Irish Independent

The Devil would appear to Keith Duffy in nightmares. “I was scared,” he says. “I was afraid. It was f**king shit.” These demonic visions were 17 years ago, in the aftermath of the tragic death of his friend and Boyzone colleague Stephen Gately (at age 33, Gately died in Spain, in 2009, of a congenital heart defect). Keith was “afraid to go asleep in case I had nightmares. The nightmares were horrendous after Stephen died.” What would he do? “I’d get drunk, because when you pass out drunk you don’t dream. I went through a really dark and difficult time. And I probably wasn’t a nice person at the time either. I was probably drinking too much as well.” What got him through it? “My faith. It was my faith that made me cop on to myself — and sleep again. Oh man,” he sighs at the memory. “I needed to find faith because I was having nightmares and I couldn’t sleep.” To try to get himself to sleep, he would recite decades of the rosary. “Hail Marys,” he says, “to the Mother of God. That’s why there are representations of Mary there.” He rolls up his sleeves and shows tattoos of the Virgin Mary on his right and left arms. Then one night, he says, Gately visited him in a dream. “We sat down and had a great chat,” he says. At the time, Duffy was staying in a hotel in London. It is, he says, a bizarre story. He got in late and was tired when he entered the suite. There was a dinner table with 12 seats around it in a lounge area and there was a door into the bedroom, he remembers. He barely looked at the room and went straight to the bedroom and went to sleep. He was releasing Keith from his pain? “Yeah. Absolutely. He said: ‘What’s wrong with you? You need to get on with your life now and stop all these things that you’re letting go on in your head. Go and have a good night’s sleep. Celebrate the memories that you have of me and we’ll be cool.’” More: https://buff.ly/9P1RXQd

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As 12,300 runners made their way through the streets in the Cork City Marathon today, hundreds were clad in yellow in memory of Ellen Cassidy. Ellen (24) died suddenly after running in last year’s event. Her family and friends, including her parents Tom and Violet, and her brother Charlie, took part in the half-marathon and 10K events today in her honour. Her father Tom (pictured) was embraced by Ellen's friends Amy Fitzpatrick, Rebecca Lowe, Isabelle Gibbs and Aoife Leahy at the finish line. Along with remembering her and celebrating her life, the group have raised more than €33,000 for a number of charities close to Ms Cassidy’s heart, including CRY Ireland, Down Syndrome Cork - Field of Dreams, The Alzheimer Society of Ireland, Pieta House, St John’s Ambulance, Focus Ireland and Marymount Hospice. Read: https://buff.ly/oUZ8yV3

Businessman Gareth Sheridan and his wife, Heidi, have shared the full story of how they came to adopt their daughter Roe from Ms Sheridan’s adopted younger sister. Ms Sheridan, who has 10 siblings — eight of whom are adopted — said the couple didn’t even know her sister was pregnant until the day the baby was born. The Sheridans, who entered the public eye last year when Gareth unsuccessfully sought a nomination to run for president, had been married for four years when they got the call in 2022 that would change their lives. “It was a Sunday morning and we were sitting on the couch when my mom called to tell me that my sister had had a baby,” Ms Sheridan said. “She had been back and forth between Utah [where Ms Sheridan’s family live] and Texas, where she has her biological family, and we didn’t know she was pregnant.” When Roe was born, the Sheridans weren’t planning to adopt her. It happened gradually, as her birth mother “wasn’t in a position to be a mother”. Mr Sheridan explained: “We had kind of accepted that we were always going to be the ‘fun aunt and uncle’, and we said we would help out. We started to help look after Roe. We said we’d take her for a week and, within a couple of days, I remember she grabbed my finger one day — and I know all babies do that, but they don’t all do it to you — and we began thinking maybe Roe could be an addition to the family.” Explaining their position on having children at that point, Ms Sheridan (39) said: “We’ve never prevented it, but we’ve never purposely tried to have kids. Our lives have always been chaotic and unstable, and so it wasn’t something that we could really think about. “As a Mormon woman, you’re meant to have kids at a really early age and I was already seen as kind of an ‘old maid’ in my culture, in Mormonism, at 30. More: https://buff.ly/BFkpawg

The 44th annual Women’s Mini Marathon drew 30,000 participants from across the country today, with Chaltu Dida from Dundrum South Dublin AC winning in a time of 31:41. It was a family affair for the rest of the podium, as twins Sorcha and Íde Nic Dhomhnaill claimed second and third place. Sorcha from Limerick Country Club AC, came in at 32:44, while Íde from West Limerick AC finished with a time of 33:58. 'The 2026 Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon has been absolutely extraordinary,' Vhi Women’s Mini Marathon race director David O’Leary said. 'A record sell-out in just 48 hours tells you everything about the passion and appetite for this event, and to see 30,000 women take to the streets of Dublin is something truly special' Read: https://buff.ly/2lkU2S0

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'Lying before me on the kitchen table is a document with a large red seal on the bottom right corner', writes Bryan Dobson, who is set to share his grandfather's story in the RTÉ programme Museum of Me this weekend. 'It is a grant of probate for the estate of my grandfather, John Dobson, dated November 15, 1963.' 'The terms of his will are set out in a few short paragraphs. His estate was to be divided between his four children. But there is my name too: 'I bequeath to my grandson Bryan Victor Dobson my presentation wristlet, three war medals and Princess Mary Gift Box (1914) with its tobacco contents.'' 'I had known of his involvement in World War I since I was a child. I had seen his medals many times. As I grew older, I came to know that he had entrusted them to my care.' 'Millions of medals were issued to veterans, but each has the unique service number of the recipient inscribed in tiny numerals on the rim. The number on my grandfather’s medals led me to his military file at the Public Record Office in London. ' 'I have only the faintest memories of my grandfather, who died, aged 79, when I was two. Reading a copy of that file for the first time a few years ago was like meeting him, not as an elderly man sitting in a corner of the room, but as a 19-year-old recruit' 'I do not know what he experienced during his 10 months at the front, but that his conduct and his character were an example to others fills me with pride'

A welcome, quiet sense of ease washes over me when I walk into the historic courtyard of Huntington Castle. Here, in Clonegal, Co Carlow, there’s nothing but birdsong and lambs bleating in the distance. I sit in the shade of this 400-year-old building and wonder about the history it’s silently witnessed. Then, out of nowhere, I’m met by an enthusiastic whippet who is keen to say hello. “Mole, get down!” I hear a man call. Two people are walking in my direction. A man wearing a flat cap, well-worn wellies and a ripped wax jacket is deep in chat with the beautiful blonde woman. She’s in a bright-coloured jumper, wellies and jeans, they have a giddy sheepdog on a lead, and I assume they are visitors here for a walk. I nod. They are in fact Lord and Lady Strathloch – Alexander and Clare Durdin Robertson, Huntington’s owners. Huntington Castle started out as a cold, functional garrison in 1625, but over the centuries has morphed into a living, breathing family home. It offers B&B in four rooms from around €300 a night (as well as self-catering options), but it’s a world away from larger, more sanitised and polished historical properties like Ashford Castle or Dromoland Castle. The couple took over the castle in 2010, after his father, David, died suddenly at 57. It was a huge change for a young couple, with a six-week-old baby, living and working in London. They had no plans to return to rural Ireland to take on the history of Huntington so soon. “We started very simply when we arrived,” Alexander says. “I literally had my grandmother’s teacups, a Burco boiler, and we built a small tearoom.” As well as stays, they now offer exclusive rentals, house and garden tours (€39.95 for a family ticket), and space for events like weddings and film shoots. “I’ve seen in other places where people don’t live in the big house, and you can see the practicality,” Alexander says. “You could be in a nice, comfortable cottage which is fully centrally heated, doesn’t leak, is warm, and you can shut the door and go off on holiday for two weeks if you want to, but we definitely can’t do that. More: https://buff.ly/cah4Chu