For some it’s a good book, for others it’s a nice relaxing drama about a serial killer. We ask people to tell us their favourite ways to unwind
1 BIG BEATS
Big "gay" dance music from the late 1980s and early 1990s, or any of the big-beat music from when I was 18. Things like Groove Is in the Heartby Deee-Lite and Bootsy Collins. Or Male Stripperby Man 2 Man Meets Man Parish. On Twitter I once said that I was on the train with Wi-Fi and large noise-cancelling headphones and asked people what song would be the most fun if the jack fell out and the whole train heard it. And they chose Male Stripper. I loved just sitting there with a big grin on in the silent carriage with that on. "I'm built like a truck / I'd bump for a buck." But I'll sit down and listen to anything from when I was 17, 18. Fool's Goldby The Stone Roses, The Soup Dragons's I'm Free. But if I want an injection of good mood, or if I'm in the gym in particular, I know can turn a 25-minute run into a 40-minute run by sticking on "I see you baby / shakin' that ass" by Groove Armada.
Dara Ó Briain, comedian
2 JANE AUSTEN
I have always gone to the novels of Jane Austen, those six great treasures. I read two of them a year, so that I reread them all every three years. I first read Pride and Prejudicewhen I was 15, and it still throws me and delights me. There is always something new to be found in it. There is the sheer effrontery of Jane Austen in a way. She is adamant that money rules all and never loses sight of the comedy and sadness of that, of how people can be made but also unmade by it. And she could never be accused of being compassionate. Compassion is hard won, making it strong and powerful. The standard of writing is also something to be aspired to, its exactness and great wit. Persuasionis the greatest analysis of a love story between man and a woman in the English language. She was dying when writing Persuasion. Twenty-five years ago I held in my hands a letter she wrote to her niece, saying she would be leaving something for publication. You can imagine how my heart beats at the memory of that.
Frank McGuinness, playwright
3 A GOOD BOOK
There is nothing more pleasurable than a good book. The greatest escape for me would be on holidays reading a book. I always have something on the go. I know people say they go back and read certain books over and over again, but I think life is too short. Having said that, I have read Wuthering Heightsa few times since school. It was much better when I didn't have to answer questions on it. What would I know about Heathcliff's passion for Cathy at 17? I would have been madly in love with a few girls from the convent and might have been thinking that this guy has it bad. There is something smouldering about it, though, and of course it is beautifully written. Sometimes I read a book and think it would make a great stage play. To me, what I am doing right now, rehearsing a new play called Jumping for Sharks, is escapism of a wonderful nature. Hours go by in rehearsal and someone says I think we should eat . . . We are so happy and contented. It's work, but to me it is the joy of what I do. Only those who do it would understand what I am trying to say.
Don Wycherly, actor
4 DEXTER and MAD MEN
I love Dexterand Mad Men. I'm just starting season four of Dexterand waiting for the new season of Mad Men. A box set is a simple thing, but is always a great escape. I also like just putting on the iPod, switching on music and singing away. It's a real head-clearer. The music depends on the time of day. Röyksopp's Melody AMis a great one in the mornings for getting me going. And I listen to Joni Mitchell time and time again. It's like a meditation, a way of leaving your life behind for a while. And then you come come back and wonder what you were worried about in the first place.
Lisa Lambe, actor
5THE RADETZKY MARCH
Glum? Depressed? Downright down? Quick, reach for Bach, Auden, Mozart, Tolkien, Chocolate, Saint-Saëns's Symphony No 3. Really down? My quickest route to supreme happiness is Strauss senior's most flamboyant tune, The Radetzky March. It make me smile, feel kinder towards my fellow man, sing that bit louder, leap about and, if in the car, drive that bit faster. Strauss the elder, who died aged 45, in 1849, begat Johann II, composer of The Blue Danube. In common with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, The Radetzky Marchpossesses the magic to propel an exhausted runner through those final, agonising kilometres of a marathon or a daily run. And not only do you have the music but you can also read Joseph Roth's magnificent elegy to the closing days of the Habsburg empire in the richly erotic, nostalgic and satirical 1932 novel of the same name.
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Literary Correspondent
6 DUBLINERS
At the risk of sounding pretentious, my choice for great-escape reading is James Joyce's Dubliners. It is a book I continually return to. Its 15 stories, first published in 1914, present us with characters whose lives are in flux and who are reaching intimate moments of crisis or epiphany. The stories are written with a directness and a clarity that many may consider surprising given Joyce's well-deserved reputation for high-art obtuseness. Presenting itself as an easy read, it begins with stories of youth and then progresses in age to culminate in the magisterial "The Dead". It is in its accumulative effect, however, that Dublinersbecomes truly exhilarating, delivering a vivid, detailed and breathtaking portrait of a provincial city and its citizens, presenting the local as truly universal. It is as relevant today as it was when it was written, almost 100 years ago.
Mark O’Halloran, film-maker
7 L’ORFEO
There’s the comfort of the familiar: the magnificent idiocy of a Ramones song, the lushness of a Hopkins sonnet, the flawless wit of Some Like It Hot. And there’s the other kind of escape – into the strangeness of the kind of alternative universe you find in, say, Proust. But for instant relief from too much reality there’s no drug like music. I use a range of mood-altering aural substances: Joan Sutherland for joy; Keith Jarrett for high-wire drama; Martin Hayes for pure simplicity. For emergency decompression, though, there’s nothing quite like Monteverdi’s ravishing early opera L’Orfeo, especially Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s version using the original instruments. There’s a passage in which Orpheus, in order to get into the Underworld, has to mesmerise the fearsome Charon with his singing. After a few notes, bankers, ministers and the rest of the undead float away to hell, and I know all will be well.
Fintan O’Toole
8 THE MAN MADE OF RAIN
I don't write every day, and I can go a long while without writing anything at all. When I do get an idea for a poem I feel exhilarated, but also some anxiety about getting started. I wonder how I'm going to do it, to start off. When that happens I go back to the poems and books that teach me what a poem is and how it works. One of the books that always motivates me is The Man Made of Rain, by Brendan Kennelly. It is a visionary poem, pitched between life and death, "a map of his wandering discoveries". It is a poem that reminds me to try to strike a balance in my own writing – to hover between self-awareness and that inner, uncontrollable place of expression, the "shadowlands" of poetry. Once I've finished the first section in Kennelly's book I feel that initial excitement for poetry fire up again.
Leanne O’Sullivan, poet
9 THE CINEMA
I like going to the cinema a lot, especially the Irish Film Institute and the Lighthouse. The kind of films shown there help me relax. But I don’t have any that I watch again and again, because they’re films I just see once. I’m more likely to return to the same music. At the moment I’m listening to a lot of Samuel Barber, the American composer, and also to Schubert. But when I want to relax, and when a film really works, I can really get into it and for two hours I can be somewhere else. Maybe it’s because of the dark of the cinema. I don’t go to as many concerts, and tend to listen to music at home. At a concert you’re more self-conscious about where you are. In the cinema, when the lights go down, you can just relax into it.
Enrique Juncona, director of Imma
10 DAD’S ARMY
At times of stress you are not going to be cheered up by anarchic yahoos or creative depressives. The Marx Brothers and Steptoe and Sonare for robust constitutions. What you need is a bit of whimsy-flavoured comfort food. No entity satisfies those demands more effectively than Dad's Army. First broadcast in 1968 – there was more to that year than stone-hurling French students – the series detailed the adventures of an aging Home Guard platoon during the second World War. Although the writing by David Croft and Jimmy Perry was consistently strong, the show is (rightly) best remembered for a host of gorgeously nuanced performances from veteran character actors. "A Wilson, (Manager)?", in which suave John Le Mesurier thinks he's finally escaped pompous Arthur Lowe, is perhaps the best episode, but it is somewhat melancholy. Try "The Deadly Attachment" for uninhibited chortles. Don't tell him, Pike!
Donald Clarke, Irish Timesfilm critic
What Twitter thinks
@jody_pierce
My ultimate mood lifter is Spongebob Squarepants. Bar none.
@evaduffy
DVD: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Spacedand Black Books. Film: Coen Brothers.
@SineadRyan
Art? Any of my many well-worn Calvin & Hobbesanthologies. A boy and tiger. Instant happiness.
@jonathangrimes
Authentic salsa music, played loudly.
@MrsVauvenargues
PG Wodehouse, Best in Show, Fargo, University Challenge, Ding Dong Denny O'Reilly, The Blades.
@NiamhMaher
Father Tedevery time.
@PaulineLogan
Music: Aretha Franklin, especially Think. Film: something like Monsoon Wedding.
@Kevnmur
It's a Wonderful Lifealways manages to restore my faith in mankind, for a while at least.
@DeusExCinema
Movies: Who Framed Roger Rabbitor any of the Disney Renaissance ( Little Mermaidthrough Lion King). TV: classic Simpsonsalways.
@larry_ryan
Annie Hall. "I need the eggs" etc.
@NiallXMurphy
Star Trek, the new one. Old Spock kicks ass!
@colmtobin
The fiddle playing of Martin Hayes. And Seinfeld.
@idiotkid
Film would have to be Airplane. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
@niall77
Flashman. Any of the books or even the thought of some of the scrapes he got himself into.
@danielsexitoni
Grand Theft Auto, end of.
@desfitzgerald
The good stuff from Stan & Ollie: Big Business; Men O' War; Music Box; Sons of the Desert; Way Out West. I could go on . . .
@Joe_Cummins
Book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy(always good for a giggle) Movie: Breakfast on Plutoor V for Vendetta.
@jaywilsonmusic
Fawlty Towers; The City, The Airportor I am Johnby Loney, Dear; playing piano; Will Ferrell's SNL videos.
@al70
Curb Your Enthusiasm.
