Niall Breslin to take part in Electric Picnic talk + The Blizzards update

Hot Press just spent a convivial hour chatting with Niall Breslin about his new book Me And My Mate Jeffery, a compelling read about about his struggles with anxiety and depression, which is published today.
While you'll have to wait a little while for our in-depth interview with Bressie, we can reveal that come 7.30pm on Saturday he'll be gracing the Theatre Stage at Electric Picnic with former footballer, RTÉ pundit and psychotherapist Richard Sadlier and performance psychologist Gerry Hussey.
He also told us how he's been getting on with the reconvened Blizzards.
"I tell you what; at that first rehearsal we were as rusty as fuck!" Bressie laughs. "It's like doing serious exercise again after five years of sitting on your sofa. We decided that rather than come out and do a couple of gigs and have the craic, we'd knuckle down and write a new record. It's different to before; because we've all got jobs we can't just rehearse when we want, but we've all managed to make time for the band and learned to be creative again. Dec will come up to the studio on a Wednesday and lay down a drum track; I'll email them a song and they'll go, 'Bres, that's shite!' But thankfully not all of the time... It's great having the incentive to write again.
"If the record's good and we get the old tightness back, we'll gig."
The recording facility in question is Camden Studios, formerly known as Pulse, which Niall and some other musical buddies of his opened in April.
"We've had Bronagh Gallagher in this week doing her new album; she's a sweetheart and super-talented," he concludes. "James Vincent McMorrow's done a bit of rehearsing there and it's generally ticking over nicely."