Rihanna And The 4 Course Set Menu
Anyone who knows me well will tell you, I’m a pretty laid back person. What I mean is that I don’t get excited very easily.
Some would argue that most Photojournalists are like that. You need to be calm under pressure. In the words of one of our greatest Irish lyricists and philosophers Ronan Keating: ‘Life is a rollercoaster, you’ve just gotta ride it!’
I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. Years of copying homework in the toilets during school assembly have given me a steeliness. An almost monk like Zen quality to remain calm even when it looks like I’m f**ked.
Until that is you get woken from sleep by your mobile vibrating against the side of the bed....and the name that is blinking on and off is your boss. Oh yes, whenever your job description is to be aware of everything at all times and preferably before it happens on the entire island, the last thing you want is your boss calling you unexpectedly from the newsroom in London.
He’s ever chirpy...especially at 7am....because he’s been up since 6am, had a swim and drunk his second almond milk skinny latte. He isn’t ringing to see what’s going on. Oh no. That’s the way this charade goes you see. He KNOWS what’s going on. What he wants to know is what the f.**k you’ve done about it!
I approach this in one of two ways depending on how hungover I am, or how successful I’ve been in the last few days. The latter is the least likely and involves me answering the phone immediately with something along the lines of ‘Morning, what’s the craic?’ The first and most likely scenario involves me not answering the phone and frantically ringing colleagues and scouring the news sites to find out what has happened. I then ring the boss back immediately, possibly while still in my underwear, but trying to sound like I’ve just finished my own chai latte following my morning Pilates session.
On the morning in question I was indeed sleeping, but not because of a hangover, nope. I had in fact a dickie tummy, the trotskis, Delhi belly.
But let’s rewind a day or two. I had been at Kileen Castle, Co Meath shooting the Solheim Cup. This is the female equivalent of the Ryder Cup. A European team of golfers battle it out against a United States of America select. It had been tiring work as anyone knows that shooting golf means lots of walking and very long days. I enjoyed it though and got a pretty nice picture of the winning putt and the celebrations that followed. Europe won and all was well.
Each evening I would go to a particularly good Chinese restaurant in Ashbourne and eat from their set 4 course menu. The food really was delicious and, as there were next to no other options in this quite rural part of Ireland, I returned night after night. This is where the story takes a turn.
On the final night after the work was done and we could all relax, I went, as usual to feast of the flavours of the Far East. At approximately 2am I was woken from my slumber by the all too familiar and unwelcome stomach cramps. I’m not saying it was food poisoning. More my body pleading with me to return to a simpler more western European diet. Anyway, the long drive home was a cautious affair as I limped from service station to hotel to service station until eventually I made it to the sanctuary of my bed and the luxury of my own en suite. I fell asleep straight away. By now a shadow of myself bearing the complexion of a candle. Not one of your fancy Yankee ones though. More like the ones that you keep in the bottom drawer in the kitchen and take out when the electricity goes out!
What happened next remains burnt into my memory. I woke up to the dreaded missed call. None of my colleagues were answering their phones which was not a good sign. Something was happening and I didn’t know what it was. My next move was to check the internet…I..WAS.. F***KED!
Rihanna, yes actual Rihanna of Umbrella fame, was in Belfast shooting a music video. It was a complete circus. Every single person in Ireland it seemed who had a cameraphone had been taking pictures.
There were selfies of her in a chip shop in Ardoyne. She was pictured in a car doing ‘donuts’ in a north Belfast housing estate. But worse was to come.
Rihanna had travelled to the countryside to shoot in a field of corn. While there, apparently overcome by the beauty of this particular area of Northern Ireland’s Bible Belt, she had whipped off her top and, clutching her breasts, pranced about the field to her soon to be number one single We Found Love.
The farmer who owned the field, was a good Christian man and a member of the Democratic Unionist Party which at the time was headed up by the famous/infamous Dr Ian Paisley. He had been delighted to welcome Rihanna to his farm to film. He had no idea who she was.
But as the shoot became increasingly raunchy, he stepped in. No matter how famous and talented this lady was, he decided that displaying her breasts to his field of corn was out of the question. Ignoring her A list status, in full view of the assembled world’s media(minus me) he told her that her behaviour was inappropriate and booted her and her entourage off his property. It was now a news story.
There was no way I was talking myself out of this one. I called the boss. I can’t remember exactly what he said but it was along the lines of “Tell Me!?” I told him about the ‘food poisoning’ and we both agreed that short of being dead I had no real excuses. I still wonder to myself where along the road I was whenever all this was happening. Which service station toilet was I hovering in whenever Rhianna was sunning herself in a County Down field. Which hotel was I running into when she was doing donuts around the New Lodge in Belfast.