I am going to chase Louis Walsh with a hammer

You better run, bitch.

Louis Walsh, you fucking gremlin. You evil Monchichi-looking piece of shit. You bag of snakes in a human skin suit. You better hope your little chipmunk legs can carry you fast enough to outrun a forty year old woman and her hammer. The hammer of justice. I won’t even run to catch a bus but in this case I’m willing to make an exception. Hop on your little bicycle if you want, you pound shop Jigsaw puppet that was found in a ditch. It won’t do you any good.

So yeah, I watched the Boyzone documentary.

And by watched I mean I inhaled all three episodes in one sitting, and have been plotting Louis Walsh’s demise ever since. Some people, when asked about the first album they bought or the first gig they went to, have very cool answers to these questions. “My first live gig? Yeah I went to REM with my older sister.” Well, I simply can’t relate. First single I ever bought? Boyzone, Key to My Life. First album I ever bought? Boyzone, Said and Done. First proper gig? Boyzone, the Point Depot. For a couple of years there it was Boyzone all the way down with me. That album was thirteen old timey pounds and I had to save my pocket money for unending weeks to buy it.

One half of my bedroom was dedicated to posters and pictures of Boyzone, and the other half was taken up with non-threatening miscellaneous hunks, the Spice Girls and for some reason a big Mission: Impossible poster of Tom Cruise’s face in shadow. But the Boyzone half was the carefully-curated main focus. To say I was deeply invested in this band is an understatement. I coveted Georgetown hats and jerseys with the bulldog mascot because Shane, my favourite, wore them all the time. I secretly wished I wasn’t quite so tall because he said in an interview that he liked short girls. As if this was genuinely going to be the thing that stood in the way of eleven year old me and her boyband crush from North Dublin with a shaved bit in his eyebrow.

Shane, my beloved!

Early on in Boyzone’s career, my parents brought me and my also-obsessed cousin to the Mitchelstown Festival, a free music event that had Boyzone in the lineup that summer. I mostly remember radio legend Tony Fenton running around onstage while introducing the acts, saying that the crowd were bustin’ his chops and not having a clue what he was on about. When Boyzone’s set finished, we raced around to the back of the stage to see them leaving, all five of them crammed into a tiny Fiat. I think one of them had his leg in a cast. Maybe Keith? I took terrible photos of them onstage in their all-white outfits, which made it into the ever-expanding bedroom wall collage. I was busted shortly afterwards when my cousin saw them and realised I’d kept all the clearest ones for myself even though we were supposed to share them when they were all developed. Sorry Danielle, I was kind of a bitch about it in fairness.

As is often the way with these things, my Boyzone fervour died down once I started secondary school. One day during a discussion about posters in art class, a cool blonde girl was called on and asked who her favourite band was. She said The Fugees and I realised in that moment that if I had been asked, and had truthfully said Boyzone, I would have been mortified to admit it in front of the whole class. I moved on to other music and eventually became a full-on metalhead by the time I started college. I dressed a bit like a goth, but with more purple, although I was much too smiley and cheerful to properly classify as goth. But even with all that, there was a night at a college classmate’s house party when a bunch of us found an old Boyzone album in her bedroom. I think she was embarassed at first, until we insisted on playing it and drunkenly shrieked along to Love Me For a Reason, thrilled to discuss who our favourite member was when we were twelve. Those were our guys!

It’s safe to say I want nothing but good things for the remaining members. I don’t even like it when people are mean about Ronan Keating, for god’s sake! I adored Keith Duffy’s run on Coronation Street and I really think he’s got charisma for days. I felt vindicated in my preteen crush when I saw how good Shane Lynch looked in the doc. (I don’t love the born-again stuff from the last while but he seems to be doing well and I’m glad!) I’m 100% here for Mikey’s mafia don era, although I was a bit saddened that he decided not to reunite with the boyz for a pint at the end of the last episode. Staged though it was, they really did seem delighted to see each other again. But if that’s what’s best for Mikey’s own wellbeing then good for him. They were literal teenagers when Louis Walsh shot them out of a cannon and left them to fend for themselves while he gleefully fed them to the tabloid wolves, probably giggling maniacally the whole time, like the cursed garden gnome that he is. The cheerful way he recounts all the cruel things he did really has to be seen to be believed. And honestly, the whiplash from being in floods of tears when the lads recount Stephen Gately’s funeral with such tenderness, seeing the ferocity with which they still love and miss him, to wanting to tear Louis Walsh’s smug Podge & Rodge head off really was something.

Every band that man has been involved in should get together on a remote island and hunt him for sport. I feel like Jedward would definitely be on board with this, as either presenters or participants (both?) and that’s the only reality show I want to see that sociopathic little hobgoblin take part in.

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Parish notes

• The second series of No Worries If Not just finished up on RTÉ last week and my god they were really cooking with this season. Sketch shows are such a tricky thing to pull off but this cast and the writers did a genuinely brilliant job. It’s on the RTÉ Player and I really recommend it. A weatherman skit from the last episode had me in actual hysterics, tears pouring down my face, the whole job lot. I love this cast of cuties.

• Speaking of sketch shows, I also watched the four-part SNL documentary on Sky, one of the many (many) things marking the show’s 50th anniversary. And it was only then I learned that Saturday Night Live is NINETY MINUTES LONG. That is an objectively insane length for a sketch show to be, even with a musical guest! How have they been getting away with that for fifty years!? I love Bowen Yang as much as the next person, but come on!

• Gladiators is back for another series and I stand by everything I said about it before. It continues to be the best thing on television and I am positively GIDDY every time I hear the theme song. And there’s been a huge development! A NEW GLADIATOR! AND SHE’S IRISH! Cyclone is a power lifter from Wexford and she looks like a Sailor Moon baddie who’s going to kick your fucking ass. She’s a heel character too and, honestly, good for her! The girls are hardly ever heels! Ate them, Cyclone!

• I’m obsessed with Power Wash Simulator on the Switch. Hear me out. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like, you clean things with a power washer and my god it is hands down one of the most satisfying games I’ve ever played. You get text messages throughout the game lining up your next jobs, and a storyline begins to unfold. Just why is everything in this town so thoroughly manky? What’s the deal with the volcano everyone keeps mentioning? And where is the mayor’s cat? It’s an excellent way to unwind and playing it while listening to a podcast or an audiobook is basically mindfulness. It’s so fucking good. In fact, I’m going to go play it right now, this mud-encrusted Ferris Wheel won’t clean itself.