James McAnespy News and Blog

The Acting Bug group

2026-10-04T21:34:12.536+01:00

Since I moved back to Belfast permanently in November 2024, I've been trying to get myself back into the acting circles in the city, so I was delighted to see that a new acting group (now with the settled name of The Acting Bug) was being set up by Owen James, and facilitated by Rosie McClelland.

Members of The Acting Bug class (acting the maggot!!)

As soon as I saw the calibre of people involved, I knew I'd have a great opportunity to shake off some of the Lockdown rust, and regain some of my confidence performing.

Having been attending for over a year now, I can safely say that it fulfilled both, and in doing so I gained a new agent as a direct result. There's been workshops with the likes of Neil Keery, Chris McCurry and Georgia Simpson

The various groups that I've been in - I began classes on Saturday morning, but moved to the Wednesday evening classes - have all had their own unique qualities and brought out different aspects of my performance repertoire.

And Acting Bug has continued to grow, bringing in Michael Curran-Dorsano to lead a voiceover class - a heaving void in my skillset.

It will culminate in a performance showcase later this year in the Black Box Belfast, and we created an in-house short film that will be showcased soon.

And on top of that, there's a new batch of actors in Belfast, given a much-needed opportunity to upskill, network and build confidence.

It's still frustrating having to work 9-5 to have to foot the bills, but now that I have a permanent base in Belfast, I can focus on long term career development, and count down the years until I'm mortgage free!

Represented by IAP Talent Group

2026-02-04T12:59:00.001+00:00

I'm delighted to announce that I'm now being represented by IAP Talent Group. Please contact them for bookings and other enquiries.

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50 Best Oasis Songs #36 Magic Pie

2025-10-22T19:48:00.001+01:00

Bloodline Detectives: On both sides of the law

2025-09-27T23:42:00.004+01:00

Promotional image for Bloodline Detectives

True crime is one of the most popular genres in pop culture at the moment, and a great example is the TV series Bloodline Detectives, hosted by Nancy Grace. It recreates decades-old crimes, and intercuts them with interviews with the law enforcement personnel who investigated the cases at the time, as well as the 'cold case' detectives who were able to apply the new DNA technology to apprehend suspects many years after the crimes.

I appeared in a couple of episodes, once as the criminal (who is dismissed as a suspect initially) in an episode titled Carla's Last Valentine, and also as a detective who walks into a horrific family murder scene in the S2 E14 A Family Torn Apart.

I was delighted to be a part of the recreations of some very heinous crimes, that thankfully reached a resolution as a result of the advances in forensic technologies.

The show is available on a variety of free streaming platforms, so keep a look out for those episodes.

ABBA-esque times with Laughlines

2025-09-23T19:27:00.002+01:00

Dunfanghy in northern Donegal is a place I spent time in as a child, and it has many of the picture postcard idylls that even Walt Disney's dreams of Ireland couldn't match.

Will there be a pot of gold in the sea?

In full costume

So I was delighted to be invited to go back up there with Laughlines again - this time to pay tribute to the Swedish pop legends ABBA.

Hosted in the Shandon Hotel and Spa, with it's wonderful scenery and enthusiastic west coast crowd, the night was a roaring success.

Of course, one can't simply go into Donegal and not have a Football Special.

McDaid's Football Special

If you're on Instagram have a look at the Wild Atlantic Traveller's post.

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On set: Newscheck Comedy - DJ taken hostage

2025-09-17T18:34:00.005+01:00

In February 2023 I was engaged to work with NewsCheck Comedy again, this time as an Irish terrorist kidnapping the most annoying radio DJ imaginable!

James McAnespy on set with NewsCheck Comedy
Without balaclava

In balaclava and military fatigues!

It was a short piece to be put up on the TikToks and Instagrams, and I was joined by Ross McCarney, whose gone on to work with Joe.ie, playing the DJ, and Owen James playing the hapless kidnapper who can't stand the excessive banality.

Written and directed by David Atkinson, I think everyone will recognise the patter of pop music DJs that seems to never end. Sometimes all you want is the music! (Don't get me started on the Radio Industrial Complex!).

Watch the final sketches below, and make sure to follow all involved.

@newscheckcomedy Radio DJ taken hostage. . . . #dj #radiodj #comedy #newscheck #newscheckcomedy #satire #satirical #funny ♬ original sound - Newscheck Comedy

Best Oasis Songs #25 Hey Now

2025-08-03T22:08:00.006+01:00

Top fifty Oasis songs in order of release, Number 25 Hey Now

#Oasis #BeHereNow #RockMusic

Official Video: @oasisinetofficial

Cover by Charlotte Hall

On Set: Governing Ireland with NewsCheck Comedy

2022-02-24T15:52:00.005+00:00

This month, I got back onto a film set with the excellent NewsCheck comedy. As well as being the first time in years I was on a set, it's also the first time in a long time I've been filming in Dublin.

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Interview in ExplorinDublin.ie

2021-04-01T14:23:00.003+01:00

I’ve been interviewed in the excellent Dublin based website ExplorinDublin.ie about New Ireland TV

Read it here!

New Ireland TV Editorial :: Joint World Cup Bid? Really?

2021-03-03T16:45:00.527+00:00

#NewIrelandTV #FIFA #WorldCup

There is a plan for a five-team bid for the 2030 World Cup. It's absolute bollocks. (For a start, are UEFA going to be happy that they lose a quarter of their qualifying spots?)

keep reading »

Partition-era drama The Green Fella to make it's New Ireland TV debut

2021-03-01T13:47:00.002+00:00

Ahead of the world-first screening of the Director's Cut of Belfast Caliber 9, New Ireland TV is delighted to present Frontier Pictures' partition-era drama The Green Fella.

Viewers will know the quality that Frontier brings to all their productions, so make sure everyone knows what a treat they are in for!

It will be released during the week along with more of New Ireland TV's unmatched mix of discussion, history and humour.

As always all New Ireland TV output is available to view for FREE worldwide, with no additional signups required. Find New Ireland TV on your #Roku or #AmazonFireTV

#movies #film #NewIrelandTV #Ireland #IrishHistory #partition #Irish #streamingTV

Announcing New Ireland TV

2021-01-21T00:00:00.011+00:00

New Ireland TV is a new TV station for a new Ireland. It's available worldwide for free on #Roku and #AmazonFireTVStick, with no further signup required. You can get all this now, with more to follow in the coming months, so keep watching.

Editorial: New Ireland, new dawn

2021-01-20T15:29:00.001+00:00

Hello, it's James McAnespy here, founder of New Ireland TV

It is currently the 20th of January, A new president has been sworn in the United States

But this is about Ireland and the journey that Ireland is going to embark on for the next three or four years

It's now looking increasingly like there's going to be a referendum very soon - I think they're actually going to make an announcement at some point of this year, as to when that might be.

So now we need to take this opportunity to really grasp the opportunity of a millienia, really

We have never had a situation where economically, and geographically, and topographically, and politically and just everything now seems to be aligned towards a 32 county, open economy island nation, which we desperately need, so that we can finally fulfil our promise fulfil our ambition, fulfil our dest- -well destiny, I don't like destiny

But the night is always darkest just before the dawn, so I'm recording this on a freezing night in Omagh, under the lights in the middle of Lockdown

We've got another few weeks of this Lockdown to go, so I'm going to be releasing more and more content until Lockdown lifts.

And then as Lockdown slowly lifts and lets us move about a bit more, I'll get a bit more content. And hopefully by the time Lockdown is over, we will have loads and loads of stuff to show you, and we'll be able to start inviting you into studios

And just feeling like a new TV station. A new TV station for a new Ireland.

Winner of the Fishpond.ie monologue competition!

2020-12-26T18:56:00.001+00:00

During Lockdown, Dublin casting website fishpond.ie hosted a series of monologue competitions, based on screen monologues. They invited their roster of talent to apply, while providing free access to the site as a reflection of the fact that the entire freelance industry collapsed overnight.

I was actually completely oblivious to this generosity in the first few months - I had to move out of my flat in Belfast two weeks after the Lockdown started (where I did the bulk of early the Oasis videos that you'll have seen on this blog). Then because I was aware there were no acting roles being offered, I hadn't been keeping on top of all the communications coming from them (also it was largely being announced through social media, which I have consciously divested myself from in the last 18 months).

When I did spot it, I entered immediately, and the chosen monologue was from Peaky Blinders. I studied the monologue, but I had only ever watched the first two or three episodes of the show, and that was about seven years prior, so it was similar to getting a fresh script.

This is the monologue I sent in to them:

That was back in August/September. I showed it to a few friends, who charitably (!) turned it into a meme for Whatsapp! But I do what I always do with auditions, and largely forgot about it.

Until last week, when fishpond.ie announced their shortlist for week 16, which included myself! This was even more serendipidous when last night (Christmas), I receieved a peak cap gift, which got me to thinking if they had released their winners yet, and sure enough:

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Which was a nice way to end the year! Thanks to everyone at fishpond and let's everyone have a better 2021!

Year Long Song Lists! The winningest game you can play!

2020-11-24T17:25:00.000+00:00

A number of years ago I made a new year's resolution (a novelty for me, someone who has demonstrated precious little appetitie for self improvement in ever), which was to try to find a song that's new to me on average once a day - so I aim for 365 (or 366) songs per year. It's a great little challenge to yourself, and it's a game I recommend everyone try!

It started because I was getting frustrated that I would find a new song that I would like, but if I couldn't call it to mind, it would be lost to history forever. This is very much a 21st century first world problem, but it harkens back to the first family computer we had (in the twentieth century), which had a whopping 20MB of onboard storage - equivalent to about seven songs in mp3 format. Useless in other words. Often when I was on the much-missed AudioGalaxy and another song was queuing up for download, I would have to choose one of the ones already downloaded for culling. It was a cruel time, similar to the savage Spartans who would chuck their own babies over a cliff if they didn't display physical prowess from birth.

Eventually Steve Jobs came up with the answer - the iPod (early mp3 players also had an issue with very limited storage space), so I was able to start burning all my CDs onto iTunes, and even burn everyone else's CDs when I got the opportunity! It was a glorious exercise in sharing the gift of art, and if I didn't have it, it's probable I would have forgotten about the artists who I would consider my favourites today.

I had perfected a wonderful system of Smart Playlists, where if I heard a song on my iTunes or iPod, it wouldn't play it again for a number of days, unless I had rated it 5 stars out of 5 (ie my favourite songs to hear), when it wouldn't play it for the rest of the day. I discovered multitudes of new music this way, from the rock and metal I was into from my teens, to the different types of Jazz, classical, world and just checking out genres to see what was going on, to what I now consider my favourite genre - the 2000s north American indie music of the likes of Arcade Fire & Modest Mouse.

But then that was frought with it's own issues - hard drive failure, which I fell victim to on two seperate occasions, with the loss of around 22,000 mp3s. Luckily, I had been paying forward the gift of sharing, and was able to claw back most of what I'd lost by just copying my library back off friends (with the bonuses of their interim additions), so I was mostly able to claw back the large bulk of my library, but I'll probably never find the random songs I would speculatively download and stick in the Random queue.

Eventually I made the switch to Spotify. I had dipped my toe in the water for a number of years, but never fully made the plunge (I cannot justify why I was so reticent, it was literally everything I had wanted - pretty much all recorded music at the end of my fingertips). But then algorithms start to force themselves upon you, and thinks that if you liked listening to Smells Like Teen Spirit once, you'll always want to listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit! It becomes an echo chamber, and invariably it will start to churn out ecery band's Wonderwall - the famous song that a band has, but the band's fanbase have probably grown tired listened to. Oasis' is obviously Wonderwall, Rage Against the Machine's is Killing In the Name, James Brown's is I Feel Good, and so on.

So I went back to my old methods, of just hoovering up any song I could find that caught my ear - and with the miracle of Shazam, it's made it incredibly easy. I could hear a song in a bar, and within 30 seconds have it added to that year's list. Then I would just hit shuffle on that list and the better songs would enter my consciousness by osmosis.

I did actually hit the 365 once, about fifteen minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve - I just snuck I Like to Move in the Night by Eagles of Death Metal into the 2018 - A Year of Living Dangerously list (and made the title fo the list all the more apt!).

In all the other years, I've missed the target, but a definite pattern has emerged. At the start of the year there's a glut of new stuff from all sorts of places; around March I'm listening to a lot of Irish and folk music; summer is usually the big hits of the year have become established; then around September I start falling behind, but I've usually built up a big enough back catalogue that I'm ahead of the days count; then in October there's a load of heavy metal; and by late December I'm trying to find new Xmas tunes.

2020 has been an interesting one, since there hasn't really been much new music released, although the list is mostly older music - it's songs that are new to me. I'm currently on 262 songs, and I'm writing this on day number 329 - but it's all good, because the best thing about this game is everyone's always winning!

Chatting Pictures - Darby O Gill behind the Scenes trailer

2020-11-23T15:28:00.000+00:00

Here's a sneak peak of the processees behind the lovably chaotic madcap recaps on Chatting Pictures podcast.

On this episode we were covering Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Walt Disney's enthusiatic foray into Irish folklore. We had a few run ins with the Little People ourselves, as explained in the podcast, and it looked like they had struck us with another curse when we couldn't find the recordings. However, with a titter-a-wit that Darby himself would have been proud of, we've managed to source the original audio file and it's going through the post productions ready to be published before the end of this current season.

Chatting Pictures is sponsored by Hang Sandwich T Shirts. Punny, funny Irish T Shirts. Quality apparel, fast delivery.

The whole series can be found on Spotify and your favourite podcast device. Subscribe now.

Father Ted Podcast S3E8 - Going to America

2020-11-10T10:15:00.003+00:00

#BuzzCagney #FatherTed #DermotMorgan

Writers and producers Muireann McGinty and Dee Harvey dream big in the final ever episode of Father Ted! 😢 After talking Tommy Tiernan off a ledge at a priest's convention Ted is seduced by visions of a glamourous life in America, but can he really leave Craggy Island and it's inhabitants behind?

The episode takes a reflective tone towards the end, and we discuss Kevin Spacey's relative anonymity in 1998, the draw of Magic America and Radiohead: depressing or not?

Announcing Chatting Pictures Podcast!

2020-11-08T18:56:00.001+00:00

This week we finally got to launch a new podcast Chatting Pictures, a lovably chaotic madcap recap of Irish cinema.

It's a bit of a free for all, and it's probably not suitable for listening to in the family car, but there's great craic, honest (potentially brutal) criticism, and even some intriguing insights as the professional hushed decorum of more mature discussions are routinely rejected in favour of salacious gossip. Some noses may be metaphorically put out of joint. So, you know, content warning.

It's hosted by anchor.fm, so it's on all the major podcast platforms, and it's sponsored by hangsandwich.com. Punny, funny Irish T Shirts, quality apparel, fast delivery.

Father Ted Podcast S3E7 Night of the Nearly Dead

2020-11-03T10:14:00.002+00:00

#TheLogues #FatherTedPodcast #EoinMcLove

Kiel Cathers, lead singer of folk rock behemoths The Logues wards off the huddled masses of Eoin McLove fans in this hilarious send up of Daniel O’Donnell. Mrs Doyle is besotted when she wins a competition to have her beloved TV host Eoin McLove visit her, but she's not the only one on the island who wants to meet him. Dougal thinks he's very cheeky, Ted doesn't approve of his poetry tastes and Jack waxes lyrical on the nature of fandom.

We also talk about treacherous male bonding games such as Eyeball Chicken and Killerball, fainting Michael Jackson fans and false rumours about Pope John Paul II.

Rearranging my online geography - new links!

2020-10-31T17:06:00.003+00:00

If you have been subscribed to this blog, you'll have noticed that Ecumenical Matters the Father Ted podcast is being up loaded to Youtube, but I am also uploading it to Spotify, on the old audio.

keep reading »

Father Ted Podcast S3E6 LIVE! Kicking Bishop Brennan Up the Arse

2020-10-27T10:14:00.002+00:00

#CultureNight #FatherTedPodcast #Live LIVE EPISODE!

We broadcast live from the Fenderesky Gallery on Belfast's North Street during Culture Night Belfast 2016 in front of an adorning audience and streamed to Facebook Live. All with the obligatory Craggy Island production values!

After losing the bet to Dick Byrne in the Over 75s Football Challenge in the last episode, Ted has to kick Bishop Brennan up the arse to satisfy his forfeit. Dougal is on hand to document the kicking with photographic evidence, while Jack and Mrs Doyle have their own way of dealing with the world's most sarcastic priest.

Father Ted Podcast S3E3 - Speed 3

2020-10-06T10:14:00.002+01:00

#FatherTed #PatMustard

PAT MUSTARD! Comedians Victoria E Armstrong and David Doherty-Jebb commandeer a milk float in this seminal episode. Randy milkman Pat Mustard has been getting Mrs Doyle all hot and bothered, and Ted doesn't like it. He organises a sting operation and the fallout has Dougal in charge of the milk run. Unfortunately, Pat has left a little surprise on it if Dougal's speed goes below 4 mph. Jack adopts a new pet brick that comes in useful later on.

We also talk about Francophones misunderstanding Touts Out graffiti in Belfast, the virtues and follies of Mrs Brown's Boys (The Greatest British sitcom of the 21st Century according to Radio Times readers), ageing ferrets and I officially respond to Graham Linehan's comments on Father Ted tribute shows. #JamesMcAnespy

Father Ted Podcast S3E1 - Are You Right There, Father Ted

2020-09-22T10:14:00.002+01:00

#FatherTedPodcast #RacistNowFather

Belfast Comedy Writers Johnny Nicholl and Jonathan McCoy watch Ted insult a sixth of the world's population when he tries to impersonate a Chinese person. Dougal helps him come up with an idea, but he didn't realise there were a lot of small ideas after. Mrs Doyle uses a novel form of chiropractic after she falls off the roof and Jack develops agoraphobia.

We also fill in the cultural and historical gaps between seasons two and three, discuss the racism in Breakfast at Tiffanys, the Nazi marketing machine, how the Irish kids TV show The Den delayed the news EVERY DAY, and how hard it is to find black clothes (the regular shops shaft us every time!).

#JamesMcAnespy #JohnnyNicholl #JonathanMcCoy

Action McAnespy

2020-09-11T11:14:00.004+01:00

Is the Antrim All County League Division 3 ready? #GAA

Audition Tapes SPECIAL COUPLE [2018]

2020-09-09T19:14:00.003+01:00

#comedy #accent #auditiontape #jamesmcanespy

A police office interrogates a man whose story doesn't add up!