Shirley’s Burn Book

Poor Unfortunate Fools

Disney has revealed the actress who’s taking the lead role in the new live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Relatively unknown Halle Bailey will play Ariel - but some people aren’t happy.

You see, as well as being a brilliant singer, Halle happens to be black and apparently it’s illegal for a black person to be a mermaid or something. These dopes have been ranting online about how it’s “PC gone mad”, which is just another way of saying “I’m a huge racist who can’t cope with change”.

Clearly those idiots have never read the original book where the mermaid speaks in Danish and dies in the end.

Maura the same please!

Irish girls named Maura have long been waiting for a positive role model (who’s not a nun in the missions in Africa) so Love Island’s Maura from Longford is a godsend. #diversity #representation Love Island is a kind of TV prison where they send young good-looking people who want to become famous. Most will fail because they are thick or conceited but, once in a while, one of them succeeds in grabbing our attention – whether it’s by having sex on the telly or by wearing a swimsuit that’s not available in River Island or by telling some eejit to go f**k himself.

She’s not everyone’s cup of tea but Maura has managed to make the Longford accent sound sexy and fun and for that alone she deserves a statue in every town from Ballinamuck to Edgeworthstown.

Imma let you fi nish…

Speaking of running your mouth off like Kanye West at an awards show - Leo Varadkar is in trouble again. He was accusing Fianna Fáil’s Micheal Martin of hypocrisy in The Dáil and decided to compare him to a dodgy Catholic priest who doesn’t practice what he preaches (I think we all know what he meant).

That seems a bit excessive to me – especially considering the horrifi c things that some priests did to young women, men and children in this country. Despite this, loads of people got very upset with Leo and accused him of anti-Catholic bigotry.

It says a lot that these people think it’s off ensive to abusive priests to be compared to Fianna Fáil!

‘Cause shade never made anybody less gay.

She’s already the queen of messy break-ups, but Taylor Swift has done it again! And you know when Taylor breaks up, it’s never pleasant. This time TayTay has dumped her record label, Big Machine – and they’ve been together since she was 15. (Relax, that’s legal in Tennessee!) Things got messy fast because Big Machine, which gets to keep all the rights to her fi rst six albums, has now been sold to her biggest enemy in the entertainment industry (this week) - Scooter Braun.

Scooter also manages some of Taylor’s other enemies, like Kanye West and Justin Bieber. It’s a growing list so he’s clearly a man with a shrewd eye for a business opportunity.

Lads out for the tits!

I spent a large part of my life not giving much of a toss about football, so you can imagine my surprise when I found myself glued to the recent Women’s World Cup. Turns out that it wasn’t the soccer that bored me, it was that men were playing it.