As a contributor to the Irish Times, author and journalist John Waters (b. 1955) is one of Ireland’s most well-known newspaper columnists. His career began in 1981 with the Irish political-music magazine Hot Press. He subsequently went on to work for celebrated and now defunct publications the Sunday Tribune and Magill. He has famously campaigned for the rights of fathers in Ireland, as well as raising the issue of the damage caused to the modern Irish psyche by the famine of 1845-1849.