When one of the most famous pop stars in the world marries a British period drama actor, there’s only one name that comes to mind: Denis O’Brien.
The wedding of Dua Lipa and Callum Turner dominated gossip pages for weeks. It began with a civil ceremony at London’s Marylebone Town Hall. Then it transferred to Palermo in Sicily and nearby Bagheria for a multi-day blowout, which included another ceremony at an 18th-century villa, Elton John singing Your Song, a pop-up bookshop taking up an entire city square and a marching band, among other subtle meaningful touches.
It was the most important Sicilian wedding since Michael Corleone married Apollonia Vitelli in The Godfather, local media suggested – though Overheard hopes the Barzinis don’t meddle in this one.
On the periphery was the 90m yacht Nero, flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Costing €490,000 a week to rent, the luxury vessel belongs to O’Brien, who bought it in 2014 and refitted it for even greater opulence. It features, according to the charter website, an Art Deco cocktail lounge and a gym.
The craft’s movements were tracked closely. Its absence from the marina one morning suggested “the couple spent the night and part of today aboard the yacht after leaving Bagheria following the celebrations”, La Sicilia reported. Another victory for Ireland.
Festivities caused some closed piazzas for residents, causing some consternation. Anything that disrupts passeggiata, or the practice of strolling around the city in the evening, is unpopular with Palermitanos.
Lipa and her husband have offered a “cultural gift” to make up for the disruption. A “dialogue was established based on the utmost mutual availability between our respective working groups”, mayor of Palermo Roberto Lagalla said.
She has already provided a traditional cultural gift to Dublin after being photographed skulling pints of Guinness in O’Donoghues of Baggot Street during an after-party for her concert last summer.
Keep the blue flag flying
Many things fly in the Dáil chamber, but not the EU’s banner, as Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews has pointed out in a letter to Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy. The debating arena features a large, nice-looking national flag, which hangs alone.
With the strains of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony implied in the background, Andrews wrote that “it is surprising that unlike most EU member state parliament chambers, Dáil Éireann currently does not display the European flag alongside the national flag”.
He asked that Murphy consider placing one in the chamber “proudly next to the Irish Tricolour”.
Overheard’s travel budget unfortunately does not extend to visiting far-flung parliaments, but we spent a diverting afternoon looking at photos trying to fact-check the claim that the flag flies in “most” member states.
We counted 16 nations that definitely do fly the EU flag, or have at some point, along with four that fly no flag at all (Luxembourg opts for a big portrait of the Grand Duke). We spotted no European emblem alongside the national flag in the chambers of Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands or Portugal.
A spokeswoman for the Ceann Comhairle said it was proposed to fly the flag for the duration of the presidency, and that this would be formally considered by the Committee on Parliamentary Privileges and Oversight this week coming.
Italy has in full swing displayed at least 33 Italian flags alongside its European flag at times, and displaying such a number of Irish Tricolours could be an option for Murphy if she wants to make the order of priority clear.
Superquinn turkey for a New York audience
The vagabond shoes of Earth’s most prestigious magazine, The New Yorker, stepped out of the heart of it and into a more peripheral place – suburban Dublin – in its June 8th issue. The home of Trump and Mamdani, Knicks and Yankees, Sex and the City and Seinfeld, finally turned its attention to a figure of real import: Feargal Quinn, the founder of Superquinn.
Author Anne Enright recounted in an article a time in the early 1970s when her mother had quibbled at the till over being undercharged for a Christmas turkey. She paid the balance and the shop manager asked to keep the receipt for training purposes, offering a box of chocolates in return.
Years later, Enright, as a television producer, was accompanying Quinn on travel adventures (as well as a retail mogul, senator, papal knight, professor, philanthropist and campaigner, he was a TV presenter). The story of the turkey came out, and Quinn showed immediate awareness of the individual incident, though he claimed it happened on the northside, not the side Enright grew up on.
“After the filming was done, Feargal Quinn sent me a hamper, by way of thanks,” wrote Enright in a comma-heavy piece displaying The New Yorker’s Gilded-Age house style.
“It was delivered, by his personal driver, to my mother’s house, in a nice display of suburban glamour.”
You wouldn’t get it in New York.
Texas’s republican Republican
Three years ago, Brandon Herrera rose to minor notoriety on this side of the pond after dressing in a balaclava for a YouTube review of an Armalite rifle. Herrera is a “gunfluencer”, which is a scarcely believable portmanteau of the words “gun” and “influencer” – and apparently a thing one can be these days.
The video, posted on St Patrick’s Day 2023, was entitled “The AR-180: IRA’s Lucky Charm”. In it, Come Out Ye Black and Tans plays in the background and at one point, after the gun jams, Herrera tells the audience: “This is why Ireland is not free.”
While the Provo aesthetic may appeal to the gunfluencer and those he gunfluences, Herrera did note that the IRA were “pretty heavily socialist” and he did not support them. “ I just f***ing hate the British,” he added. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding… mostly.”
Why is this relevant? Herrera does more than fire large guns into the distance for an internet audience: he’s also running for office in Texas. His party rival, Tony Gonzales, withdrew amid allegations of an affair with a staff member who died by self-immolation, so Herrera is now the de facto Republican candidate in his district. Trump won the area 57-42 in 2024.
Herrera wouldn’t be the first American politician to declare a preference for Ireland over “the Brits”, but he’s probably the most heavily armed.
