"Irish women say they're 'grand' about a million times a day." Comedian Tara Flynn (Irish Pictorial Weekly and Armagayddon) has taken this as the starting point for her new book: You're Grand – The Irishwoman's Secret Guide to Life.

“Irishwomen have been around for ages – some would say almost as long as Irish men. We’ve learned a lot in that time but, until now, we haven’t shared it. Perhaps being shushed by priests/foreign invaders/the wind, for too long has taken its toll.”

Flynn definitely finds the LOLs lurking behind the tears of Irish womanhood. Her brief history of Irish times yields many nuggets. Did you know Kylie Minogue would have been too big to fit through the door of a ring fort?

Did you know that a book focused on women is not anti-men because by being mean to everyone, the English gifted Irish women not “800 years of oppression”, but “800 years of equality with our lads”.

If there isn’t enough in this book to make you giggle (the Real Housewives of the Blaskets; a whole page on sex – “a dirty word” that took us from “lusty pagans to uptight biddies”), then you’re not trying hard enough. Anthea McTeirnan