Magazine Minute: BBQ special, Colm Meaney, Serena Williams, Wimbledon fever

BBQ GUIDE: LOVE ME TENDER

The summer is heating up, and the garden grill is ready for something new. In a 12-page barbecue special in this week’s Magazine, Gillian Nelis assembles the tastiest recipes and insider cooking tips to ensure your next outdoor gathering goes with the right kind of bang and sizzle. Alex Meehan also helps you find the best kit without burning your fingers, while Tomás Clancy and Emmet Ryan select the top summer wines and beers to wash it all down. Find a wide selection of dishes, ranging from the fishy to the spicy, and traditional to modern, in our expert guide this Sunday.

INTERVIEW: COLM MEANEY

Colm Meaney is one of Ireland’s most famous and prolific screen actors, having made his name in the 1990s with the film adaptations of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy. The US-based actor is back on familiar territory this summer in Irish culture clash comedy Halal Daddy, loosely based on the true story of a Sligo halal meat factory. This Sunday, he catches up with John Maguire in a wide-ranging interview covering career milestones, LA life and immigration. “It really saddens me when I hear Irish people giving out about migrants,” as Meaney puts it, “when some of the people coming here are fleeing terrible ways and unbearable oppression.”

ZEITGEIST: CATHERINE HEALY

Serena Williams has done a Demi Moore, 26 years since the original naked and pregnant Vanity Fair photoshoot was conceived. While her cover photo has predictably ruffled some feathers, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion makes a powerful statement by unabashedly showcasing her bump to the world, argues Catherine Healy this Sunday. “Black women, invisible in so much of US culture, are still rarely the subject of headlines gushing over pregnant mothers, never mind elevated to goddess-like figures in photography,” she writes. “Williams - tennis queen, mother-to-be, champion of black womanhood - has secured her place in sports history, and for that all should salute her. With or without swollen ankles.”

RAISING A RACKET

Anyone for tennis? As Wimbledon fever competes with our day jobs, we focus on sport for this week’s travel inspiration. Aileen Hickie argues the case for centre court thrills as she recounts her recent and highly memorable Roman holiday. "When I first told my elderly mother that I was going to the Italian Tennis Open, she said she thought I would do very well,” Hickie tells us. "She was very impressed that having only taken up tennis through a Rusty Rackets programme a few years ago that I was now going to be playing with Venus Williams, Simona Halep and the like in Rome’s Foro Italico. I had to disappoint her. I was going to watch. Obviously.” For Hickie’s inside track on how to do a tennis trip in style, plus further sporting holiday ideas, see this weekend’s Sunday Business Post Magazine.