...but in the decade since she released her solo debut album she has consistently won friends and influenced all the right people, so that she is now a major star - especially on home territory in Ireland but also in Japan, Australia and, increasingly, in the UK and Europe. With her latest album The Holy Ground, the campaign is picking up momentum in the U.S. too, to the extent that the next year to eighteen months is positively glowing with possibilities.

Over ten years of solo work, the dominant ethos in the Black camp has involved independence, and with it the related characteristics of self-reliance and integrity. You know that there is no way that Mary Black will compromise her artistic vision on the tainted altar of success. If a song feels right she'll sing it - otherwise she won't. Nor will she engage herself in publicity stunts or gimmicks to attract attention to herself or her work - if the music isn't good enough you're better to throw your hat at it, is the underlying sentiment. But then Mary Black can afford to feel like that because the music is good enough.

VITAL IMPORTANCE

Her strong streak of independence has been supported by the organisation which she has built around her. There's none of the misguided A&R pressure under which so many other artists buckle because her record company boss just happens also to be her husband and manager, Joe O'Reilly. And in Declan Sinnott she also found a producer, arranger and collaborator who recognised her superb talents and knew that his primary function was to draw them out effectively, frame them as well as possible - and let audiences do the rest by falling equally under her spell.

In Ireland, her last album Babes In The Wood sold 70,000 copies, and with the boost of the phenomenally successful A Woman's Heart project and her collaboration on the title track with Eleanor McEvoy in the interim to assist - also on Joe O'Reilly's Dara label - her recently released follow-up The Holy Ground may push close to the 100,000 mark.

That astonishing level of success has been mirrored in her live work, which saw her complete no less than five sell-out nights at The Point Theatre in front of in excess of 30,000 people recently. And all this has been achieved, it must be said, without any of the heavy-handedness or stepping on people's toes that too often accompanies success in contemporary music. Which only goes to show that nice guys don't always finish last - not by a long shot.

Everywhere you turn in the business people have positive things to say about the Mary Black operation. And that, when it all comes down and the music has done its job, remains of vital importance. Which is why we can say, without equivocation, long may it continue. From the promoters and the songwriters and the business associates and the record companies and - most of all - from the fans, thanks for the good ones.

It's been a pleasure.