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Billy Keane Opinion Even a small town like New Ross has a rich historical tapestry – and there is no shortage of stories to be retold across this country

So there I would be in Croke Park singing our anthem and not having much of a clue what I was singing about.

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Billy Keane Opinion Have you heard the one about Sr Carmel, the nun who knows how to get the men to do her bidding?

I was asked to Wexford by a nun. You couldn’t refuse a nun. Especially when the nun is holy, but doesn’t act holy. She just is.

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Billy Keane Opinion I was refused entry by Russians once. Well, it was the Pravda pub in Dublin, but I wasn’t being bolshie

The Taoiseach was distraught. His holiday plans were ruined by Vladimir Putin. The leader of the independent republics of Cork and Ireland has been barred from Russia.

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Billy Keane Opinion 'The good part is we didn’t wait for Vicky Phelan to die – Ireland celebrated and loved her when she was alive'

She fought for the living, and she fought for the dead, and she fought to live. Vicky Phelan died on her terms. Vicky said to a friend last weekend “I’m ready to go now.” She gave her all. Did her very best.

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Billy Keane Opinion Whatever Father Sheehy says or believes, we are all under the same rainbow-shaped umbrella these days

The rainbow flag is flying out the upper front window of the pub. The wild east wind has our colours scrunched up in a wintry fist.

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Billy Keane Opinion Me, Mr Know-All, and I never knew just how much love there is in my home town of Listowel

Ard Chúram’s dementia clients moved virtual knives, forks and spoons around by touching the images and the cutlery expertly with their fingertips. There was a competitive edge to the setting of the table. The game was fast.

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Billy Keane Opinion Lockdown was terrible. I missed the pub, but two doses of Covid have left me feeling anxious for the business

“Time now, please. Have ye no cows to milk?” It’s 6am, and under the proposed licensing legislation, nightclubs will be allowed to open until all hours.

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Billy Keane Opinion Barring someone isn’t easy – least of all a poor divil called El Nino who is prone to cause a storm or two

The crows never shut up over in the wood. It’s no wonder they are hoarse. I’m silent myself for much the same reason. Too much talk. The pub isn’t a place for the silent.

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Billy Keane Opinion The heart is broken, but love knows no boundaries – bereft husband shares agony as wife dies the morning after their wedding

Billy Rowan sits before me in the silence of the closed pub. Head low, teary-eyed, gaunt, Billy is heartbroken. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” I ask. His voice is weak but audible. “Yes.”

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Billy Keane Opinion The FOMO for what’s happening back home is creeping in as I busy myself keeping Spanish wolves from the door

The huge, woolly dogs howled when their owner left the small house which doubled as a kennel. It’s like being in a cabin in the Yukon, what with all the yodelling. The dogs might be huskies or some breed of wolf, but what use would the pets be here in the Costa del Sol?

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Billy Keane Opinion Playing cards for a turkey ‘so big and fierce it had to be trapped with a net like a tiger’ was a serious business back in the day

This is one I was told in the pub on Budget Day. The man in the story ordered his usual. It was a large bottle of stout, off the shelf. Warm as beastings it was, on a hot day (beastings is the first milk produced by a cow or goat after giving birth).

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Billy Keane Opinion Budget 2023: It’s as if we wrote to Santa early and we were given all we asked for

The price of drink was left untouched in the Budget. The pint is sacrosanct. No price increase, yet again. Good news shines through the opaque black stuff.

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Billy Keane Opinion It’s a thankless race to the bottom when it comes to judging jeans at the races

Orla Diffily asked me to judge the fashion event on the Monday of Listowel Races. I refused.

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Billy Keane Opinion After a wretched few years, my beloved Listowel Races are back – and so is a once-a-year romance

The Listowel Races start tomorrow, and for one week our town will be the centre of both the known and the unknown universes.

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Billy Keane Opinion Memories of our sunny summer melt like ice cream, as we prepare to hibernate

It’s only the bare week since Ireland was sunny. Now the search is on for the summer hibernating jumpers and where did I leave my coat?

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Billy Keane Opinion Between my snoring and those noisy crows, getting a good night’s sleep is tiresome

It’s 5.17am and I’m wide awake. Up before the birds and their dawn chorus, ready for milking – if I had cows to milk. This is the time when a bar man should be sleeping. I wonder if there’s a job going as an auxiliary postman.

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Billy Keane Opinion As our Ukrainian friends watch reality TV of the very worst kind, the eyes of history are fixed on us

There was a time when you would need binoculars to see the TV. The televisions grew longer, wider and slimmer. Twenty-one inches was considered to be a ferocious size of a weapon of a television and people were worried they would go blind from watching the huge screen.

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Billy Keane Opinion This early back-to-school lark is killing tourism, not to mention the summer fun had by children

Most people think lies were invented when Twitter and Facebook came into our lives, but the story that went out every year around this time when I was a young lad was the one about the burning down of the school. We were delighted.

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Billy Keane Opinion Even a dash to the Croke Park toilet wasn’t enough to get rid of space invader who gave me Covid

I did the time, but there was no crime. Banged up I was, under house arrest after two red bars showed up on the Covid test. I’m not too bad, thanks for asking. I have it down on a man who was nearly close enough to kiss me at the All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Galway.

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Billy Keane Opinion Deadly enemies are best pals and men are falling in love with their wives – all is well in the Kingdom of Kerry

The All-Ireland is won and July is barely done. All is well in the Kingdom. One wag paraphrased Marty Morrissey when he said: “There won’t be a child washed or a tourist milked this week in Kerry.”

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Billy Keane Opinion Don’t mind the muggy weather, it’s always sunny side up when it comes to All-Ireland weekend

There used to be an advert on TV for Harp lager, and it had this parched man sweating in some desert place where water was dearer than diesel. The ad would be banned today for giving people mind for drink. The strange thing was, I only ever got mind for fried eggs after watching it.

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Billy Keane Opinion Don’t be giving in to giving out – there’s always a solution, so keep on trying, no matter what

Sean O’Shea, or Seanie Shea, as he is known in Kerry, kicked the winning point against Dublin last Sunday from 53 metres out. The breeze was in his face and was strong enough to stiffen limp flags.

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Billy Keane Opinion Farewell, Garry – our births may have been separated by decades, but our friendship will last for ever

It was back in the days before the motorways when the only by-passes completed in Ireland were constructed by cardiologists and the country’s two-lane autobahn went only as far as Naas, fully 20km from Dublin.

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Billy Keane Opinion Yes, some hotels are guilty of overcharging – but they’ve brought us under the one roof and into the same bed

The days when the travelling GAA fans stayed with the neighbours and relations are back. There are more mattresses on floors than in the time of the Troubles. Tall men’s long legs hang off the end of sofas. Camp beds have been requisitioned from army surplus stores.

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Billy Keane Opinion Years as a barman taught me not to engage with someone who has a story too long to go into

The walled garden was in full bloom. It was the sort of a place where you would expect to find ‘Adam loves Eve’ carved into a tree. The man and his mother sat sipping apple juice in the gardens of Tintern Abbey in Co Wexford.

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Billy Keane Opinion Anxiety of an expectant grandad is hard to take. I’d the morning sickness without any drink

These are the weeks in June when the summer suddenly bursts out all over. The hedgerows on the roads barely travelled are a resurrection of wildflowers, in these the best days of their short but glorious lives.

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Billy Keane Opinion How Google Maps sent the art of conversation in new direction on our information highways

Hardly anyone stops to ask for directions anymore. It’s all sat-nav now or Google Maps. Connections are impersonal. The days of the extrovert are numbered. Long live the talkers.

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Billy Keane Opinion If Trump gets back in, there’s no chance he’ll nuke us – not when he owns a five-star hotel here

The Man Who Knows Everything (TMWKE) was certain he was right. “Ye’re after causing terrible trouble in the world,” he said, “what with pandemics, wars and the boiling of the bacon separate to the cabbage.”

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Billy Keane Opinion Man-eating tigers, cheetahs and polar bears have nothing on the gouger gander from Ballyfinboy

The Serengeti is home to voracious lions and cheetahs. What’s left of the Arctic is populated by ferocious polar bears. Indian tigers are man-eaters and the Amazon is full of nasty piranha. We too have our predators in rural Ireland.

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Billy Keane on the legacy of John B Keane: ‘Even though Dad didn’t last the test of time, his work did’

Dad — or John B Keane, as he is known to you all — moved on 20 years ago, on May 30, 2002 to be exact.