From yesterday’s Irish Times – a decade on in the recession – however, I was much more upbeat about my future. I have turned the corner, I am proud of my achievements, and the future is looking very rosy! Irish Times Jillian Godsil lost her home in the recession and was one of the the first women to go bankrupt under Ireland’s new bankruptcy regulations. “Until 2008, life was very good. I was happily married, or so I thought, running my own PR and marketing company, living in a big house we’d bought in 1996. “Then two things went wrong. I discovered to my horror that I wasn’t happily married, and we started separation proceedings. The second thing was that my ex had got into property. The house had been worth €1.6 million at one stage, and it seemed to make sense to release some equity. So we had huge debts that we couldn’t pay. “It happened so quickly. My husband went back to the UK and declared bankruptcy. I made a video to try to sell the house on YouTube. The video was quirky and it went viral. I got a cash offer of €500,00 in 2011, and I put […]
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Mixing your genres – Feminist, Activist, Comic ….Erotica!
How do you make the medicine go down? With a spoon full of sugar of course. Watch me explain on video here Last year when I found myself speaking into a vacuum about debt and austerity in Ireland, I decided to use the one weapon at my disposal, the one thing the banks could not take from me – namely my pen – and I wrote a trilogy that has at its core the harsh human cost of our economic tragedy. And I say tragedy because most of what has happened to Ireland was so unnecessary. I can guarantee that in all the reviews of 50shades there is not one mention of the collapse of the American banking system. Whereas in the reviews of my humble trilogy there are loads of references to the social and economic landscape that is Ireland today. So, if you fancy the idea of reading about Ireland in recession, spiced up with some very naughty bits (for people cannot live by recession alone) then I think it would be a very good thing to buy and read my books. Telling the truth through fiction (and naughty bits) seems like an honourable thing to do. […]
Continue readingWomen’s Inspire Network (WIN) kicks off with first conference
For immediate release: Friday 24 October, 2011 The inaugural Women’s Inspire Network (WIN) formed by Twitter-Goddess Samantha Kelly kicks off its 2014 programme with a conference to inspire women in Wexford. The lineup includes Victoria Mary Clarke, Carmel Harrington and Jillian Godsil. The venue is The Talbot Hotel, Wexford, on Wednesday 29th October from 9am until 1pm, when lunch and networking will take place. The theme is Surviving in a Recession. Samantha Kelly, better known as @TweetingGoddess, is well known for her successful appearance on Dragon’s Den, the online group IrishBizParty and Goddess Hour on RadioActive. She formed IrishBizParty as a networking group and that has now grown to more than 2000 active members. She formed the WIN group this year in response to her experience at formal networking groups. As she explains: ‘I found most traditional networking groups to be intimidating. They tend to be suit-dominated and very male in their orientation. Often, the timing too was geared towards people who either do not have children or who have a spouse at home to mind them. I felt we needed a fresh channel where women in particular could come together to share experiences, link up and network in a […]
Continue readingMy week on @Ireland – my parting message
What an amazing week. I will write about my lovely time as the curator of the @Ireland account tomorrow but I am running out the door now and so I just want to ask people who follow the account to look at this presentation I did on debt, survival and hope. http://bcove.me/i68kpnpg or click on the icon on www.SouthEastTelevision.ie This is a talk I did with SouthEast Television called I wonder – about debt,survival and hope I really put my heart and soul into this. I think it is important. I am passionate about not being ashamed at failing financially. Neither should you be – if you have the misfortune to be down on your luck. God bless! Remember – This too will pass…
Continue readingJim Bolger – interview by Jillian Godsil on SETV
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Bolger, racing trainer, recently. It was a big honour and I have to say I was really worried in advance. Jim’s international reputation precedes him: he is a very straight man, at the top of his game and would not suffer fools gladly. The night before the interview I suddenly got very worried. I wondered if I had done enough research. I woke at 2am in a blind panic and got up and started watching video after video of him. Of course, the more I watched, the less I knew. I finally collapsed in bed about 6am, exhausted and all the more confused with his wins, the horses and the different race courses. This is me with the cameraman man Ronan from South East Television before the interview. I may look calm, but …. Anyway, it all went fine on the day, thank goodness. Jim was a most friendly interview subject and very generous with his time. The final result is on the SETV pages (click here) and look for the icon on the right. All I say afterwards is Winner All Right, Winner All Right!
Continue readingInterview with Aoife Brennan, author of The Cougar Diaries
I have been working with South East Television and recently they asked me to interview Irish writer Aoife Brennan, author of The Cougar Diaries. Aoife’s book is fascinating in that she writes from the heart. It is not your normal erotica, in fact it is it quite the opposite as her character faces real life situations and troubles as she tries to discover who she is post divorce. It is also very funny in parts and a little sad in others. Aoife explained that this book is all about Sex and Divorce, but book two is all about Sex and Austerity. And funnily enough, it works. A real page turner. Watch here to see my interview with this lovely author. Sadly we had to take down the YouTube link HERE (NSFW). but here is a transcript of the very funny interview – lots of laughter and frank discussion! Buy the book here (.com) or here (.co.uk) Jillian: The year is 2013 and the book title Fifty shades is synonymous with erotica or Mummy porn. People said it started off with ereaders – women could buy the most salacious reading materials and no […]
Continue readingHappy Birthday Aspire Magazine
ASPIRE Magazine is officially one year old and is the top selling business magazine on iTunes. It is a business magazine with a difference. On its first birthday last month, Nick Broadhurst, editor and founder, came out with a new and improved mission statement. The mission of the magazine and its contributors is to help people become GameChangers. Nick defines a GameChanger as someone who wants to make a positive mark on the work. “They put their mission first and are driven by empathy rather than ego. They create change in the world because they care,” he explains. “How they meet their mission is inconsistent. Rather than following an existing path, they create their own and leave a trail. They embody resourcefulness, the courage to disrupt and the commitment to pursue the unreasonable. “What they create is the infrastructure for a new paradigm. They recognize Einstein’s sage advice that the greatest problems we face can’t be solved using the same level of thinking that created them. Thus, they focus on building a new model that makes an existing model obsolete. Your interest in this magazine is a telling sign that you recognize a new model of business is being […]
Continue readingBright Lights Big City
It was a cold and frosty night but the American Lifeguard, dressed only in shorts, tee shirt and flipflops, stood aloft in his high chair and called constantly through his megaphone. “Do not go into the water,” he repeated. The crowd, Irish and wrapped up in scarves and coats, laughed and stamped their collective feet against the cold. A number of women wore very high heels combined with belt-short skirts and their bare legs shivered in sympathy with the lifeguard’s. No one was in any danger of going into the water, not that there was any in the city centre location. The queue was lined up for the Jameson Cult film night in the Tivoli Theatre on Frances Street. Previous screenings in the Cult series had included Snatch, Alien and Reservoir of Dogs. Attendance was by invitation only and we, my friend and I, had gained our entrance through a competition run by WorldIrish. We joined the queue and soon spotted another actor roaming alongside, dressed in cutoffs and oversized glasses. Chief Brody was on hand to keep an eye on things. This caused more laughter and talk and we made some temporary friends in the people in the […]
Continue readingHaggling over the Price
Over the weekend an Australian film maker went stratospheric when the culmination of an online auction of two virgins raised almost a million euros. Actually, it was only the girl who attracted the large bidding, with more than $700,000 pledged by a Japanese business man. The male virgin had to settle for a mere $3000. The auction and the proposed documentary has excited a lot of people, not least of which are law makers and the director may yet end up with a visit to his local penitentiary. Justin Sisely, director of Thomas Williams Productions, appears to have been limited to filming weddings prior to his big break. In what he claims is a search for the change that happens when virginity is sold, he advertised across campuses in his native Australia for virgins to enter the experiment and his documentary. The creative urge was to explore human sexuality and our views on virginity, but the posters looking for participants said they would be paid $20,000 and win fame and fortune; a somewhat incongruous and conflicting message. Initially he was seeking local virgins but the campaign went viral and global. The female virgin, Catarini Migliorini from Brazil was set to […]
Continue readingCindy Gallop – if she ran the world…
Aspire Magazine ran my article on Cindy Gallop on the cover of September magazine. It was probably the hand action that secured the success of the micro talk at TED2009, that or the fact that Cindy Gallop had broken TED’s porn cherry with the description of her own sex life, the merits of hardcore porn and a personal preference not to watch sex films that resembled open heart surgery. In just ten minutes, a global sensation was born and a Cindy Gallop’s fame washed out of advertising circles and into mainstream social consciousness. Her diminutive frame and well-articulated vocabulary were at direct odds with her subject matter: the creeping ubiquity of porn and its damaging effect on society. However, Gallop is not anti porn, on the contrary she is a discerning consumer of it, but she worries about the effect that male dominated porn has on an impressionable younger generation, both male and female. Gallop explained her problem and how she encountered at first hand the direct impact of porn on Generation Y, or GenY. In short, she dates GenY men and has sex with them. This point is only of interest as Gallop would be considered a cougar, and […]
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