Hot Press Christmas Summit '25: With Cliffords, BIIRD, Junior Brother, Daniel Lambert, Steve Wall, Shark School and DUG

SUMMIT LINE-UP:

Iona Lynch
Lead singer with Cliffords, the Cork indie merchants who were cherry-picked by Dermot Kennedy to play at his Misneach festival in Sydney, overcame severe sunburn to stun at Glastonbury and in Salt Of The Lea have an EP of the Year contender.

Lisa Canny
The winner of seven All-Ireland Fleadh Ceoil titles, the Mayo multi-instrumentalist and composer has put together the eleven-piece Biird whose burgeoning fan club includes Ed Sheeran.

Daniel Lambert
When not steering his managerial charges Kneecap through choppy waters, the Dubliner is Chief Operating Officer at Bohemian FC, a DJ of considerable repute and a social activist in his own right.

Junior Brother
Also answering to the name of Ronan Kealy, the Kerry singer-songwriter signed this year to Pete Doherty’s Strap Originals label and gifted us The End, his third album which is a Choice Music Prize contender if ever we’ve heard one.

Peggy Forde & Nora Staunton
Two-thirds of Shark School, the Galway garage band who’ve caught the Edge’s ear and are currently applying the finishing touches to both their debut album and the third FemmeFest in the Róisín Dubh.

Steve Wall
Not content with fronting The Stunning whose current ‘Stand Up In This Wicked World’ single has raised a tidy sum for Medecins Sans Frontiers’ Gaza Fund, this veritable City of the Tribes legend is also soon to be seen in George R.R. Martin’s A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms.

DUG'S Conor O’Reilly & Jonny Pickett
Hailing from opposite sides of the Atlantic, this extremely dynamic Dublin-based duo wowed the folk masses this year with their debut Have At It! album, and will unashamedly be plugging their Palestine Solidarity Night gig over Christmas in The Sugar Club. Having yet to acquire Padre Pio-like powers of bilocation, they’re joining us on Zoom.

Stuart Clark
Hot Press’ Deputy Editor will be channelling his inner Fiona Bruce as he tries – and ultimately fails – to keep Christmas Summit order.

---

It’s the morning after the miraculous World Cup qualifying night before, and the ten participants in the 2025 Hot Press Christmas Summit are talking about Troy Parrott with the same reverence other people reserve for that virgin birth fella.

Frankincense, gold and myrrh are off the menu but we do have beer, mince pies and glazed donuts to help fuel this year’s discussion of all things cultural.

There’s much to consider, so without further ado let us hear from the wise men and women – plus Stuart Clark – who are starting their festive partying early...

Stuart: Kneecap spoke for the nation when they tweeted, “Stick that up your bollox Viktor Orbán” after the game last night. Their bothering to include the fada – or whatever it’s called in Hungarian – on his surname showing the deep respect they have for the Christofascist loolah.

Steve: They’ve such a way with words! I was watching at home and had given up completely when Hungary made it 2-2. I was like, “Oh no, here we go again…” I never expected that outcome. It’s mystifying to lose to Armenia and follow it up with a win against Portugal who then go and beat Armenia 9-1. You could hear this echo of screams from all the houses around me when Troy Parrott scored the winner.

Stuart: Anyone up for doing an Ireland World Cup Song?

Junior Brother: I’ll get started after we finish here!

Conor: We’ll see! I’m half-Scottish, half-Irish so it’s a rarity being able to celebrate both teams doing well. I don’t remember either country at the World Cup, so bring it on!

Stuart: Dan, have you ever run into Troy Parrott on your footballing travels?

Daniel: No, but Bohs runs street football programmes in the flat complexes around the northern city, and his younger brother is one of the players. What an area! Troy, Kelly Harrington and Wes Hoolahan are all from the one tiny street, Portland Row. To produce that many world class athletes is amazing. The people in our Community Office are saying it’s like St. Patrick’s Day in and around Sheriff Street where Troy’s from.

Stuart: You were also celebrating a couple of weeks ago when Shamrock Rovers winning the double guaranteed Bohs European football next year.

Daniel: Yeah, for the first time since 2021. It’s a really big deal – especially for a publicly-owned club, which doesn’t have the resources that some of the private ones do.

Favourite Songs & Albums

Stuart: 2025 was another epic year for music. What are your standout releases?

Jonny: Two albums we’ve been listening to nonstop in the car are Geese’s Getting Killed and Joshua Burnside’s Teeth Of Time. We’re signed internationally to Claddagh Records so a shout out to our labelmate Michael D. Higgins on the success of his album! Christy Moore and The Chieftains are also signed to Claddagh, so it’s an honour to be part of something so legendary.

Conor: Not just because he’s sitting here but Junior Brother’s The End is pretty amazing.

Junior Brother: Thanks! On my way here I was listening to It’s A Beautiful Place by an American band called Water From Your Eyes. Another favourite of mine is Alannah Thornburgh’s Shapeshifter. She’s a harpist from Swinford in Co. Mayo who’s been opening my shows.

Iona: Madra Salach are class. We’ve played a few shows with them and they’re very, very good. They write these songs which feel like they’ve been around for years.

Nora: I’ve been listening to a lot of Just Mustard this year. The new album, We Were Just Here, is incredible.

Peggy: I’ve been living and breathing Turnstile whose Never Enough album is incredible. As was their show in the 3Arena. It felt like a gig in a 100-capacity venue where you keep bumping into people you know. The moshpit in front of the stage continued all the way to the back – it was crazy!

Steve: I’ve really been enjoying Muireann Bradley’s stuff. It’s obviously very influenced by her dad’s blues records growing up. She’s a superb guitar picker – and her voice! She’s this gentle girl from Donegal who’s already done Later… With Jools Holland and been on these lineups in America with Lana Del Rey. There’s something really cool about her and I’m excited to see where she goes. I also have to mention my friend Oliver Cole who’s released a new album, Wingspan. He used to be in a really great guitar band called Turn who were around in the noughties, and is still quietly producing amazing tunes.

Conor: Muireann’s signed to Decca who look after DUG in the UK. We’ve crossed paths a few times this year and she’s great. It reminds me of when John Martyn put out London Conversations in 1967, aged eighteen. He was also a virtuoso guitar-player with talent way beyond his years. The sky’s the limit for her!

Daniel: I didn’t know how For Those I Love was going to follow up his first album but Carving The Stone is class. Róis’ Mo Léan is remarkable and a worthy winner of the Northern Ireland Music Prize; she got Best Live Act as well. I went to see her the other night in the Button Factory and it was exceptional. It was like seeing six artists in one. I also really like All Smiles Tonight by Poor Creature who are Ruth from Landless and John and Cormac from Lankum.

Stuart: Talking of Lankum, were you as gobsmacked as we were by what your missus, Radie, and the boys did to ‘Ghost Town’? Which I initially thought was atrocious but quickly came to recognise as a work of genius.

Lisa: There’s a fine line!

Daniel: I had it on my ‘phone for a few months. Travelling with Kneecap we’d put it on and, yeah, it is gobsmacking. Covers are particularly hard if the song’s well-known because what it sounds like is imprinted on people’s minds. I love the end of the Lankum version where it goes full-on electronica.

Lisa: The Heart, The Mind, The Soul by Tank and The Bangas, a New Orleans band, is incredible. Róis is a big one for me as well and Huartan nail that Irish trad/dance crossover thing on their self-titled album. It’s just one banger after another. Miadhachlughain O’Donnell’s voice in the midst of it all is the icing on the cake. It’s really otherworldly.

Gigging For It

Stuart: Great, that’s my Tidal Christmas playlist sorted! On now to gigs of the year, both as performers and punters. Ronan, what’s it been like opening for Pete Doherty?

Junior Brother: The Libertines and all that stuff passed me by somehow, so I was coming into it fresh and, wow, what a songwriter! His voice is incredible as well. He’s got such a devoted fan base all over the world who are willing to give you a go. You don’t always get that when you’re supporting other people. He’s great for chatting to and getting advice. The team he’s got around him now are top class and really look after him.

Stuart: I love that the whole family – dogs and all – are on the tour bus with him.

Junior Brother: The first gig I played with Pete was at this massive venue in Wales. I’d have the eyes closed singing and three songs in the crowd just started laughing. Then I heard a bark beside me. I was upstaged by one of his dogs who got a standing ovation when he walked off. And rightly so! As a fan, I went down to Connolly’s of Leap to see Gilla Band. It was the ideal environment and they rose to the occasion, big time.

Stuart: Pete Doherty does a great Junior Brother impersonation. Do you do a Pete Doherty impersonation?

Junior Brother: I do an impersonation of Pete Doherty impersonating me!

Conor: We played a gig this year in the National Stadium with The Scratch. They included some songs from their forthcoming album, Pull Like A Dog, and to me they’re the best live band out there right now. If you fancy a road trip next year, the Telluride Blues Festival in Colorado is one amazing act after another. Dan Tyminski there was insane!

Jonny: We’ve been at so many mind-blowing gigs; Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and Iron & Wine, both in Vicar Street. Chappell Roan at Electric Picnic was stupidly good.

Stuart: Does Chappell Roan give you hope for the future of America?

Jonny: 100%! To me, ‘Pink Pony Club’ is one of the best songs of the past ten, twenty years. And I’m saying that completely unironically. I follow Zohran Mamdani on Instagram and, like Chappell, he actually makes me feel good about America. I was definitely high-fiving myself in my hotel room when he won the Mayor of New York race.

Daniel: Gurriers have played with Kneecap a good few times and they’re always top class. Bricknasty blew me away when I saw ‘em. Their manager, Georgia from Rough Trade, asked me to go and see Theatre, a Limerick band, in The Workman’s and give her my report. I don’t know her name, but their singer’s unbelievable. Chalk and Cardinals are class as well.

Nora: We were supposed to be doing a gig this month with Theatre but they’ve landed the Shame support and have had to cancel.

Stuart: All those festivals – and Cliffords played twenty-four of ‘em this summer – must start blurring into each other, but is there one which stood out for you?

Iona: Glastonbury. Getting to play there seemed like too high a bar at the start of the year, but then things took off for us and we got offered a spot on the Thursday, which is the night before the music properly starts. Because there was no one else to see, we got a massive crowd who had no fucking idea who we were but had the greatest time ever. It was a bit mental because Gav, our bass and trumpet player, then went and got really bad sunstroke. He fainted at The 1975, was horribly burnt and couldn’t leave the tent for all of Saturday. At 1am on the Sunday morning, we had to go live on the BBC which was a massive opportunity for us. I was like, “There’s no way we can do it with him in this state” but Gav pulled it out of the bag.

Stuart: Cliffords were good at Glasto but even better at All Together Now.

Iona: That was the best show we played this year. There was another festival, Into The Great Wide Open, on a Dutch island which was full of the coolest, best looking people you’ve ever seen, all wandering around smoking joints. I was like, “Why can’t every day be like this?”

Kicking Against The Pricks

Daniel: Glastonbury was a big one for Kneecap as well. I spent probably four months trying to keep that gig on.

Stuart: Yes, you earned your 25% this year!

Daniel: There were 52 of the biggest names in music on that secret email trying to shut us down for speaking about Palestine. The police were also trying to shut it down. The British Prime Minister came out and said it shouldn’t happen. I’m not someone who ever cries, but I did cry from the side of the stage watching the lads go on. It was a real relief. And then Naoise during the gig joked, “We’re going to go to the court and start a riot!” and the police announced they were investigating us again. So the relief was short-lived!

Stuart: Kneecap and Fontaines D.C. in Finsbury Park was another good ‘un.

Daniel: It was Amyl and The Sniffers as well, so it was a great line-up. Another that stands out is Coachella. I wasn’t planning on going because it’s way too corporate, but I flew out for the second weekend with some new graphics. The gig went really well. We were joking, “Hopefully we’ll get Fox News” – and fuck me, did we get Fox News! We were watching them have their Kneecap meltdown on the way home, which was quite funny! The media generated backlash happened because they were frightened that what the lads said, which was right and correct, would have a knock on effect. Instead of it being Kneecap and 5,000 people, what if it were Green Day and 50,000 people? That becomes a threat to Zionism in America where lots of Israel’s support comes from.

Jonny: Glasto was a turning point for sure. I didn’t think it was possible to still be punk and wholesale challenge a system like that – but Kneecap and Bob Vylan are both reminiscent of Pussy Riot in Russia in 2012. We’re not so different to the people we call tyrannical.

Stuart: I remember Robert Smith telling me how The Cure became unlikely best mates with Mastodon after running into them at a festival. Have any of you had memorable backstage encounters this year?

Iona: I met Yungblud at his BludFest, which was fun – and weird!

Stuart: There’s a YouTube clip of it.

Iona: There is. I was trying not to laugh when he kept calling me a rock chick, which in the clip looks like I’m crying. They posted it afterwards saying I was overwhelmed. All the comments were like, “This must mean so much to her!” but that’s just how my face is in those situations. He was cool and nice, though, and told me to “keep riding the tiger.” I’d say something like, “Thanks very much for having us” and he’d reply with these catchphrases, which is just not how we communicate in Cork!

Steve: It sounds like something from Spinal Tap!

Jonny: At Telluride, they had some of the best five-string banjo players on Planet Earth – among them Béla Fleck – lined up across the stage. I’d had a few drinks and photobombed them from behind. They probably all think I’m an absolute knob!

Conor: At a festival in Carlow, we played to twenty people in a pub who included Joe Boyd, the legendary record producer, and Colin Greenwood from Radiohead. That was very fucking surreal!

Stuart: Biird had an Ed Sheeran moment…

Lisa: We did! It was just after we’d done All Together Now. Being the biggest group of lunatics you’ve ever met, we’d celebrated our set there in style and – along with Kneecap – were the last people to leave the campsite on Monday night. On Tuesday morning we went down to the Fleadh Cheoil in Wexford at Ed’s request. It was supposed to be all eleven of us but, big break or not, only six made it because we were so dead, My voice was completely gone; I was hoarse as could be. Anyway, we introduced ourselves to Ed Sheeran who thought we were gas and ended up doing ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ and ‘Raglan Road’ with him at a secret gig in The Sky and The Ground pub. Ed couldn’t have been any more welcoming. Within five minutes he’d given me his email address and by the end of the night he’d offered us his studio to record in and now we’re going on a world tour with him, starting on December 1 in Paris.

Then we’re doing Australia, New Zealand and America. He’s taking Amble, Beoga and Aaron Rowe with him as well, so I can already feel the hangovers! We were with Ed again last week in the Dead Rabbit in New York. He has no other agenda other than he wants to be known as somebody who supports Irish music. I’ve started doing a little bit of writing with him for his record – Ed Sheeran is making a folk album! He’s also hooked me up with his mate Johnny McDaid and a couple of other writers for Biird.

Conor: Ed Sheeran wanting to be part of what’s happening here is so fucking cool!

The Non-Violent Femmes

Stuart: The Róisín Dubh was jammers in February for FemmeFest, which featured Adore, Tramp, Cabl, Dream Boy and the one and only Shark School.

Nora: Yeah, we sold-out the Róisín in the name of feminism. This festival is just two little girls’ dreams, it’s our pride and joy, it’s our little baby. It was 100% the best part of our year. I think I cried for twenty-four hours afterwards. The bands came from all over Ireland – Dublin, Derry, Galway…

Peggy: We spend so much time going up and down to Dublin, but I love it when we don’t have to leave Galway. When we book gigs there, we get bands to support us who are not only really good but are also our friends. They play great sets, we give them our couches and just bring everyone together.

Stuart: The Irish indie scene is probably the healthiest it’s been since the 1980s. Who else should we be listening out for?

Peggy: Thanks Mom from Dublin. I saw them in Whelan’s and they’re ridiculously good.

Nora: Jean Pack from County Cork. We had her in Galway recently and I’ve never seen a room so enthralled.

Stuart: Are you busy putting the 2026 FemmeFest lineup together?

Nora:It’s done in my head. We just need to ask them. They’ll say “Yes!”

Stuart: The Stunning have also been selling gigs out left, right and centre this year.

Steve: We’re regarded as legends now – “See them before they die!” What I love is that there’s such a mixture of ages at the gigs. We really noticed a boost after House Of Guinness used ‘Brewing Up A Storm’. We’re pretty shit at social media. We only opened a TikTok page because Garron Noone told us we had to. Prior to House Of Guinness we had about 5,000 Instagram followers, then in the space of a week we were at 18,000. Everything now is measured by your traction on social media whereas we come from a time before ChatGPT. When The Stunning started there was no internet – and when The Stunning split up there was still no internet! You could lie in your press releases and claim all sorts of number ones in far-flung countries…

Stuart: And knowing no better, we’d swallow it! What as a crowd member were your favourite gigs this year?

Steve: Soda Blonde blew me away in the Button Factory. Such a tight band with a really interesting sound and Faye’s voice is brilliant. Shobsy’s a fucking star – we had him on stage with us in the Olympia. He should be huge.

Stuart: Bohs threw two Oasis pre-gig parties in August at Dalymount. Which was you, the Fontaines D.C. manager Trevor Dietz, Dandelion, David Holmes and Bobby Gillespie. I sadly couldn’t make it, but hear they were riotous.

Daniel: I was DJ-ing four nights a week at one point, so it was good to get back behind the decks. Bobby’s set was unbelievable. I don’t think I knew even one of the tracks he played, which were all rare ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll singles. His record collection is class.

Stuart: I assume you did get Oasis tickets. How amazing – or otherwise – was it?

Daniel: It was great! I can’t remember what night it was but we were invited to go and see them in London. They gave us class tickets and beforehand we were drinking with their mates. There was some lineup of people in there. Metallica wanted to meet Liam Óg which was bizarre! Radie, who loves him, met Woody Harrelson. The best craic that day was when we all met in the pub for a drink. As I was going next-door for chewing gums, this party limo like you’d get for the debs pulled up. It was in bits. I asked the driver, who looked like he’d been on a session for the week, “Are you busy later?” He said, “No”, so I got him to come back at four o’clock and take us to Wembley. We squeezed into this crap limo and rocked up to the Oasis gig steaming!

With A Little Help From Our Friends

Stuart: We’ll segue into football shirts now. How did the Bohemian FC x Oasis charity one come about?

Daniel: I tried to do it first years ago. I contacted Noel’s manager but Oasis weren’t together at the time, so I got a “Good idea, but it’s not going to happen” back. Since then, Noel’s become a Kneecap fan and been dead sound to us. So, I asked Noel who was into it and said, “I’ll check it out with Liam’s management.” It was very nice of them to do it. They didn’t take a cent and have raised a couple of hundred grand for charity.

Stuart: Unable to do it themselves because they were rehearsing for the tour, they sent their bezzie Paul Weller over to Dublin for the official kit launch.

Daniel: Weller’s a really sound guy. He gave us free use of his studio. His politics are great and he did those Gigs For Gaza in England.

Stuart: Biird also have their own football shirts which were originally mired in controversy.

Lisa: Yeah, we teamed up with a designer friend of ours in Belfast, Gaelige 22, who’s our tour manager’s partner. He made these Biird jerseys which are black and white with three stripes on the shoulder. At that same encounter in Wexford, I got Ed Sheeran to wear a shirt. He said, “I’ll leave this on for the day” and, sure, there were photos taken and it got an awful lot of press. Next thing I know, I’m getting a call from adidas who were not very happy about it. I had to plámás them and turn on the Irish charm a little bit.

Steve: Did it look like the adidas stripes?

Lisa: Ah, yeah! I have my own argument, though. I’m a GAA woman and when I played for Mayo I had three stripes, which were as much O’Neill’s as they were adidas’. Anyway, we got away unscathed and have just got our new jerseys which have a Celtic design on the shoulder.

Stuart: Cliffords’ 2025 became much more exciting when Dermot Kennedy took a shine to you.

Iona: That was mad! We’d done Ireland Music Week and Eurosonic, but our first time playing to thousands of people was when Dermot Kennedy picked us to be at his Misneach festival in Australia. He was so nice. To be backstage with that calibre of people – Amble, The Frames and Kneecap were also on the bill – really meant something to us.

Stuart: You also opened for Queens Of The Stone Age in Kilmainham, which was a hell of a gig.

Iona: Queens Of The Stone Age was funny because Amyl and The Sniffers pulled out and then we got the call, which most of Ireland was very, very sad about.

Peggy: I wasn’t going to tell you but we sold our tickets when Amyl and The Sniffers cancelled!

Iona: I’d have been mad too! I’d much rather see Amyl and The Sniffers. I think we’re good in our own right but we’re very, very different bands. I went on and said, “I’m really sorry that we’re not Amyl and The Sniffers and are about to play folk indie music.” By the second song everybody got behind us and it was a magical gig!

Stuart: As impressive as having Dermot Kennedy, Noel Gallagher and Ed Sheeran in your corner is, they’re mere Johnny-come-latelies compared to The Edge who’s said lots of nice things about Shark School after catching you at Music Generation showcase in Windmill Lane.

Peggy: The first gig Nora and I did together was a Music Generation thing on Nun’s Island. We’re only playing music because of that programme, so it was a sweet full circle moment.

Nora: I had food poisoning and had never been as sick in my entire life when Peggy rang and said, “We need to go to Dublin, now!” So, I hopped in the car and had to spend the day with the Edge, feeling violently unwell.

Peggy: I was sleep deprived, so we were like, “Don’t collapse in front of the Edge!”

Stuart: Did he give you any advice?

Peggy: We obviously weren’t listening if he did!

Nora: We were too focused on standing up!

Peggy: It was just before Christmas last year so when we got the, “Are you still at the music?” question from the family we were able to whip the photo of us and the Edge out!

Stuart: The new Stunning single, ‘Stand Up In This Wicked World’, has really struck a chord with people and features newsreel footage of Kneecap in the accompanying video.

Steve: It’s been out two weeks and I’ve only just asked Dan, who hasn’t seen it yet, for permission! I was like, “Your band’s in our video, is that okay?” He said it is… I’ve been advocating for Palestinian rights for over twenty years, and came across a photo recently of my then four-year-old daughter marching with me down to the Israeli embassy. She’s holding a placard: “Stop killing kids!” And my daughter’s twenty now. It’s been going on for too long.

When everything kicked off after the horrible events of October 7, we all knew, “This is going to be hell...” It’s been over two years now, hundreds are being killed every single day and people are still arguing over technicalities, like is it a genocide? Joe my brother wrote the song, which was originally about the Easter Rising and had ‘Phoenix’ as its working title. It never got finished, so we went back to it and ‘Stand Up In This Wicked World’ emerged. We said, “Look, you can download the song for whatever you think it’s worth.” The average is €20 but people have paid up to €100, which is really heartwarming.

Solidarity with Gaza

Stuart: DUG are playing a Palestine Solidarity Night gig on December 28 in the Dublin Sugar Club. How did that come about?

Conor: We were trying to figure out a way to show solidarity and thought, “Let’s do a fundraiser with all the money going to the Irish Red Cross Gaza Appeal.” We contacted some friends and everybody said “Yes!”, so it’s going to be us, John Francis Flynn, Laura Quirke and Joshua Burnside. The music community here has always been pretty tight, but Gaza has definitely given it a singular sense of purpose.

Stuart: Cliffords pulled out of the Victorious festival in Portsmouth in solidarity with The Mary Wallopers who had the plug pulled on them when they unfurled a Palestinian flag onstage. It obviously felt like the right thing to do.

Iona: Yeah, it did. We’d driven halfway down to Portsmouth when we saw the video of the flag being pulled down and the sound being cut, which was horrific. We went for coffee and were like, “Will we go on and bring a flag out ourselves? No, it’s actually better if we just cancel.” It was kind of terrifying because this is our first year in the industry and being signed.

Steve: Fair play to ye for pulling out because it’s really important that when you feel something in your heart, you’re not afraid to act because of the repercussions from within the industry. That’s why it’s important to have established bands and actors – Kneecap, Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital, Paloma Faith, Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem – getting on board. There’s strength in numbers.

Iona: With Victorious, I thought, “Fuck, what if we’re the only ones?” but a member of The Last Dinner Party – who I’m a massive fan of – texted and said, “We’re pulling out as well. We’re really proud of you. We all need to stand together. We should get a drink some time and talk about this.”

Stuart: It must have been great when, at the height of the Kneecap backlash, Massive Attack issued their statement of support.

Daniel: We talk to them a lot. We’re actually meeting tomorrow night in Bristol. Their principles are unbelievable. We put graphics up at the start of our gigs, which kind of comes from seeing Massive Attack in the Olympia ten, fifteen years ago when they were already talking about Gaza and had loads of stats on the screens.

Stuart: I’m not saying that he/she/they have any connection with Massive Attack, but Banksy has allowed one of his/her/their artworks to adorn the new Kneecap single, ‘No Comment’. Have you met him/her/them?

Daniel: No, we haven’t. I was chatting to the lads and said, “I wonder if we could use that artwork?” It was a long shot. We didn’t think they’d give us permission but we emailed them and they did.

Stuart: When I was a nipper, Irish artists – U2, Thin Lizzy, Horslips, The Chieftains and Clannad among them – made their ‘American album’ in order to achieve commercial lift-off beyond these shores. Now the reverse is true.

Junior Brother: When I was little, I thought it was insane that nobody sang in their own accent. It just never made sense to me. It was like you had a colour in your palette – something unique – that you weren’t using. It’s become almost expected to sing in your own accent now, which is great. Every new band I see are just being themselves, which encourages the next generation of bands to be themselves. That wanting something authentic might be down to how fast technology is developing and the whole AI thing.

Screen Age Kicks

Stuart: I suspect you’re right. Time for our penultimate question; favourite films and TV shows of the year?

Jonny: Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was just one chef’s kiss after another. It encapsulates the frustrations of so many Americans right now. It has a sense of empathy with the immigrant experience. These people are human beings and have lives. It’s just so well executed.

Nora: I know it’s old but the series I watched most again this year was Derry Girls.

Stuart: Of course, what you should all be saying is Black Doves featuring Steve Wall.

Steve: I faceplanted into a bowl of noodles which is one of my better screen deaths! Ben Whishaw – who’s lovely – shot me in the head.

Stuart: What are you allowed to tell us about your upcoming role in the Game Of Thrones prequel, Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, which lands next month on Netflix?

Steve: Those big productions are really fucking boring unless you’re the central character. There was just so much hanging around. We were somewhere an hour-and-a-half north of Belfast for two months. It rained nearly every day and I was sitting in a suit of armour in a tent with all the chaperones and parents, because there are kids in it, trying not to eat too many of the sweets they keep putting in front of you. I did loads of horse lessons because they were offering them every day. Those HBO things are massive.

Stuart: Nothing if not versatile, you also shot something called Kung Fu Deadly, which sounds great.

Steve: It is great. There are these two Dublin rat catchers, one of whom is of Chinese heritage. His father has died in mysterious circumstances and this mythical creature called a Jiangshi, which is like a banshee crossed with a vampire, comes into it. I’m really looking forward to seeing that one.

Daniel: I really like The Chase and old Come Dine With Me-s. The film Cillian Murphy plays a teacher in, Steve, is amazing. It’s dark but wow!

Stuart: Have you been inundated with ideas for the boys following the success of the Kneecap movie?

Daniel: Not really, although we are looking at making something. That’s all I can say. I’ve mainly been dealing this year with legal issues. Me in my kitchen with my laptop and five hundred well-resourced people coming at us, which doesn’t feel nice. One time I hadn’t slept for five days; I was under a lot of pressure and Radie said to me, “You’re not making sense.” I was manic and needed to go to bed. I speak to Daragh, a young guy from Newry who deals with this because it has nothing to do with music, every single day. He’s brilliant and also did stuff on behalf of the Stardust victims and their families. We owe him six figures for sure and he’s never asked for it.

Stuart: Finally, it’s Christmas Day, you’ve been horsing into your mum’s sherry, a singsong starts, what’s your party piece?

Lisa: I grew up in that culture and have a huge family of 65 first cousins. That’s the only reason I sell tickets for shows! Funerals, weddings, communions… whatever the event is it finishes in a sing-song. I’ll keep everybody happy and either do ‘Grace’ or ‘Róisín Dubh’.

Steve: Something from the American songbook like ‘King Of The Road’. I’ll also give Elvis and Billie Holiday a go.

Junior Brother: I had an uncle who stubbornly brought over his guitar and we’d do Christy Moore songs. I’m usually forced at some point on Christmas Day to go to the piano and sing ‘Fairytale Of New York’. As more booze is consumed, the songs get longer and the sean-nós stuff comes out.

Iona: I’ve been singing ‘Siúil a Run’ at trad sessions, so that’ll be my party piece this year.

Conor: Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’ every time!

Jonny: I’ve just found The Muppet Christmas Carol on vinyl. My dad’s a piano player and growing up we’d gather round and sing every song on it.

Stuart Clark: Happy Christmas everyone!

Everyone: Happy Christmas!

---

• Cliffords have just released their new ‘Marsh’ single
• Biird play Dublin Castle on December 31 as part of the NYF Matinee Countdown Concert
• Kneecap’s ‘No Comment’ single is out now
• Junior Brother’s To The End album is out now
• The Stunning’s ‘Stand Up In This Wicked World’ is available for stunning.net download and will be bringing the house down at Cyprus Avenue, Cork (December 19 & 20); INEC, Killarney (31 + The Frank & Walters); and Live By The Bay, Bantry (January 1)
• DUG’s Palestine Solidarity Night gig takes place in the Sugar Club, Dublin on December 28