Brendan O’Connor show spent over €5,000 more on guests than Ryan Tubridy-fronted show. Between them, they shelled out €265,318 on filling the guest seats last season.
This week, columnist David Kenny takes Boyzone’s Keating to task for using the Press to stage-manage his career and image as a domestic god – and then blaming it when he fell from grace.
RONAN KEATING says he has won back his wife Yvonne, after she forgave him for a fling with a dancer.
The Boyzone frontman (33) said he had made up with his wife after she flew out to meet him in Australia where he was judging on a local version of The X Factor.
He said Yvonne (36) had forgiven him for his seven-month affair with a dancer, Francine Cornell (26), who was a member of Boyzone’s troupe.
“We’ve been left to our own devices but we are now a happy family,” The Star reports him as saying last night. “It’s all good, thank God.”
The couple’s 12-year-marriage seemed to be over when Keating was reported to have signed a year’s lease on a house in Malahide, and joined a local gym, last month.
They had announced their separation in May, claiming that it was amicable and that they would “continue to work together in order to provide the best for their [three] children.”
The Irish Times leads with the Central Bank’s predictions that the economy will grow by 2% in 2011, as published by the bank in its Quarterly Bulletin published yesterday.
Inside, it tells of how the Supreme Court has referred the issue of custody rights of unmarried fathers to the European Court of Justice, which is required to offer a clarification on some points in a case with potential ramifications for the rest of the continent.
As with many of the Irish papers, it also carries news of how an as-yet-unknown Kilkenny resident scooped €1m after winning the top prize in the monthly Prize Bond draw – with a bond bought in 1981.
The Times’ magazine profiles the Irish students enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, who tell the paper about their 80-hour weeks and lives on a shoestring.
In contrast to the Times’ good news, The Irish Independent leads with the growing pressure on Brian Lenihan to deliver another tough budget, with it interpreting the Central Bank’s report as saying that Lenihan’s own projections are too optimistic.
Inside, it carries news of how brothers Eddie and Kieran Ryan – who themselves were at the centre of a kidnapping claim in 2003 – were sentenced to a combined total of 14 years in jail for possession of a high-powered firearm yesterday.
The Weekend magazine asks whether Nikki Pelley can ever marry her her current partner, convicted wife-murderer Joe O’Reilly.
The Irish Examiner leads with the news that more and more people are volunteering as medical ‘guinea pigs’ and taking part in clinical drug trials – because they need the money during the recession.
It also tells that the body found in an Inniskeen bog – believed to be that of one of the IRA’s ‘disappeared’ victims – may take up to a month to identify.
Inside, it details how lawyers for the partner of Twink’s ex-husband told the High Court that the Sunday World took a picture of her and her child and printed it alongside a caption labelling the child a ‘bastard’ and her a ‘whore’.
The Star leads with news that Ronan Keating and his wife Yvonne are “a happy family again” after Yvonne forgave him for having a “fling” with a dancer.
Inside it tells how the various public events taking place over the Bank Holiday Weekend – like the games at the Aviva Stadium and Croke Park, and the the Galway Races and the Spraoà Festival in Waterford – will boost the Irish economy by €160m.
On its back page it carries a “Jack lash” from Kerry football coach Jack O’Connor who believes that the entire world is out to see the back of him and his Kerry team.
Abroad, The Guardian leads with the insistence of US defence secretary Robert Gates that WikiLeaks’ publication of Afghan war logs is a potentially serious breach of the country’s security.
The New York Times features an Indonesian model, singer and actress Julia Perez, who is turning her attentions to politics in frustration at her country’s political establishment.
And in Germany, Bild reports that a previously unknown bacterium in the Gulf of Mexico is helping to dissolve the remains of the oil spill after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
