 56, is a shadow of his former self. He seems haunted by the events of recent years and the stress has clearly taken its toll. Personally, I feel sympathy for his family. Jailing Callely doesn't seem to make economic sense. The cost of imprisoning him will be far greater than the few grand he ripped us off for. But the general consensus seems to be that the judge made the right decision on the basis that there was a breach of trust involved by a person holding a position of public office. It's hard to argue with her reasoning.

Ivor Callely is highly unlikely to make a political comeback. He has suffered enormous reputational damage that far outweighs the length of his custodial sentence. Even if he only serves a portion of his time behind bars, he will have paid a high price for his serious errors of judgement and blatant sense of entitlement.

And for that, he should be afforded the opportunity to rebuild his life as a private citizen.

Rip-off Ireland laid bare by Garth Brooks fiasco

Not since JR Ewing was shot in 1980 has a man in a Stetson hat proved such a talking point in this country.

But despite global coverage of the Garth Brooks Croker fiasco, I expect the international media have already moved on from a story that has dominated the headlines here for the past number of weeks (seems longer somehow, doesn't it?).

•Garth Brooks pictured in Croke Park earlier this year at the announcement of his planned concerts

In true Irish style, no party to this sorry mess comes out in a particularly good light in the aftermath of the cancellations. As the blame game continues, we have politicians, the GAA, Dublin City Council, the promoter, local residents and, darn it, even the great country crooner himself, taking their share of the flak.

Notwithstanding the High Court injunction threat, which has since been withdrawn, three sold-out gigs could have gone ahead had Brooks not thrown a strop and taken his ball back. Frankly, his "five or none at all" ultimatum was a crass display of brinkmanship that won him little sympathy. Similarly, comparing which concerts to play as being like having to choose between children was mawkish sentimentality at its worst. It's hardly 'Sophie's Choice', Garth.

So should we be collectively embarrassed as a nation, as has been widely suggested? Well, yes and no.

In my view Dublin City Council management are to be applauded for not bowing to the considerable pressure from political and commercial interests to reverse its decision to only allow three concerts. A number of politicians did themselves a disservice by issuing populist statements to the media calling for a solution to the standoff, while naturally being cognisant of the local residents' grievances. Er, isn't that what Dublin City Council's decision sought to achieve in the first place?

We should rightly be embarrassed by a system that allows 400,000 tickets to go on sale for concerts that have yet to receive a licence. This is a particularly Irish way of doing business and will no doubt force a belated review of our licensing laws. The army of loyal Garth Brooks fans who bought tickets were caught in the crossfire and it's hard not to feel sorry for them.

Much has been made of the reputational damage caused to Ireland by the controversy. Residents were urged to support the five concerts in the national interest, with dire warnings that €50m would be lost to the local economy if they didn't go ahead.

I certainly have a degree of sympathy for genuinely struggling hotel and pub businesses affected by the cancellation of the concerts. I have also been impressed at how some hotels have been facilitating full refunds to their customers owing to the exceptional circumstances involved.

But let's cast our minds back to January when the tickets first went on sale and a number of Dublin hotels immediately hiked up their rates to cash in on the Garth Brooks bonanza. This type of behaviour smacks of greedy opportunism and lays bare the rip-off culture alive and well in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

And for that, we should be genuinely embarrassed.

Critics' reaction to Mrs Brown movie is hilarious

Mind-numbingly boring, off-the-wall, totally hilarious and outrageously vulgar. But enough about some of the reviews that have greeted the release of 'Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie'.

If you don't find the antics of the matriarchal Finglas street trader funny, you can guarantee yourself a good laugh by Googling a selection of the serious critics' reaction to Brendan O'Carroll's first big screen outing. Some of them can be very grumpy, precious individuals, to say the least. It's hard to know what bothers them most: the commercial success of the Mrs Brown franchise or the lack of subtitles in the film.

They might have preferred it if the movie was three hours long and set in a monastery in Tibet. Naturally, it would have to be filmed in a single sequence on a handheld camera with the actors eschewing a script in favour of some self-indulgent improvisation. You can almost predict the plaudits coming off the pages - 'brave', 'groundbreaking', 'exceptional', 'challenging'.

•PRAMTASTIC: A scene from 'Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie'

The point that many critics miss is that 'Mrs Brown's Boys' is not art for art's sake. It's not even art. It's old fashioned entertainment and does exactly what it says on the tin. The sexual references and bad language have certainly polarised opinion. But taste is a subjective thing and millions of people around the globe love Mrs Brown and her on-screen family. She certainly has her knockers (fnar fnar!) but TV viewing figures consistently show them to be very much in the minority.

Brendan O'Carroll is no fan of the critics as he believes many of them have been unkind to him since his early days. He has been at pains to point out that he writes for his fans, not the reviewers. But even O'Carroll must have been taken aback (and hopefully amused) by some of the brickbats flung at Mrs Brown's first big screen venture. Frankly, suggestions that the film is racist, sexist and homophobic are pretty wide of the mark. Criticising the vulgarity of a film featuring Mrs Brown is like saying you were shocked by the level of violence in a Bruce Lee movie.

There's a scene in the classic American comedy 'Seinfeld' where the hapless George Costanza tries to chat up a woman by telling her he's a writer. She seems initially impressed until he discloses that he's writing a sitcom, at which point she laughs with derision at what she perceives to be such a low art form. It reminded me of some of the critics' reaction to Brendan O'Carroll's work.

So while 'Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie' will not be to everyone's taste, it's already a box office sensation here and is likely to propel O'Carroll and his team to even greater heights of success. Quite rightly, he will be more focused on his core audience's reaction to the film than the elitist, snobby views of some of the begrudgers. He should make a sequel, just to annoy them.