Another week, another heatwave. My daughter in London calls to complain about the 32C heat in the city, wondering why she’s struggling to motivate herself to work. At Wimbledon – and not for the first time in this year’s tournament – spectators sitting in the sunshine pass out and require medical attention that stops play.

The friend travelling to southern Spain for a wedding is freaking out about how she’s going to stay cool. Potentially lethal puffer fish have been identified in the Greek waters of the Mediterranean for the first time. It’s feeling hot, hot, hot.

Is this the first time in history that we Irish have been happy about the weather here? It might be a shade on the warm side for some and a little uncomfortable to sleep in for others, but for most of us, it’s positively balmy. Temperatures across the country are generally in the low to mid twenties – which, for those of us who grew up in a hopeless place where the mercury rarely topped 18C, constitutes a sun holiday

without the stress – and with Met Éireann talking vaguely about conditions prevailing until at least the middle of next week, all’s right with this part of the world.

It won’t last of course. This is, after all, still Ireland. Soon the clouds will roll in and the heavens will open and we’ll be back to our default position of giving out about the weather. But, most likely, there’ll then be another week and another heatwave and off we’ll go again. Climate change might be – is – threatening huge parts of our bruised planet but, as predicted by scientists decades ago, the result of the raised global temperatures in Ireland is summers that are breathable, bearable and extremely pleasant.

Obviously, the overall messaging on climate change remains Down With This Sort of Thing. But in the short to medium term, would it be churlish to regard Europe’s difficulty as Ireland’s opportunity?

For the longest time, Fáilte Ireland and its predecessors have marketed Ireland abroad as a place of heritage, history, roots and ruaille buaille. As far as tourism was concerned, the Irish weather never ticked a box or made the grade.

Crucially, when the hugely successful Wild Atlantic Way was dreamt up and marketed overseas, its promotional films, shorts and still were shot during winter – the genius theory being that if we promise visitors bad weather, then they’ll never be disappointed. But if the past couple of months – as well as all future climate models – are anything to go by, the Irish summer weather is no longer something to be fudged or hidden from the glossy brochures. The reality – however grim for the planet – is that summers in traditional European sun destinations such as Spain and Greece are basically unbearable and increasingly a threat to health and even life.

After more than 50 years of an annual Irish exodus to those parched places, shouldn’t we now grab the chance to attract the Spaniards, the French, the Italians and the Greeks to spend their summer holiday here?

The weather could also be used to attract foreign workers from mainland Europe and beyond, to take advantage of life in our more bearable, temperate climate. Between work and play, the dividends for Ireland could be enormous.

Of course, cost would be – and is – a major factor in attracting people to Ireland for holidays or for work. But that shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem, and if the tourism bodies want to increase visitor numbers to Ireland, then an across-the-board approach to pricing could make it a manageable prospect.

Of course, it has taken a global disaster to make Irish summers an attractive proposition. But the saying about making hay while the sun shines has never been more true for us, and exploiting the climate crisis is an opportunity we shouldn’t pass up.

It won’t last of course. This is, after all, still the Earth and it’s boiling. Two weeks ago, on holidays in Connemara, I wiped the nightly invasion of dead midges off the handbasin in the bathroom every morning.

But after the hottest night of the year so far, the dead were all mosquitos. There will be more of that and other trouble ahead. But in the meantime, we could do worse than to face the music and (Irish) dance.

If you come for Vogue, then be prepared to take on Joanne 

It could have blown over in an online moment, but the unlikely beef involving Vogue Williams, Joanne McNally and Katie Price’s 2026 husband Lee Andrews has escalated into the Celebrity Feud of the Summer after McNally’s brilliant take-down of the shady Andrews’s attack on her podcast partner. 

For weeks, Vogue has begged Joanne to stop talking about Andrews on their podcast, but it was the Howth native the Dubai exile chose to attack – leading to Joanne’s razor-sharp response. I hope that round two sees Price enter the gladiatorial arena: if that happens, frankly, there won’t be enough popcorn in the world.

Congratulations to Donald Trump on learning the rules of association football overnight, and just in time to turn the screws on Fifa to suspend USA striker Folarin Balogun’s red card ahead of the hosts’ game against Belgium. Still, given how Trump happily conceded that he hadn’t understood what a red card signified – which I would have thought was sort of entry-level stuff – I’d love to hear the US president explain the offside rule.

I see Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher reacted to England captain Harry Kane losing his voice after singing Wonderwall following his team’s dismissal of Mexico, posting that ‘it’s hard work that singing Harry Kane cmon ENGLAND cmon WONDERWALL’. Given how Gallagher’s older brother, Noel, famously responded to a journalist’s question about supporting England by pointing out that he’s Irish, can we take it that Liam is now the Declan Rice of Oasis? 

Amidst all the headlines about the international career of Cristiano Ronaldo, left, ending in defeat, can I take a moment to point out that the Portuguese captain’s footballing life has been one of the most brilliant we’ve ever seen, that his bone marrow and blood donations – hence the lack of tattoos – make him a hero without ever striking a ball, and that, for laughing out loud when we gleefully sang ‘You’ll Never Play For Rovers’ during his debut for Real Madrid at the Tallaght Stadium, he might just be my favourite international player of all time. Truly, he’s left nothing behind him. 

THERE have been plenty of dropped jaws over actress Ruthie Henshall’s tell-all book about her sexual relationship with Prince Edward – but there’s one nugget that could have far- reaching consequences for the beleaguered royal family. ‘We’d listen to music,’ Henshall reveals of the pair’s time together. ‘He made me tapes of Fleetwood Mac… and Carole King.’ This was the early ’90s, a time when there were regular warning about the illegality of ‘home taping’. So now we finally know who killed the music industry.

Fair play to singer Una Healy for embracing single life with an online post in which she dresses up in a sort of sexy superhero costume. ‘The thoughts of dating with what’s left of the dating pool in your forties…’ she writes. ‘Never mind. I’m gonna slay single.’ So far, so positive. My question is where and why the Thurles-based mother-of-two got her costume: it’s not exactly Day Two of a wedding, Tipp are out of the hurling championship and Halloween is months away. How the other half live, indeed.

I’m delighted to note that 86-year-old actor David Jason is charging fans €250 for meet-and-greets at the annual Only Fools And Horses sitcom convention in November. Finally, it seems Del Boy has got the hang of making easy money for old rope.