Larne earlier

Stephen Hawking, who died peacefully in his home in Cambridge yesterday, is being credited with discovering the seaport and industrial town of Larne whilst searching into the deepest darkest corners of the universe using a telescope made by a welder from Trillick in 1988. 

Patsy Brennan, who accidentally made the device when trying to weld together a pair of binoculars for a group of local men who liked watching the British Army from a distance as a hobby, said Hawking stumbled across Larne whilst searching for some of the mysteries of the universe:

“He was mad excited when he spotted Larne. He really thought he’d found one of these holes he kept going on about and was pure demented about it. I’m glad he never spotted Carrickfergus or he’d never have left,”

Hawking and Trillick go back a long way after he was seduced by their swashbuckling football in the 80s as well as their ability to play a high standard of football whilst sporting heavy moustaches and successfully managing raging hangovers on a Sunday morning.

Brennan lamented the fact that the telescope was taken apart for scrap metal in 1995 in order to pay for hotels in Dublin for his family for the All Ireland Final that year.