Corrs keep the media hordes at arm's length

Saturday night's Corrs concert at Lansdowne Road is a sell-out. The group becomes only the second Irish artists to sell more than 40,000 tickets for a single performance, a pre-concert news conference at the venue was told yesterday.

The only other band to have achieved this is U2.

In keeping with this achievement, the news conference was attended by the glamorous and tanned of the music industry. But the glamour and the tans had to compensate for a certain lack of solid information for the waiting journalists, caused by the extraordinary event of the press conference apparently starting early.

The glitz had begun outside where the colourful jeeps of the radio stations, TV3, Press Association and RTE indicated that a media organisation cannot be considered truly hip unless its staff drive around in all-terrain vehicles.

Inside, the Corrs were squeezed into a small room with access through a folded back section in a partition wall. "With album sales of 10.5 million and sell-out shows worldwide, the Corrs join U2 as the only Irish artists ever to. . ." a DART train trundled along on the other side of the wall, leaving The Irish Times lost as to what was said next.

More music journalists arrived, clearly shocked that the event had started. "Can we open another section of this partition?" they inquired. "No," was the reply.

"Does it help on tour to be a family?" we heard a reporter inside ask.

"We have reaped the rewards . . ." came the reply, before some of the excluded music reporters started to mutter darkly about how the conference must have started early. An amplifier was switched on: "Our goal is to keep . . ." the male voice - Jim Corr? - began before being lost in another DART rumble.

And then it was over. Among the crowd filing out was the familiar face of Mr Colm Allen SC - familiar that is to followers of the Flood tribunal. "I acted for the IRFU in liberating the grounds for use for the pop concert," confided Mr Allen.

Mr Justin Green of MCD promotions emerged, followed by a young woman with a three-paragraph press release which was eagerly grabbed by those who had been excluded.

"Speaking today, the band said they were absolutely delighted with the response (to the ticket sales) and were looking forward to performing in front of their home crowd," said the bottom line.