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Billy Keane Opinion Jonathan Sexton’s Ireland success was always a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ – never mind what he says

Jonathan Sexton is sore. But winning a Grand Slam is the balm for all the aches. We don’t speak too much about the fact he threw himself under the English team in a last-ditch effort to save a try last Saturday evening. And England are very big. I would hate to have to feed them.

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Billy Keane Opinion Johnny Sexton’s father might present me with a severed finger for this, but here’s the truth about those tears

I’ll be driving to Dublin for the big game against England. We’ll be up early because Kerry is far away from everywhere except Kerry. I wish it was game time. The tension is too much.

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Billy Keane Opinion I got home late from Cheltenham and emptied my pockets on the duvet – it was raining sterling

The 2023 Cheltenham racing festival starts next Tuesday. The good suit used for religious occasions such as holy communions, weddings and getting laid out in has been sent to the dry cleaners.

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Billy Keane Opinion Call me fussy, but the Bourbon Creams were far too cheap – and not a drop of drink in them

This story of food, strong drink and a personal consumer journey started with the Bourbon Creams when I was a small boy and De Valera was still in short pants.

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Billy Keane Opinion Chicken out before you go ladling strawberry jam on your nuggets and getting a dodgy schtummick

The schtummick isn’t great by me at the moment. I know schtummick sounds a bit like the German for fermented cabbage, but it’s actually the way people used to speak around here before homogenisation.

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Billy Keane Opinion The shopping part knocked the stuffing out of me – but my trip to Dundrum, seeing all the friendly ‘new Irish’, also warmed my heart

I was there years ago when it was only a small bit bigger than a small town. Dundrum Town Centre has more shops now than small cities have.

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Billy Keane Opinion Six months in a mother and baby prison merits proper redress – the State really should pay up

Our State has penalised babies who spent less than six months in mother and baby homes, and county homes, which were anything but a home. These institutions were mother and baby prisons.

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Billy Keane Opinion If I were Fr Billy, I’d drink pints, tell women to take the pill and hear confessions without sins

The crows are as reliable as any alarm clock. It was they who set it all off concerning the late vocation. If the Catholic Church refuses to take me, I could join a more sensible and practical religion where priests can marry. But more about the priesthood when I figure out exactly what it is I’m writing about.

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Billy Keane Opinion No such thing as half measures when you have a bad back in the middle of a very dry January

The quest I set myself was gigantic. Too big for mere mortals. Too big for gods. Luckily, I escaped from the self-imposed obligation on a technicality. Quests should be kept private in case of failure.

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Billy Keane Opinion How a daring long shot with a two-euro coin took its toll on a ringmaster at a motorway kiosk

There’s a game called rings, and it used to be very popular in pubs. The rubber rings were thrown from a couple of metres on to a series of hooks, screwed into a lacquered wooden board.

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Billy Keane Opinion Browsing at busking or in pubs is unacceptable – the least you can do is fork out for a purple Snack

Grafton Street wasn’t that busy on Tuesday morning. There were no summer throngs licking ice cream, or listening to mellifluous buskers jamming with Bono and Glen Hansard, who sometimes stop by for a tune.

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Billy Keane Opinion Seamus Begley: From possibly the most talented of musical dynasties, the big man is asleep but his music will live on forever

THE sun has sunk in the west.

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Billy Keane Opinion Lunar lovers, canny Christmas shoppers in January and a little disembowelled angel going cheap

This New Year of 2023 is flying. The Christmas shopping is here with us already, and we are only barely a week into January.

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Billy Keane Opinion From the Chatham Islands to New York...here’s hoping 2023 is a good one wherever you are

I know a man who celebrates the first seconds of the new year all over the world. Here is his method of managing to multi-locate in several different countries at the same time.

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Billy Keane Opinion Keane’s Kingdom: Memories of Christmas past and the way the turkey’s waistcoat would strain against the potato stuffing

This year’s bird isn’t free-range, but she’s a good size and was well cared for. Happy bird, happy dinner.

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Billy Keane Opinion Blippi has banked millions for acting the eejit. I’ve been doing it as a non-profit for decades

That Blippi is one smart man. Smarter than me, even. I’ve been acting the eejit for years, for the children, for free. Blippi is cleaning up at acting the eejit. Good luck to him.

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Billy Keane Opinion We must never forget our debt to gardaí who always stand between us and the enemies of our nation

The line of traffic was moving slowly on the N69, just a few kilometres from the port of Foynes, on the Shannon. It was in February of this year and the weather was near enough to pleasant so I opened the car window.

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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.