From soda bread to knowing who Leo Varadkar is, Sarah Jessica Parker gets more Irish by the day

More Irish than the Irish themselves: Jack Charlton, certain Anglo-Normans and, in recent years, Sarah Jessica Parker.A Donegal woman who winters in Manhattan, the Sex and the City star recently showed her palate narrowing to Irish specifications by posting to Instagram some soda bread and a hearty brothy soup she had whipped up for herself. Parker, not quite at native levels with Irish cuisine, ate the soup and bread for breakfast. “All I’m missing is the smell of turf,” she said.Her recipes came from Kieran McArdle (30), a Newry man who explores traditional Irish cooking on Instagram and TikTok under the name Bitewise. “It was quite shocking, to be fair,” he told Overheard.READ MOREParker followed him a week or so before unveiling her culinary endeavours. “I thought it might have been a fake account,” he said. But then a post appeared. “I was just thinking to myself, it looked like the exact same as mine,” McArdle said. Confirmation came as Parker wrote publicly in response to his Irish broth video that she had followed the recipe and posted the results. “And I made my first soda bread!” she said. “Thank you for the inspiration!”An exciting moment for McArdle who works full time in mental health in Liverpool, and whose growing audience gathers together the Irish and Irish-inclined around the world. “I’ve got quite a few people from the States, saying that they’ve been away for ages and some of the recipes that they’d just completely forgotten about and it reminds them of home or a certain person,” he said. Parker has previously spoken about the dead end she faces in seeking Irish citizenship due to her lack of a suitably Irish granny. Her husband, actor Matthew Broderick, has been visiting Roelough, near Kilcar, since he was a teenager and the couple secured planning permission for improvements to their house a few months ago.They even presented the Broderick Cup at a local underage GAA blitz event, which we thought might have been in the Constitution as a path to citizenship, but apparently not. A new acquaintance could prove a useful advocate for her cause, however. At the opening night of Ulster American, a play at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin starring Broderick, Parker encountered a local luminary.Who? Leo Varadkar, of course. Happier than Enda Kenny after the All-Ireland final, the former taoiseach managed to corner the six-time Golden Globe winner to tell her of the depth of his admiration. “So chuffed to meet this lady at last,” he said in a post on Instagram. “Have seen every episode of Sex and the City like four times. She’s as fabulous as ever.”Overheard is told by those in the know that four is not that many times to have seen Sex and the City, but he’s been busy at times, to be fair. A State visit for LimerickBritish king Charles III inspects a Shetland pony. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA Glad tidings for another frequent visitor to Ireland with the news that Charles III has been invited to Limerick. No reigning British monarch has ever been apparently. Seeking to make amends, John Moran, the high-profile mayor of Limerick, has invited his counterpart to come have a look around, with a formal invitation to follow.“Any time that you get somebody of the stature of the king coming to an area, it shines a huge spotlight on all the good work we’re doing, on the place that we are, and on the people,” Moran told Limerick’s Live 95 as he launched his charm offensive.[ Limerick mayor John Moran wanted to avoid taking ‘hard position’ on Aughinish Alumina, emails showOpens in new window ]Charles is already expected on this only partly sceptred isle in 2027, thanks to an invitation by President Catherine Connolly, and has been to Limerick on a fishing trip in 1992 in his prior incarnation as a mere prince. He might be tempted back.What would he look at? “There would be plenty of things to show off now,” Moran told the Limerick Leader, adding: “He needs to come and see King John’s Castle.”We’re not sure a castle will be a novelty to the king of England, but it’s worth a try. Ready to rockOverheard is as sensitive to signs of the apocalypse as the next column, and given the eclipse, we’re looking for signs of reassurance.Earthquakes in particular have been in the news for months now, with damaging tremors in Indonesia, Japan, Colombia and even, this week, Granada. Is something going on?Seismology is not our strong suit, so we asked experts. “The number of large earthquakes per year varies,” Dr Martin Möllhoff, director of seismic networks at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), said. Earthquakes over magnitude 7 average out at about 16 per year, according to the US Geological Survey.Cracks on a road after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. Photograph: Made Nagi/EPA “I think 11 have been recorded this year so far, which is not far off from this average,” Möllhoff said. “The annual rate fluctuates quite a bit; recent extremes were 23 large earthquakes in 2010, and six in 1989.”When tremors rock populous areas, we tend to take more notice.Prof Chris Bean, head of geophysics at DIAS, said sometimes mega-earthquakes can set off strong aftershocks. “It can actually take several years for this to smooth out, and for the number of events to go back to ‘normal’ values.”He added: “Interestingly, on the very long time scale of say two billion years, we will expect fewer and fewer earthquakes, as plate tectonics starts to shut down because the earth is losing heat.”Something to look forward to.Nothing new under the sunA cuneiform tablet, though not the one in question. Photograph: Murtaja Lateef/AFP/Getty As Irish farmers call for action from Government over the consequences of the recent drought, Overheard was reminded of one of our favourite Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions. “As to the sesame field, I am not getting water,” carved a farmer into a clay tablet around 3,600 years ago. “The sesame will die.”Attempting to alert the Babylonian version of Fine Gael Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon to his plight, the farmer chiselled: “Don’t say ‘You didn’t write me!’ The key is ... to see ... that sesame will die.”“I have written to you (now), (let me hear) what you say.”Compare Francie Gorman, head of the IFA, this week: “There’s not much point in doing a survey of a house when the house is burnt down. We know the situation.”Some things never change.