As revealed yesterday on hotpress.com, Simple Minds mainman Jim Kerr and Enya co-manager and producer Nicky Ryan are the latest heavyweight additions to the Music Show line-up, which takes place in the RDS on October 3 and 4.

It’s been a great 12 months for Kerr who organised a 90th birthday party for Nelson Mandela in Wembley Stadium, and then scored a huge international hit with Simple Minds’ Graffiti Soul covers album, which includes a nod to their Celtic soul brother Phil Lynott on ‘Whiskey In The Jar’.

The only cloud was the death earlier this month of film director John Hughes whose use of ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ in 1985’s Breakfast Club helped the Minds crack America. The band have subsequently announced that they’ll be dedicating the song every night to Hughes on their upcoming tour, which takes in the Dublin O2 on December 9 and then travels the following night to the Belfast Odyssey.

Nicky Ryan meanwhile has been a key figure in one of contemporary music’s most spectacular and enduring success stories.

Aided by Nicky and his lyric-writing wife Roma, Eyna has scored nine hit albums, which between them have sold well in excess of 70 million copies. Along the way he’s picked up an Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement, Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and a mantlepiece full of Grammys. And that’s just for starters!

The Hot Press Newsdesk