Comment, by Geraldine Comiskey, Looks like Maria Steen will make it onto the ballot sheet. Michael Healy-Rae and even Paul Gogarty of the Green Party have nominated her in the interest of democracy, despite both saying they won’t vote for her. If she gets on the ballot, she’ll not only mobilise a load of people who felt disenfranchised- she’ll also take votes from the FFG candidates. At the very least, Maria will have the opportunity to take part in live TV Debates, which is where she excels. Books by Geraldine, Worth a Read.

thirty-year cold case… A beautiful victim seeking refuge from her high-society life. A handsome drop-out with a history of domestic violence.
When the wife of a wealthy French film-maker was murdered in her Irish holiday home on a remote Irish peninsula, a local freelance journalist thought he had the ‘scoop’ that would revive his career.
Instead, he was arrested for the murder of the mother-of-one.
The only strong evidence was retracted after the chief witness claimed police had coerced her to frame her neighbour (an allegation the officers have consistently denied). Ian Bailey was never charged with murder in Ireland, because three consecutive Directors of Prosecutions felt the case against him was, at best, local gossip. He voluntarily gave DNA samples which came back negative. He had no motive or opportunity to carry out this brutal attack on the far side of a mountain within a half-hour time-frame.
Yet he spent the next thirty years trying to clear his name, a decade fighting extradition attempts – and the last five years of his life living under the shadow of a sentence handed down in Paris after he was convicted in absentia.
He died in a public street at the age of sixty-six, destitute, alone – and still protesting his innocence.

Skin Deep – synopsis Beauty is only skin deep…until everybody has it. Cosmetic surgeon Raffaella Bianchi has grown up knowing that she is the most beautiful girl in the Italian town of Borgocasino. But she has never been tempted to sashay down the Milan passarella or join the hordes of starlets who fight tooth-and-manicured-fingernail for jobs as TV gameshow hostesses. Having experienced emotional pain as an adolescent, she wants to help other people – whether with a comforting smile or a sharp scalpel. And she believes that the only cure for some people is…beauty. So she offers her services free. Soon, she is world famous. Actors, women taken for granted by their boyfriends, gangsters on the run…they all come to the beautiful “Dottoressa” to heal their self-image and change their lives. Soon, beauty is no longer the preserve of those with good genes or plenty of money. The runways are inundated with uber-models. Hollywood has so many stars that even the extras are extra-glam. Beauty loses its exclusive appeal – and ugliness becomes a precious commodity. Now everyone wants to see unattractive people on screen, on the catwalk, sitting across the table from them on Valentine’s Night. What’s the point in a candlelit dinner when the two of you look gorgeous in floodlights? What’s the point in putting the spotlight on the belle of the ball, when everyone is bellissima? But Raffaella’s act of altruism has gone horribly wrong, and she has made enemies, including the mother of a child beauty pageant princess, a jealous husband whose wife has become very desirable to other men – and a crazed dog-breeder who seeks revenge after Raffaella refuses to make her pug more ‘pugly’.