Friday, July 11, 2014
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WILD CHILD BIEBER’S NG FACIN U.S. BAN
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‘SPEED CAMERAS WORK TOO WELL TO PAY THEIR WAY’ » Page 5
Matinee idle: Garth rejects Council offer
MENDES SEEMS EVA SO SHY OVER Deal agreed for five gigs in three days, but Brooks says NO BABY BUM P
FRESH hopes for Garth Brooks to play in Ireland were in disarray last night as the country music star rejected a compromise over his five-night comeback in Croke Park. Just three hours earlier Brooks had said he would do whatever it takes to put on the concerts, including ‘crawling, swimming or flying’ to meet Taoiseach Enda Kenny and ‘dropping to his knees and begging for those 400,000 people to just have fun’. But later the US singer dis-
by CON DOHERTY
missed an offer of playing three night and two matinees, saying it ‘cannot possibly compare’ to five night gigs. His publicist Nancy Seltzer said to treat 160,000 people differently than the other concert-goers is ‘wrong’. Promoters Aiken and Dublin city planners reached a compromise yesterday following Brooks’ description of Ireland’s licensing system as ‘flawed’ at a Nashville press conference.
‘Flawed’ comments: Brooks However despite the singer’s insistence on five shows or nothing, he has not turned back the ships bringing over the ‘mon-
strous’ stage and set, requiring 17 days of loading. In an increasingly bizarre debate, Lord Mayor Christy Burke had suggested Croke Park residents approach US president Barack Obama to try to break the impasse, but this was dismissed by the US Embassy in Dublin. When the issue was raised in the Dáil for a second day Ceann Comhairle Sean Barrett said: ‘Please refrain from making a joke of the whole thing.’
Keep Dublin tidy – Please recycle this Metro Herald when you are finished with it
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