Twentysomethings on the up.
While most of us have to spend years swotting through college and then take a succession of second rate jobs before we get a break for some people life just works out easier. You might have designs on fame when you graduate from university but wouldn't it be great if you could get to the top of the heap while you were still in your twenties? In this the launch issue of The College Examiner we profile ten young Irish people who are either teenagers or are still in their twenties. All ten have been chosen for one reason: the are still young but already they have achieved great things. These are the names that will be known throughout the country and in some cases throughout the world even before you pass your final exams. Read on and be inspired.
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| Lukeman (24) may have performed his first gig just four years ago but the young Kildare man is already seen by most music insiders as Ireland's most promising emerging solo performer. It all began in the Bailey Court Hotel in Howth, Co Dublin in 1994 when the young Lukeman | |
| made his first sortie into the music
industry's limelight when he performed his first gigs. Then in the summer of 1995, along
with his band, The Black Romantics, he packed out Dublin's Da Club. The
word of Lukeman's talents spread quickly until, just a few short months after his first
performance, hundreds of people were being turned away from his gigs.
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RYAN TUBRIDY |
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| At 25 Ryan Tubridy has already established himself as a regular broadcaster on Radio 1 and having worked as a reporter on the Pat Kenny show for the past two years he moves to 5-7 live with Myles Dungan this month. Tubridy, from Blackrock in Dublin, is an arts graduate of | |
| UCD and claims to have always been fascinated with
radio. He began his broadcasting career at the tender age of 12 . It all started when he wrote to The Irish Times complaining that there were not enough film reviews for younger people in the paper. The letter was published and spotted by a producer in RTE TV and he was asked onto Anything Goes to do some reviews. A stint with the Poparama radio show followed where he reviewed books once a month for the next two years. During his days at UCD he became involved with the college's radio station UCD FM. After graduation in 1994 he went to work for the Midas production company which produces Crimeline for RTE. Following that he pursued a number of contacts in RTE until he was finally asked in to do some work experience on the Gerry Ryan Show. He then began freelancing in the evenings for other shows until he got a call at the end of 1995 from a senior producer at the Pat Kenny show offering him a job. Having worked with Myles Dungan for a brief period last summer the two will now work together on 5-7 live. With the departure of Gay Byrne and Ian Dempsey from RTE, a number of broadcasters will be in line for a promotion. If they do not work out over the next year or so, do not bet against Tubridy filling their shoes.
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| Dubliner Sarah Kavanagh hopes to be the first woman driver to break into the male dominated sport of Formula 1. The 26-year old has been driving for nine years, having begun in go karts in the UK when she was 18. | |
| She is currently competing in the European Boss
Formula 1 Cars Championship racing an old Jordan Formula 1 car. After racing go karts in the UK when she was a teenager, Kavanagh moved up to Formula Ford 1600 and has gradually progressed up through the ranks ever since . A stint at Irish Formula Opel followed and then a drive in British Formula Vauxhall. After that she secured a drive in British Formula 2 where cars compete at anything up to 200 miles per hour. Last year she extended her driving CV with a year at Japanese Formula Nipon. Sarah has also worked on RTE on the Drive programme which was broadcast earlier this year but insists she is 100% focused on breaking into Formula 1. Next season will be crucial if she is to follow in the footsteps of Eddie Irvine and secure a Formula 1 drive. She hopes to spend the year racing the European 3000 championships, just one rung on the motor racing ladder below Formula 1. "The Formula 3000 races are on after practice sessions for Formula 1 so you are racing in front of the Formula 1crowd and you are racing where you can be seen" she says. "A lot of Formula 1 teams support the Formula 3000 teams and use them as a feed for new drivers. I need £400,000 for the year for Formula 3000 but I've forged a lot of good relationships with my sponsors this year so I just hope I can use them again".
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| Having just turned 27 last month, Conor McPherson has already achieved enough in his short career to leave established writers twice his age green with envy. The bespeckled red haired Dubliner's scripts have shown so much promise that director's Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan are reputedly jumping through hoops to work with him. | |
McPherson is an unlikely writer. He began writing while studying Arts at UCD. But he never wanted to go to University and had it not been for his parents' insistence that he go on to third level he may never have picked up a pen. He was in a rock band during his school years and claims that the only thing he wanted to do when he left school was to continue playing music. Once in college however, he quickly developed a love of literature and began writing. After his first year at UCD he wrote a play which he put on at the college during his second year. Numerous other plays followed during his college days and he has not stopped writing since. He has just finished a directing stint in New York with on an off Broadway production of Saint Nicholas ­p; a play he wrote while writer in residence at the Bush Theatre in London. His first big major success was the staging of one of his earliest scripts The Good Thief at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1994. The highlight so far has been writing the screenplay for "I Went Down" ­p; starring Brendan Gleeson - which has just finished a successful run in European and American cinemas. His latest play The Weir had one British critic label him "the Irish Chekov". The Weir ­p; set amongst a group of lonely bachelors in a Leitrim pub ­p; has just been staged in The Gate Theatre in Dublin and McPherson is currently working on a new play and film.
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SUSAN SMITH
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| Emerging from the shadows of Sonia O'Sullivan and Catherina McKiernan might seem like an impossible task for any up and coming young Irish female athletes but that is what Waterford's Susan Smith is intent on doing. | |
Before the Olympic games in Atlanta few Irish people outside the athletics circuit had even heard of Smith. But having reached the semi-final of the 400m hurdles in Atlanta - and having run the event an amazing seven seconds faster that any other Irish woman - it quickly became clear that she had the potential to become a world-beater. Her time of 54.93 on the Atlanta track was the sixth time in eight months that she had broken the Irish record. Smith is a very realistic medal contender for the next Olympics. Apart from her obvious natural ability her other great asset is her unflinching self belief and she has no qualms about saying that she wants to be one of the best 400m hurdlers in the world. The 26 year old got married this year and with the assistance of a Sports Council grant along with a generous sponsorship deal from TNT and appearance money from grand Prix meetings throughout Europe she has begun to turn her sporting career into an increasingly lucrative money spinner. She may have failed to progress beyond the semi-finals in Atlanta and failed to win a medal at the European championships last month but in Sydney expect her to reach the final and end up on the podium.
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PAT GUNNE |
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| After the death of his father Fintan last year, 25-year-old Pat Gunne assumed the position of head of Gunne Auctioneers &; the biggest estate agent in the country. The task now facing him at the head of one of the biggest firms in such a competitive industrywould cause even the | |
| oldest hand a few sleepless nights. But not only
is Gunne Jnr determined to continue his fathers successful empire, he is also set to
take over the patronising of a plethora of good causes taken up by his late father.
Shortly after his fathers death he took to wielding the auctioneer's hammer at a
charity auction/ball in aid of the ISPCC. The Gunne empire formerly concerned itself with cattle and car auctions but it now works exclusively with property and as the largest such firm in the country Gunne will have to have his witts about him. While some more experienced auctioneers may see his youth as a liability he is no new comer to the auction business. Obviously as a Gunne he has been around auctions pretty much all of his life but on the practical side he also spent a number of years working in London for one of the UK's most renowned auction firms, Richard Ellis. His days spent working the intensely competitive London markets will now stand him in good steed now. Gunne will definitely be one of the country's high flyers well into the next millennium.
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GRAINNE
SEOIGE |
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| It has been just two short years since Grainne Seoige graduated from University College Galway but in the interim she has turned herself into one of the most respected TV broadcasters in the country.The 24 year old Galway woman became the main news | |
| anchorwoman on Telifis na Gaeilge when that
channel first took to the air. After perfecting her skills there she has
just jumped ship to the new TV3 channel where she will again
present the news. Grainne's parents are both native Irish speakers from the Galway region and her mother hails from the Arran Islands . Grainne grew up in Spiddal where Irish has always been her first tongue. After graduating from UCG with a first class honours degree in English and Sociology she took a course in applied communications and has not looked back since. While her broadcasting skills may not have been in full view to the bulk of the nation while she was at the struggling TnaG all that looks set to change at TV3. The new channel is been seen by many in Irish journalism as a real threat to viewing figures at RTE . Of all those twenty somethings profiled in this month's issue of The College Examiner, Grainne's face will definitely become the most recognisable to the Irish nation over the next few years­p; that is if she is not tempted overseas with offers from other television stations.
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SIMON COVENEY |
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| Cork's Simon Coveney threw his hat into the political ring last month after the death of his father in the spring. Hugh Coveney TD had been a former minister for the marine but died in an accident while he tried to rescue his dog from the edge of a cliff close to Cork Harbour. | |
| At the time Simon and the rest
of the Coveney siblings were sailing around the world to raise money for the
Children of Chernobyl charity. Having returned to Ireland for their father's funeral they
decided to resume their fund raising activities and complete their round
the world voyage. When Coveney Junior announced he would attempt to secure the Fine Gael nomination for his father's seat in Cork south central on the 11th of this month he immediately won the backing of Fine Gael leader, former Taoiseach John Bruton . Even if he does not win the seat in the forthcoming by-election, his first sortie into the political arena will have raised his profile in his native Cork and got him noticed by the party faithful. He currently works as a farm and land manager in Cork but insists he has always wanted to enter politics with Fine Gael and has strongly refuted the suggestion that he is trying to ride on the coat tails of his late father. "I have a romantic view of politics, which is a little naïve perhaps ­p; that politicians should be genuine public servants and that people should be able to approach at any hour of the day and expect to be heard" he has said.
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| Technically speaking Eammon Owens should not be included in our list of twentysomethings on the up because he is still a teenager. But because he has been so successful to date and his future seems so bright he simply could not be over looked . In his last film The | |
| General, Eammon played the young Martin Cahill,
with the older version depicted by Brendan Gleeson. But while having
starred in The General will look good on his CV the indisputable high point in his young
acting career was his depiction of Francie Brady in Pat McCabe's classic The Butcher Boy.
Owens is an unlikely superstar actor in that he is still a
schoolboy in Cavan and had no acting experience before he was wrenched from obscurity by
Butcher Boy director Neil Jordan and cast in the leading role of The Butcher Boy. McCabe's film was one of a school boy who is hated by most of his native town and is forced to live with an alcoholic father and a depressed mother who after spells in a psychiatric institution returns home and hangs herself in the kitchen of the family home. Drinking bouts follow for the young Francie Brady until eventually he too is sent to an industrial school; where he is sexually abused and then to a psychiatric hospital after suffering a breakdown and killing his neighbour. The next big home grown Irish production looks set to be a big screen adaptation of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes where Owens looks set to steal the starring role yet again. Whatever happens though with Angels ashes young Eammon Owens looks set top become one of the greatest young talents ever to come out of Ireland.
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JAMES MC ILROY |
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| Since the days of John Treacy and Eamonn Coughlan Irish men's middle distance running has not enjoyed much success. Mark Carroll may have won an unexpected bronze medal at the European Championships in Budapest last month but that has been the only significant | |
| breakthrough for the any Irish male middle
distance runner. James McIlroy, who runs the 800m may be the answer. McIIroy has been
running for just 16 months but incredibly finished fourth in last months European
championships narrowly missing out on the
bronze medal. For many athletics commentators he has already surpassed two highly
experienced Irish athletes expected to do well in the event in coming years, namely David
Matthews and James Nolan. A year and a half ago McIlroy (21) was on trial with Darlington football club but when his probationary stint at the third division club ended he was told he was not good enough to be signed. He became involved in athletics through his sister, Emma. She wanted to take up the sport so James rang a few coaches on her behalf. One of them asked him down to the track, he went and has not stopped running ever since. He was studying at Newcastle University (leisure management) last year but when he failed his exams he left college to train full time. McIlroy has also played golf for Ulster and when Irish high jumper Antoine Burke suffered an injury at a recent European cup meeting McIlroy took his place and finished sixth overall. If he focuses exclusively on the 800m in coming years which he plans to ­p; he could become a world class athlete. |
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