Absolute O'Brien?

Advantages: If you take it as being jocular, it's quite amusing in places.
Disadvantages: Creepy to the upmost!

...Richard O'Brien; 'Absolute O'Brien' (1999) My fondness of Richard O'Brien stemmed from when I use to watch the Crystal Maze as a girl during the summer holidays. I always found his presenting style interesting, bringing in his own unique charisma and personality to each episode of the Channel 4 game show. Fast forward by ten years and I'm sat watching the Crystal Maze once again. Except for this time, I found Mr. O'Brien to be even more humorous than I remembered. Call me crazy but I never remembered him as being that witty or jocular. Perhaps it was just my age? So, when I found out that the man himself had had the guts to release a solo album, I was shocked but almost intrigued. One of my good friends joked that she would get it for me as a late birthday present. At least, I thought she was joking. A little over a month...

MizzMolko 29.12.2007 · Read review
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Review of Absolute O'Brien - Richard O'Brien

St Edmunds Church, Castleton, Derbyshire

Advantages: Beautiful Architecture, Lots Of History, Fascinating Boxed Pews
Disadvantages: Deceptively Small, Some Areas Out Of Bounds To General Public

...The Church of St Edmunds can be found in the heart of the picturesque Peak District Village of Castleton in Derbyshire. I usually try and make a point of visiting Churches whilst I am in an area, not because I am a Religious person, but because they are generally beautiful Buildings that are steeped in history. St Edmund's is no exception to this rule and serves as an excellent place to learn about the history of this Village. The Church is located in the centre of the Village bounded by Castle Street, Market Place, Back Street and Cross Street. It lies at the foothills of Peveril Castle, which overlooks Castleton and it is thought that it may have originally been a Garrison Church to the Castle. It is certainly of Norman origin and was built before the year 1200. The first named Vicar of St Edmunds dates from 1216. Although...

micksheff 16.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of St Edmunds Church, Castleton, Derbyshire

Sticky Toffee Covered Chocolate

Advantages: Tastes Delicious
Disadvantages: Watch Out It's Moreish

...it a try. The chocolate bar I ended up with was Lily O'Brien's Sticky Toffee Milk Chocolate bar. For those of you who have not heard of Lily O'Brien's chocolate before. It is a company which was founded in Ireland. I logged onto the website to research a little bit of history to discover that the company started in 1992 by Mary-Anne O'Brien who first made chocolate in her kitchen with the help of a wooden spoon and her little girl Lily who was chief stirrer and taster!!! The company subsequently being named after her. They have received numerous awards for their excellent range of products over the years and provide a huge range of mouth watering delicious chocolates and treats using the finest ingredients. I must admit that brown is not a packaging colour that I find myself particularly attracted to. I do have a sense of humour...

anniehiccups 28.05.2009 · Read review
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Review of Lily O'Briens Toffee

Love Certainly Happens in this book!

Advantages: Funny novel, witty writing, well explored relationships
Disadvantages: A bit of swearing but nothing major!

...I saw this book sitting on the trolley in my local library a couple of weeks ago waiting to go back onto the shelf, and the bright cover caught my eye. I picked it up and read the blurb on the back of the book, and it looked like a fun book which I might enjoy. I also felt a bit sick of reading the same old authors so I thought that this would make a nice change, so I checked it out the library and sat down and looked forward to reading it. As I said before, I had never heard of Sarah O'Brien but after a quick look on Amazon, it turned out she had actually written 3 books before. But I flicked to the front of the book to find out more about the author, and it turns out it isn't one author, it is two! Sarah O'Brien is a pseudonym of Helena Close and Trisha Rainsford, 2 best friends. Love Happens is their third novel they have written...

mummy2harry 01.10.2007 · Read review
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Review of Love Happens - Sarah O'Brien

FREE DVDs

Advantages: Free trial, large choice, post included,new realeases
Disadvantages: see review

...I like movies and I like freebies, so when you get offered both in one swoop you?re bound to accept! I used my two week free trial with this company and remained with them for a couple of monthsbefore moving on to try many other companies free trials (and winning a new DVD player on Tesco DVD rental site on their free trial offer). I then had an email from DVDs 365 asking me to go back, and offering me a free DVD if I did so. I had just left Tesco (with my new DVD player) so I chose to go back with them. ∆◊◊ THE SERVICE THEY OFFER ∆◊◊ Basically it?s like going to a video shop and hiring films on DVD, except you don?t pay for each film you chose ? rather a monthly fee for which you can watch as many movies as you can fit in, for us this is usually around 8 a month (2 a week usually weekends...

dabmim 15.11.2004 · Read review
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Review of dvds365.com

Surprising Picture Quality - Panasonic DVD-S54

Advantages: Incredible picture quality when compared to my old non-upscaling player with a scart lead
Disadvantages: Sometimes disc drive can be really noisy when DVD's initially load.

...At first I wasn't convinced by up-scaling DVD player technology but was persuaded after reading an article in "What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision" magazine. Unable to afford a Blu-Ray player my sister and I bought the Panasonic DVD-S54 to match our parents brand new Panasonic TX-32LZD80 LCD television as their Christmas 2008 present. Admittedly it was a slightly selfish purchase as we both live at home and wanted to watch DVDs on the big new TV ourselves! We bought the player from the electrical retailer Comet for about £100 just before Christmas so there were no discounts applied. On Christmas day when opened we found a relatively small box tightly packed with the player in polystyrene packaging. All the components such as cables, remote and manuals were well presented in their own protective plastic bags, to keep them protected. The player...

bobbacon985 12.02.2009 · Read review
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Review of Panasonic DVD-S54

1950's Ireland stunningly evoked

Advantages: Warm depiction of long gone Ireland
Disadvantages: A little too short

...It's hard to credit now but when this book was first published in the 1960's it was banned by the Catholic Church in Ireland, along with its predecessor The Country Girls. Why? In being honest about sex, and the shortcomings of convent education, it transgressed the rules and horrified the Establishment who wanted to see Ireland carry on as a cultural backwater steeped in reactionary notions of how women should live. O'Brien 's trag-comic story about Kate and her wily best friend Baba , fleeing village life for the fleshpots of Dublin, is both witty and true in its evocation of 1950's Ireland at a time when girls were supposed to stay pure until marriage. Neither of these two have any intention of doing so! The main focus is the "Girl With Green Eyes" ie Kate as she embarks on her first real...

bookaddict 08.07.2009 · Read review
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Review of Girl with Green Eyes - Edna O'Brien

Do you know what I'm going to tell you?

Advantages: Inimitable, inventive, imaginative, Irish
Disadvantages: Involuted, occasionally incomprehensible, very Irish

..."Just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl," was Dylan Thomas's verdict on At Swim-Two-Birds, which sounded like high praise to me and was probably so intended. However, since my sister could lay claim to only one of the three qualifying criteria, I withheld the gift and kept the book for myself, just the kind of thing that one of O'Brien's characters would have done, or so I reassured myself. I don't think she would have enjoyed it, anyway. You do need to be a certain kind of person to enjoy At Swim-Two-Birds to the full. You have to delight in words - their sounds and cadences - and in the ever-changing patterns of the meanings they convey. You have to be beguiled by ideas - quirky, paradoxical ideas that bend over backwards to undermine the ground they stand on. And you have to have a sense...

torr 01.05.2006 (03.05.2006) · Read review
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Review of At Swim-two-birds - Flann O'Brien

Nut allergy sufferers rejoice!

Advantages: Delicious
Disadvantages: Too small. Might be hard to find.

...By now you're either getting a little teed off with my chocolate egg reviews and thinking "Enough already" or you're sitting there thinking "Wow - now I know what to buy so-and-so for Easter". I would like to think it's the latter although incase it isn't, this will be my last Easter Egg review as I think I've tried all the new ones there are, plus, I don't want to end up looking like one?. I saw this egg in the very small Easter selection in Tesco's a few weeks back. It was perched on the very top shelf and priced at the princely sum of 43p. Unperturbed I jumped up, grabbed an egg, paid and went back to work. The next day I visited the company website and read a little more about the company. I'm not going to type word for word off their web page as that would be dull and very very naughty, so here goes?. Mary Ann O'Brien...

Amazingwoo 16.03.2006 · Read review
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Review of Lily O'Briens Toffee and Shortcake Truffle Egg

Loving Lily's Lollies!!!!

Advantages: A scrumptious treat...
Disadvantages: Too small......

...On a quick dash to the shops recently I spied something new and just could not resist Lily O'Brien's Caramel Toffee Biscuit Crunch Belgian Milk Chocolate Lolly Truffle. This is a very big name for such a small treat. It has the appearance of a mini Magnum Ice Cream bar and has Cocoa Deli on the front of the wrapper. There are three to choose from Mixed Berry Crunch, Cookies & Cream, and the one as listed above which I am reviewing. Upon opening the wrapper the first smell that I got was a wax smell from the wrapper. This is a little off putting, as I actually thought that it was the chocolate I could smell, but upon further sniffing I got the distinct smell of butter then cream and finally a cocoa smell. Not the chocolate smell that I was expecting. I removed the lolly from the wrapper. It is a darker shade of milk chocolate but...

Mayclair 24.03.2006 · Read review
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Review of Lily O'Brien's Cocoa Deli