Barrtalk: Faithful Kelley Higgins did Donegal proud!

Didn’t young Kelley Higgins do us up in Donegal proud? What an unassuming star and inspirational young woman she turned out to be.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last month, Kelley (23) was one of a trio of winners on the RTE mega-hit television show The Traitors.

After helping to successfully banish all the ‘traitors’ during the near-month-long series, the Letterkenny student was one of three ‘faithful’ girls left standing to share in the prize fund of €42,900.

The fact that each player took home only €14,300 each after all that effort seems more than a tad measly, particularly given RTE’s mega salaries and tax-funded budget, but that’s a whole column for another day.

Anyway, we shouldn’t really slate RTE here, since it scored such a hit with The Traitors. It seemed all the generations were watching together, just like the old days – including my parents, who usually only watch Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

In an interview afterwards, Kelley said she was her “true authentic self” – and that’s exactly what came across throughout.

In an era of grandiose social media egos and reality TV wannabees, intent on launching careers as ‘influencers’, Kelley was an ordinary, trustworthy young woman who never seemed willing to shaft others to further her own progress [except maybe Joanna!].

In fact, her calm and gentle personality may well become the ‘blueprint’ for playing the show in years to come; as she was one of the few contestants universally liked.

At this stage, she’s probably the third most popular Donegal person on the planet [after Daniel and Jim McGuinness, obviously].

But wouldn’t it be ironic if Kelley Higgins went on to launch a media career after being so unassuming on the show? Nice guys don’t always finish last.

Meanwhile, The Traitors will almost certainly be back for a second season in Ireland next year.

Its viewing figures have been through the roof, pulling in an average of 557,000 live viewers for a whopping 50 per cent share of viewership. It has done even better online, where it has been streamed more than 4 million times on the RTE Player, which is saying something, given how insufferable that player often is.

Anyway, well done Kelley, who in the end just pipped Faye to the post as Barrtalk’s favourite contestant. Sadly, no €14,000-plus for that honour though!

Trump descends even further into madness

I’ve tried desperately to avoid the subject of Trump and the raging US Culture Wars during the silver-spooned fraud’s second term in the Oval Office. If the Americans voted for him twice, then let them have the double dose they deserve [with sympathies to the half who didn’t vote for him!].

That said, how could you possibly ignore Trump’s latest descent into madness [just when you thought he’d already reached the bottom], with claims that the use of Tylenol is linked to autism?

For those who don’t know, Tylenol is the same drug as paracetamol, a mild pain-relieving tablet that billions of us have been taking without issue for more than a century.

In fact, as a sufferer of frequent headaches, I almost certainly take more paracetamol than the average Joe, by a long chalk.

In the view of Trump and his even more twisted senior health official Robert F Kennedy Jr, the use of paracetamol by pregnant women puts their babies at increased risk for autism.

Please. Such predictable, pathetic and outlandish claims are a deep insult to those with autism and their families. I can imagine if I had a kid with ASD, I’d be apoplectic.

Trump and RFKJ are also busily pushing the baseless conspiracy theorist agenda that vaccines – the single greatest invention in all of human history, which have saved gazillions of lives – are the cause of autism and other illnesses.

Not even ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘South Park’ – during their deepest, darkest moments of black humour and scathing satire – could have gotten away with this stuff.

The President claiming that paracetamol causes autism! How do you respond to that? Do you even dignify such insanity with a measured response?

The World Health Organisation has pushed back against Trump and his band of halfwits, by asserting that there’s no scientific basis to support such a connection.

“Extensive research, including large-scale studies over the past decade, has found no consistent association,” the agency said in a statement.

“The WHO recommends that all women continue to follow the advice of their doctors or health workers, who can help assess individual circumstances and recommend necessary medicines.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) released a statement saying “suggestions that acetaminophen use in pregnancy causes autism are not only highly concerning to clinicians but also irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients.”

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The WHO also reaffirmed its stance on vaccines, assuring people that they do NOT cause autism. The organisation also pointed out how global immunization efforts have prevented at least 154 million deaths in modern times.

In a toss-up of whose health advice to follow, I’m pretty sure I’d plump for the established medical science community and my local GP, ahead of a deranged man, who guzzles Big Macs and Diet Cokes every day.

And to think, Tylenol assumed the ‘Chicago Tylenol murders’ – when a madman laced the tablets with deadly potassium cyanide, killing at least seven people in the early 1980s – would be the worst thing to happen to the company.

Can’t keep those madmen down, it seems . . . Anyway, no more Trump next week [I hope].