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‘Tyrone-Shaped Omelette’ Destined To Replace Brooks At Croke Park
The Omagh Omelette
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
The creation by an Omagh housewife of an omelette that coincidentally looks ‘almost exactly like Tyrone’, is expected to take pride of place in a hastily-convened showcase at Croke Park.
44-year old Philomena McCaughey was making a two-egg cheese omelette for her husband Peader, when she noticed that it looked quite like Tyrone.
“It’s mighty. It looks almost exactly like Tyrone if you look at it sideways-on with your eyes closed a wee bit. And I had thrown on a big pile of grated Crackerbarrel that made it look just like the Sperrins, especially if the Sperrins were yellow and a bit more cheesy-looking”.
McCaughey’s husband admitted that the eggy phenomenon looked a little less like Tyrone after he devoured the south eastern part of the omelette, around Clonfeacle, whilst waiting for RTE to turn up.
“Aye, that’s true. I was as hungry as a horse because we had run out of eggs and Philomena hadn’t been to Newell Stores yet. I just had a wee corner of it though. It now looks like Aghaloo’s been wiped off the map, but sure, they won’t mind. It still looks deadly”.
He went on,
“RTE never turned up. Their loss. The very least we were expecting was Sky News and some reporters from London, or maybe some of them celebrity chefs like Jamie Olivers or Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. In the end we just took a photo of it and stuck it in the fridge next to the Kerrygold”.
The pair have offered to stage an exhibition of the so-called ‘Omagh Omelette’ at Croke Park in place of the cancelled Garth Brooks’ concerts later this week.
“At least people would still get their money’s worth”, said Peader. “We’d have the Omelette on a big video screen and Philomena could play the spoons while I sing Friends In Low Places, so that people still think they’re getting a bit of the Brooks’ magic, while they’re looking at the Omelette. I’m some chanter once I get going. And for a lock of extra pounds I’d be happy doing a couple of matinee performances”.
In 2012 McCaughey dug up a potato in his father-in-law’s field which had an exact resemblance to England footballer Wayne Rooney, before digging up a further 200 potatoes that also had an exact resemblance to Rooney.
Brackaville Pop Duo Record Coalisland Tribute: ‘Island In The Stream’
From Brackaville
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
A young couple from Tyrone hope to make it big in the charts by launching their debut single which could also put Coalisland firmly on the pop music map.
Using a cover version of the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers classic ‘Islands in the Stream’ with amended lyrics, Killian Grugan and Clare Toner, both from Brackaville, will release ‘Island in the Stream’ next month, inspired by the heavy rain experienced by the town in recent weeks, when at one stage Main Street almost turned into a river.
Unemployed sandwich-filler Toner, 22, agreed to share the lyrics of the first verse, which retains the same tune as the Dolly Parton version:
You do something to me that I can’t explain
Maybe it’s the people or the pelting rain
Or our Belfast links, it’s fifteen minutes there and back
Disneyland has nothing on our Newell Stores
Tiger Woods once played at Brackaville’s golf course
And our wemin he loved, Coalisland girls are mad for craic
The chorus then goes on:
‘Island in the Stream
Of that there is no doubt
Come see our deadly Spar
And mini-roundabout
Take a lovely cruise on our quare canal
And we’ve the Central Bar, ha ha
And the Yankee Star, ha ha
Other verses remain a secret but Toner revealed,
“We’ve done a whole verse on the parking facilities in the ‘Island, and we were going to do more on transport links but we couldn’t think of a word that rhymed with Ulsterbus”.
She went on to explain how the idea came about on the spur of the moment.
“One day we popped into O’Neill’s when it was bucketing down for a quick one, and we had this wile idea. Let’s put the ‘Island on the map. They were playing Dolly Parton in the background and we both love Dolly so what better way to big up the ‘Island than re-writing one of her best songs? To be honest we were hammered by that time, but fair play we’ve carried it through. We’re going to be the biggest boy/girl pop group since them ones like Sonny and Cher, or Cagney and Lacey.”
Grugan, 24, a full-time ear defender, responded to questions over the accuracy of the lyrics, saying,
“Aye, well maybe a fifteen minute round trip to Belfast is stretching it a bit, but we’ve got to appeal to the tourists from Americay. That’s why we’ve mentioned the canal, see? And I’m sure I heard that Tiger Woods once played golf here. Or maybe it was Darren Clarke. Or somebody”. He went on, “There’s plenty songs that have put places on the map before. Where would London be without ‘The Streets of London’, Glasgow without ‘I belong to Glasgow’ or New York without ‘Viva Las Vegas’? Even ‘Mountains of Pomeroy’ made Pomeroy world-famous”.
Hopes are high for interviews in the London Times, Le Monde and the Coalisland Post. If the single is successful, the duo intend to record another re-written Dolly Parton classic entitled ‘Nine To Five-miletown’.
Councillors ‘Deadly Embarrassed’ As Council Debt Spirals To £20 Million
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
Total council debt in Tyrone has spiralled to £19.8m, it has been revealed, with Omagh’s local authority accounting for £10.3m, and Dungannon & South Tyrone Borough’s standing at £5.2m. Magherafelt is the only local authority which is currently debt-free.
Commenting on Omagh’s £10.3m debt with only the flimsiest grasp of the scale of the problem, Councillor Enda McMann said,
“Over £10 million? Jaysus. That’s unbelievable isn’t it? Although to be honest it was a mighty night out”, he said sheepishly. “We were all in Tally’s and the hard stuff was flowing. I didn’t think we spent that much, but I suppose thon flaming sambuca yolks don’t pay for themselves, do they? £10 million. Eff me pink. We shouldn’t have ordered all them sandwiches. That can’t have helped”.
McMann spent all day Wednesday ‘doing his bit for the people’ to re-coup some of Omagh’s portion of the loss, by looking for spare change down the back of all the chairs and seats in the Council building, and investigating whether refunds can still be obtained at newsagents on empty bottles of pop.
In the event that these measures fail to recover the loss, Omagh Council last night called an emergency general meeting and produced a number of hare-brained, half-baked, ill-considered, knee-jerk solutions to be put into place from 1st December, including: –
• Parking charges for all cattle. Standing in any one part of a field – first 20 minutes free, then 50 pence for every hour, or part thereof. Discounts on Sundays and Bank Holidays.
• Auctioning off every Dungannon Swifts player. Reserve price £200 each, or £250 with extended warranty.
• Renting the Garvaghey Complex to Manchester United as a spare training ground.
• Controversial ‘Tayto Tax’. Charge of £100 on any member of the public eating crisps during daylight hours in an open space. £125 for grab bags.
• Privatising Hugo Duncan. Again.
• Sightseeing tours of the new Newell’s store in Coalisland.
In the meantime Omagh Council has ordered an investigation into how the debt could have spiralled out of control. It will be undertaken by an independent analyst, and is likely to cost £300,000.
Coalisland Man Destroys Kiwi Fruit Stall After New Zealand Defeat
Kiwis, before the kicking
Coalisland writer Roy Sherry has admitted to completely decimating a local supermarket’s fruit section, and in particular the kiwis, in a fit of temper after the heartbreaking Irish loss to New Zealand in a rugby test in Dublin today. Sherry, the town’s only rugby fanatic, was described as possessing ‘mad eyes on him’ as he rampaged his way through Newell Stores half an hour after the game.
Shelf operator Kitty McGlone described:
“Jaysus he was fit to be tied. I knew he was fierce passionate about Ireland rugby but this was frightening. He kept shouting ‘where are the buckin kiwis?’ but we’d have plenty of people shouting things like that every day so no one batted an eyelid. I saw him run straight at the fruit section like an Olympic sprinter and do a two-footed mid-air sliding tackle on the kiwi punnets.”
Eyewitnesses described him jumping up and down on the kiwis shouting, ‘how do yiz like this haka, yiz Oceanic buckers’ and other similar phrases. Shop manager Mary Newell (49) intervened when a crowd began to gather to encourage the stamping session:
“By the time I got there, men were goading him into destroying any product with all-black packaging on it. As soon as I saw him pull down his trouser zip I rugby tackled him before things escalated. Sherry remarked that I could show Tommy Bowe a lesson or two, which I was secretly chuffed about.”
This was the second successive week Sherry has been caught taking a rugby defeat badly. Seven days ago he was evicted from two pubs in the town after the Australia win over Ireland, for firing his pint glass through both pubs’ TV screens for showing Celebrity Get Me Outta Here, set in the Aussie outback.
PSNI officials let Sherry off with a final warning
Brackaville Plumber On Strike Until Wife Stops Spending All The Money In Newell Stores
A likely scenario in Brackaville today
A Brackaville plumber, John McCann, has downed his tools and embarked on a 7-day strike until his wife stops spending their money on ‘stupid things’ in the new Newell Stores in Coalisland. The self-employed 59-year old also hit out at customers who say they’ll pay him the next day they see him and then duck for cover for up to a year afterwards. McCann denies he’s having a meltdown and prefers to say he’s taking a stand on a range of matters:
“That bloody woman. I go out and do a job, get a lock of pounds, throw it on the table, jump in the shower and come down only to find she has disappeared. On returning she’d have bought something stupid like screw bulbs or AAA batteries that were on offer in the Newell Stores even though we’re not short of them. I’m sick of it. That new shop will ruin us. All they have to do is slap a £1 sticker on something and it’ll end up on our table. Like, five Turkish Delight yesterday. Who the hell eats that? I’m officially on strike now. We’ll see how she likes that.”
McCann also hit out at the miserly nature of the majority of his customers in the greater Coalisland area:
“That’s another thing. You’d get an emergency call to fix a burst pipe and I’m there in minutes. On finishing the job you’ll see the customer patting the front of his trousers and then the back pockets and you know what’s coming. He’ll say he has nothing on him at the minute but that someone will throw a few pounds down to the house later on. For the next twelve months i’ll see them in the distance walking around the town. As soon as they set eyes on me they’ll throw themselves into the first pub or shop they see. I did nine jobs this week and got paid for one, and even that was a fiver a Coalisland pensioner threw me for installing a new shower. A fiver! I don’t care if every house in Brackaville and the ‘Island is flooded next week as I’m not answering the phone.”
Worried locals are considering a benefit concert for McCann to get him back to work but have warned professional musicians that they’ll be getting paid with ‘those wee sticks for lighting the fire’ and that any money made from the concert will not necessarily go directly to McCann.
Newell Stores Creating 150 Jobs In Coalisland – One Man Not Happy
The cat that went for Thornton
Despite the general excitement in the greater Coalisland area that the new supertmarket, Newell Stores, is to create a rake of jobs for people on the dole, Pedro ‘The Deballer’ Thornton took to the street this morning to campaign against the latest addition to the Coalisland retail landscape. Thornton, 59, maintains he wanted a job there too but his back was too sore for sweeping or doing shelves. After arranging a meeting with the owners to discuss other options, Thornton left in disgust after being told the only job left was to lick stamps:
“I used to be big news around here. I neutered cats for 25 years for everyone within a 10-mile radius. Even the Yellow Pages had me as ‘Mr Deballer, Coalisland’. I was a celebrity, like, and had no bother with getting the women because of it.”
Pedro had to give up the neutering business after he had the face scratched off him by a continental large cat as he attempted to neuter the beast which was imported during the International Festival. He claims he will not degrade himself by becoming the supermarket stamp licker:
“I had to take a couple of years off after the stress of that big bastard clawing away at my choppers like. My good looks never really returned and I think that’s why I’m not getting jobs anymore. There are worse looking people than me in management positions. Fair enough, the empty eye socket and missing nose might frighten the young’uns but after a while they become less scared. I’m not buckin licking stamps though. Imagine the slagging down in O’Neills I’d be getting about being an ‘oul lick’ or ‘gluey tongue scratch-the-face himself’. I’ll campaign here for a day or two just against the store as long as it’s not too cold.”
Thornton says he’ll not give up on finding employment though and has turned his hand to freak show performances for an illegal Croatian circus in Dungannon, calling himself ‘The Deballing Demon‘ as he attempts to neuter lions.
Tyrone Tribulations 