New & Noteworthy: Gimme shelter

By Eileen Murphy

We hear that actor Ed Burns and his shagadelic girlfriend, actress Heather Graham, have put in a bid for the TriBeCa loft once owned by the late John F. Kennedy Jr.

The North Moore Street co-op has been vacant since last summer’s tragic plane crash, which claimed the lives of Kennedy, his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren. The property, which passed to Kennedy’s sister Caroline, had been quietly placed on the market via Sotheby’s Realty, with a price tag of $2.5 million. The family seems to have a strong relationship with Sotheby’s; the auction house handled the sale of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s estate.

The New York Post quotes real estate sources, who speculate that Burns bid less than the asking price.

"I don’t think they got the $2.5 million," said one insider. The value of a comparable property is closer to $1.5 million, said another, even in today’s super hot property market. A mere bag of shells, no?

Burns, who shot to fame as the triple-threat director, writer and star of "The Brothers McMullen," has achieved fame (and good critical reviews) in mainstream Hollywood movies like "Saving Private Ryan." Heather, who’s been Burns’s steady for the last two years, has appeared in smash hits like "Boogie Nights" and "The Spy Who Shagged Me."

The only thing that could stand between the pair and the apartment is the upcoming interview with the building’s co-op board. But yet another source insists that this should not be a problem.

"It’s one Irishman replacing another Irishman," said the source (with tongue, we’re sure, planted firmly in cheek).

Flatley fabulous

Don’t know about the rest of you, but we’ve been up nights worrying about Michael Flatley and his love life.

Really, the questions are keeping us up at night. Is Michael getting married to this Lisa Murphy one, or not? Is her boxer ex-boyfriend going to try to mess up Michael’s carefully coiffured hair? Is that girl ever going to wear an outfit that completely covers her chest? And, of course, most troubling of all: are Michael and Lisa actually getting (gulp!) married?

Well. You’d think that Ireland’s Sunday World newspaper, which breathlessly follows Flatley’s every move, would give us some insight into the situation, but they’re playing it safe on this one. The paper’s photographers followed the amorous pair to Dubai, where they strolled on the beach in skimpy swimwear (Michael and Lisa, not the photographers). The two blondes look deliriously happy and, we must say, as fit as fiddles in their scraps of spandex. But are they getting’ hitched?

Flatley’s Irish publicist, Chris Roche, insists that the pair aren’t engaged. Yet.

"Michael and Lisa are obviously a very special couple," gushed Roche. "But, as far as I’m aware, there is no engagement.

"If it happens," he added, "you’ll be the first to know."

Well, we all know how sincere and trustworthy publicists can be, so we’ll just wait by the phone for the news. After all, we’ll be the first to know, right?

Here comes trouble

To those of you who were breathing a sigh of relief now that Sinead O’Connor has taken the collar and (presumably) settled down a bit, we can only say: mind your sandwiches. As a public service, Sinead – or Mother Bernadette, as she’s known these days – is giving us notice right now: her son is destined to be another creative dynamo.

Thirteen-year-old Jake, O’Connor’s son by ex-husband John Reynolds, is apparently getting ready to follow in his famous mother’s footsteps, at least when it comes to stirring things up. Sinead told a reporter recently, "I think he is a very special individual."

With pardonable maternal pride, O’Connor added: "I think you’ve got to watch out for him. If you think I was a trouble maker, fasten your seatbelts. Jake Reynolds is on the way!"

Ready for his (posthumous) closeup

It’s interesting to note that Martin (The General) Cahill is such a compelling character to filmmakers that he’s being featured in yet a fourth movie since his death in 1994.

The Dublin crime lord’s life was depicted in the critically-acclaimed movie "The General" starring Brendan Gleeson, and in "Ordinary Decent Criminal," which starred Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey. Cahill’s exploits were also the basis for a BBC television movie, "Vicious Circle."

Cahill will next make an "appearance" in "When the Sky Falls," a biography of murdered crime reporter Veronica Guerin. The Cahill character has been renamed O’Shaughnessy in the script, but filmmakers say he’s "heavily based" on Cahill. The character will be played by Peter Postlethwaite, who was on the other side of the fence in "In the Name of the Father."

The Children’s Hour (or Year)

You know, if we didn’t have to write a column, walk the dog and wash the windows, we’d do what everyone else on the planet (or at least, in Ireland) seems to be doing these days: forming our own pop group. It seems that anyone who’s ever been able to warble "Happy Birthday" (without inducing projectile vomiting from those around them) is can be a pop star.

The latest entry into the world of pop wannabes is a Dublin boy band called InFOCUS, whose members, surprisingly, are cute, toothsome and mildly melodic. They want to be the next WestLife, who want to the next BoyZone, who wanted to be the next Backstreet Boys, who want to be the next Boyz II Men . . . well, you get the idea.

Anyway, the InFOCUS guys (and no, we don’t understand why some of the letters are capitals, so don’t ask) are not at the point where they can give up their day jobs. This means that there’s always a danger of the guys getting mobbed by screaming girls in the course of their normal duties, which can be a bummer.

Poor Jamie McDaid found himself the FOCUS of screaming fans while on duty as a security guard at a Dublin shopping mall, which didn’t go down a treat with his bosses.

"I was given the choice between my band or my job as a security guard," Jamie told a reporter. "I chose to stick with InFOCUS because of the cool spelling thing and I’ll get to wear lots of hair gel."

Sorry – we lost FOCUS for a moment. What Jamie actually said, of course, was, " I chose to stick with InFOCUS because it’s the best opportunity I’m going to get in life." Blah, blah, blah.

Another InFOCUS hunk, Peter O’Shaughnessy, makes ends meet by working in construction and tending bar.

"Some of us are doing day jobs to get by while we wait for the money to come in," he explained. "Things don’t happen overnight in this business, so you do what you can to stick with it."

Doing these other jobs is good for the guys, said O’Shaughnessy.

"It just shows how committed we are and it keeps us down to earth," he said.