By PETER SINCLAIR
Break out the shamrock! Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, one of the two great Celtic revels (Halloween is the other).
Nostalgic expats and honorary leprechauns everywhere can choke up at the big Dublin parade and watch video messages from the President of Eire, Mary McAleese, and the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, at St Patrick's Festival 2000.
At the very least, drop into Virtual Ireland and send an e-card to everyone you know whose name begins with an "O'."
But Jo Fergus, a reader of this column in Hawkes Bay Today and co-organiser of the "Let's Get Boyzone to New Zealand" campaign, is more likely to be found at boyzone.co.uk, the Web-site of these five singers of the green, if only because March 17 also happens to be vocalist Stephen Gately's birthday.
A shamrock Renaissance is under way, and these days Irish groups are enjoying as much international acclaim as Irish geeks.
Jo, a Napier mother of three, finds time between her chores to tend the NZBoyzone internet mailing-list, and if we don't see the boys down under it won't be her fault.
She hounds them devotedly. Some quotes:
* "I'd love to go to New Zealand ... I do plan to go next year to do some promotion" - Stephen Gately, September 1999, Disney Webchat.
* "Yeah, we're lookin' forward to goin' to New Zealand, the women are supposed to be beautiful" - Keith Duffy, June 1999, Tearaway.
* "I'm gonna make it my business to get to New Zealand, I promise you I'll be there next year, definitely" - Ronan Keating, TVNZ News.
Nor is Jo's devotion confined to Boyzone. She also runs a mailing-list for Westlife, the Irish boy-band which (mercifully) dislodged Cliff Richard's Millennium Prayer from the top of the British charts just in time to see in the new century.
The girls aren't far behind, either. B-witched (b-witched.co.uk or b-witched.com) offers four variations on the fabled loveliness of the Irish colleen, plus easily-digestible music which never quite escapes the rhythm of Eire's traditional jig.
And let's not forget Andrew, Caroline, Jim and Shannon Corr. At a time when some Irish music had degenerated into a cynical parody of itself, the Corrs brought a breath of fresh air into the stuffy rooms vacated by the likes of U2 and Enya.
You shouldn't overlook the glossy website of the Cranberries, either.
But when you're Irish, triumph often tilts into disaster. Let's at least pause to remember that "Pope-shredding, Grammy-snubbing ... drama queen", Sinead O'Connor, one of those artists in whom the wild Celtic strain becomes almost indistinguishable from madness.
Bald, suicidal, deprived of the custody of her children, booed from the stage of Madison Square Garden after an ill-advised foray into opera, flung out of Israel, ordained as a "priest" in the dodgiest of pseudo-Catholic cults, she represents the artist as destroyer - of her own career, her very life.
Yet she is, quite simply, a bruised genius - one of those Irish meteors who streak through the British heavens; who have for centuries, in the words of Evelyn Waugh, "lent fire to an imperial race."
It might be nice to say "thank you" and show a little respect over at sinead-oconnor.com this St Patrick's Day.
Comments: petersinclair@email.com
Peter Sinclair - The Singing of the Green
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