I’m starting a new column in the Sunday Life from this Sunday. It’ll be various rants and raves on all sorts of subjects - from celebrities to politics to the economy and traffic wardens. It may even be like therapy for me - weekly. If you fancy reading it and the Sunday Life is on your weekend paper list, please check it out from this Sunday onwards.

By Rodney Edwards
e-mail: rodney@rodneyedwards.co.uk

Fall Out Boy and Miley Cyrus will headline Radio 1’s Switch Live, I can exclusively reveal.

The event will be Switch’s first ever live event and will take place on Sunday 12th October in London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw will officially announce the news later tonight on their radio show.

The event will be exclusively headlined by Fall Out Boy and Miley Cyrus and will also feature Ne-Yo, McFly, Basshunter, N-Dubz and George Sampson.

Taken from the Impartial Reporter (Thursday 18th September 2008).

By Rodney Edwards
e-mail: rodney@rodneyedwards.co.uk

Outspoken Enniskillen man Phil Newton has fought hard for what he believes in all his life. But fighting his own ill-health has become one of his biggest challenges so far – yet he still manages to beat the odds.

On September 21, 1996, the day before his wife Joy’s birthday, Phil was working in Scotland and didn’t feel well and went to the Ninewells Hospital outside Dundee – he woke up seven days later.

Phil had suffered a heart block that lasted 55 minutes and had less than two per cent chance of surviving. “The heart block cut off messages going to my brain. I was in ‘resus’ with nurses jumping up and down on my chest, the bag being stuck in my mouth to keep my lungs going and ten jumps of a defibrillator. Once they got a slight response from the heart they shipped me to cardiac intensive care,” he says.

Phil then took a cardiac arrest which killed 60 per cent of his heart muscle before taking a small stroke. He was just 36 years old. His young family (wife Joy, son Andrew and daughter Amy) travelled over within four hours - they were told to expect the worst.

He was fitted with a £17,000 pacemaker and defied the odds; “It was very rare for someone to go through that type of illness and survive. They put it down to stress. My body was fairly fit but six months prior to that I was working 17 hours a day without a day’s break for months.”

When Phil fully regained consciousness, he was able to recount in amazing detail, his “near-death experience,” to his wife. “I looked up to Joy and said, I’ve just seen my dead mother.”

“There was the white light, the corridor and there was my mother in front of me. She wore a floral piny with the pockets in the front, she had her arms folded and looked at me and said; “Pip, it’s not your turn yet, get back down there.”

In the months to follow, Phil went through serious bouts of depression; “I didn’t want to be a burden on my young family. Do I pack my bags and leave during the night or do I take all of my tablets? But I saw a pyschiatrist in Belmore house, and it was a long, slow path to normality. I had a quick wake-up call.”

Phil was 13 years old when his mother Elsie died in his arms. “I can remember it as if it was yesterday. The kitchen windows were all steamed over because we were having boiled potatoes for our dinner – then mum collapsed. I went over to help her out; she was a white colour with blue lips and everything. She died of coronary thrombosis - a massive blood clot to the heart. She was only in her early forties.” he says.

It was a difficult time for the rest of Phil’s family (two brothers and a sister) “I give my old man credit because he kept the family together, he had the opportunity to put us into the British Rail Children’s home which is just outside London but he didn’t.”

Money was scarce and so it was an extremely tough childhood. His father Herbert worked on the old steam engines and was a rag and bone man. Phil left school at 15 with half a CSE in art and became an outdoor pursuits coordinator in Wales. “We gave the kids the very sharp, short treatment. You receive all these raw ingredients and at the end of the course, you have an end product. You could then say that you had an input into that person’s life.”

Phil and his family moved to Fermanagh in 1991.

From 1998 onwards, Phil joined others campaigning to retain acute services at the Erne Hospital. “I am an argumentative git, so I got on my soapbox. I don’t pull punches, if a question needs to asked, I’ll ask it and I expect a straight answer,” he says.

In recent years, the Newton’s have brought children from Chernobyl over for regular visits. It was in July 2007 when Phil and his family were gearing up for the children coming back over that his health deteriorated again. He was suffering from Viral Hepatitis B and water retention from the kidneys. On the 18th of December, he went to casuality and underwent treatment for major kidney, liver and heart failure.

Doctors said he had just one hour to live but incredibly Phil survived another near-death experience; “The fact I lived is put down to my attitude that nothing’s going to bite me or drag me down.”

Phil is now on the waiting list for a heart transplant and with the help of his hugely supportive family, he plans to fight on the way those who know him have learnt to expect,

“We knew it was on the horizon. We just didn’t know it was going to be so bloody soon. It’s just one of those things, I’ve nearly died twice. If I said I’m not scared, I’d be lying, I am, but my wife is my biggest inspiration. My legacy will be on my tombstone which will be on top of the compost heap in the back of the garden in Chanterhill. It’ll say, are you sure I’m gone?”

Taken from the Sunday Life, Sunday 3rd August 2008

e-mail: rodney@rodneyedwards.co.uk

Kian’s plea over knife crime

By Rodney Edwards

Westlife star Kian Egan last night appealed to Ulster youngsters not to get involved in knife crime. In an exclusive interview, the Irish singer became the latest big name to join the fight against the spiralling number of stabbings being reported in the UK and Ireland.

Pop pin-up Kian, who is engaged to gorgeous actress Jodi Albert, said: “I’ve just came back from a holiday and we turned on the news and saw that another young guy was stabbed in London.

“It’s disgusting and disgraceful that so many young people are being murdered. Whether it’s with knives or anything else, something needs to be done about it. Everybody knows that — something really has to be done to sort it out once and for all.”

Last month the PSNI revealed knife crime in the province has increased by almost ten per cent between last year and the previous year.

The figures were released as the police re-launched a campaign against knife crime here. The drive, which is aimed at boys and young men between 11 and 18, includes cinema, radio and poster advertisements.

Kian made his emotional appeal to young people, asking them to “just get away from it”, saying: “Picture something better for your life, don’t settle for second best. Find yourself a good hobby and good friends, go and make a career for yourself, look at yourself as someone who is up-and-coming in the world, who is going to have a good, long successful life.”

His band Westlife are on a year’s break but Kian added: “Westlife are not a political band but if there’s anything we can do to help, we would.

“We would sign our name to anything that helps sort out this mess. We would help with any worthy campaign that is for a good cause and this is something we think is worthy.”

In March 2001 Kian himself was a victim of thuggish behaviour when he was attacked, as he walked around Sligo with friends, by two yobs he had previously gone to school with.

Whether it’s relaxing in his Porsche, Jeep or brand new campervan the Sligo man is enjoying his break from one of the world’s biggest bands and spending more and more quality time with fiancee Jodi.

He popped the question on Christmas Day and the happy couple plan to tie the knot next year.

“We are simple people, it’s going to be a simple occasion. And we will have good tunes playing all the time.”

As the band enjoy their time apart, Kian is kept busy, having just teamed up with manager Louis Walsh to find the Irish equivalent of Girls Aloud. Last weekend the pair held open auditions in Dublin and his fiancee Jodi is already being tipped as one of the girl band singers.

Kian told us: “I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to do something different. My role is going to be very simple — I’m going to be helping the band themselves. I’m going to be with them most of the time, trying to show them the ropes of the music industry and guide them on their journey – hopefully to the top of the charts.

“Louis is going to be involved in the record label and all the decision making. This is my first project outside Westlife.”

But the search for Ireland’s new girl band will not be televised: “It’s going to be more a case of finding real talent and taking them away without anybody seeing them, before launching them as the next big girl band. I think going down the reality TV line is probably a bit common at the minute. I think to try and do what we’re doing on TV would just get lost and that’s not necessary how we want to do it. We want to find the next big Irish girl band,” Kian said.

Hundreds of people, including relatives and survivors, have gathered in Enniskillen on the 20th anniversary of the town’s Remembrance Day bomb.

A two-minute silence was observed and wreaths laid at the cenotaph where 11 people were killed and 63 injured by the no-warning IRA explosion in 1987.

Earlier the town’s centre was cordoned off due to a bomb alert.

However, the remembrance service and parade were not disrupted and started on time.

Ulster Unionist councillor Alex Baird said the alert had brought back “difficult memories of twenty years ago”.

“I’m amazed that anyone could be so uncaring or unthoughtful at this poignant time on the 20th anniversary of the Enniskillen bomb.

Poppy Day Bomb - BBC One NI Nov 11th 10.40pm

Get the Mug Man into the record books!

By Rodney Edwards

A self proclaimed “radio anorak” is attempting to get into the Guinness Book of Records for having the biggest collection of radio station mugs in the UK.

Richard Stuart from Belcoo in Northern Ireland now has over 117 mugs from different radio stations across Britain but needs many more!

I interviewed Richard for the Impartial Reporter about his quest a few weeks ago. Since then, he has turned into something of a cult figure. He’s been interviewed on RTE Radio 1, KCLR FM, Hope FM, Dundalk FM and tomorrow he’ll be on Alex Zane’s Breakfast Show on XFM. He was also featured in a piece I did for the News of the World.

Affectionately known as ‘The Mug Man’, he is now appealing to radio stations everywhere to send him a mug to help him get into the record books. If you have a mug you’d like to send Richard, get in touch. The more mugs the better!

Visit Richard’s website for more information!

A two-day postal strike has begun despite last-minute talks between the Communication Workers Union and the management of Royal Mail.

Royal Mail said it was disappointed at the move and advised customers not to post mail on strike days.

Julie McMaster from the customers’ watchdog Postwatch said small business would suffer very badly.

“OK, you have electronic e-mails and that sort of thing, but if you are waiting for that cheque, that one cheque can be the breaking of a business,” she said.

This has really annoyed me today. C’mon Royal Mail, sort it.