How do you unwind at the weekend? Pre-lockdown, it was all about family and friends, like the people we'd stay with who live near the beach at Portaferry.

REVIEW Sadie By David Ireland Lyric theatre / BBC2 IF YOU want to show the vitality of theatre, albeit on the 36" TV screen, as part of the BBC Lights Up series it's clever to choose a playwright who doesn't do flat realism.

1. When did you think about a career in comedy and what were your first steps into it? I knew from the age of about 12 that I wanted to be a comedian – while friends were going off to music festivals, I spent most of my time watching comedy shows on TV and listening to funny radio shows and podcasts.

1 Up and at it – what is your new morning routine? How has it changed? Strangely, I’ve started to waken up earlier in the mornings now, which is unusual for me because I was always a late-night person pre-Covid, especially if I was working on a production.

BORN with congenital glaucoma, musician Joe Kenny lost his sight completely at age five.

IF EVER Senator Eileen Flynn thinks she is in danger of becoming “big-headed” with her grand new title, a trip back home to Labre Park – Ireland’s first purpose-built housing scheme for Travellers – in Ballyfermot, west Dublin, quickly disabuses her of any ‘notions’.

IT'S been hard to stay optimistic during the past year of pandemic-induced lockdowns and paranoia, but Blame Game man Neil Delamere now has something concrete to look forward to: he's just announced his biggest ever solo stand-up show, Liminal, at Belfast's SSE Arena next February.

"I THINK that keeping the creative process going on a day-to-day basis is very important," says poet Murray Lachlan Young.