Well, Lordy, Lord, if it ain't that time of the year again. Tens of thousands are due to arrive in Slane today for a singsong with Bryan Adams, Moby, Macy Gray and their buddies in Henry Mount Charles's back garden. Lord Mount Charles (49) was born Henry Vivian Pierpoint Conyngham, the Viscount Slane. This mouthful was soon shortened to "Boggy" by his helpful young friends across the water at Harrow School; a nickname to remind themselves that he may have been blue-blooded, but he was still "Bog Irish".
Mount Charles himself has consistently stated over the years that he detests the moniker of "West Brit" and finds insulting the inference that he is anything but Irish. In 1977, interviewed by this newspaper, he said he was "absolutely Irish in every respect. My family have been here since the 17th century".
In the same interview in 1977 Lord Mount Charles remarked: "If Slane has any hope of survival it has to be within a 1970s context . . . We concentrate a lot on providing an unusual arena for entertainment . . . Past generations have been in the position of being able to subsidise Slane."
At that time, he and his first wife, Juliet Kitson, had just opened a restaurant in the castle, but those words were to prove eerily prophetic. The open-air concerts that have taken place at Slane on and off since 1981 are rooted in a 1970s culture that still has contemporary resonances.
Of all the many enterprises that Mount Charles has undertaken at Slane, the concerts have proved to be the most enduring. He was only 24 when he took over the running of the castle estate from his father, the Marquess of Conyngham, who scooted off to live in the Isle of Man to escape the newly-introduced wealth tax.
Before taking over the estate, Mount Charles had worked in a number of places, including Sothebys and publisher Faber and Faber, which would have been considered traditional jobs for a well-connected man of title. No matter how familiar he was with Slane Castle, having grown up there, the learning curve of managing the estate can only have been steep.
He decided quite early on that the best way of keeping the place going was to open it to the public in various ways. Hence a restaurant and night-club, guided tours, upmarket accommodation and, in 1981, the first concert.
That first line-up featured Thin Lizzy and an up-and-coming band called U2, who played support. It was, apparently, not that well attended, and many of the people who were there had scampered in unnoticed for free, something most unlikely to happen today. But it was almost certainly the first time so many people had been inside the castle grounds, and as U2's reputation grew, so did that of Slane as a venue.
The Rolling Stones played there in 1982; Bob Dylan in 1984; Bruce Springsteen in 1985; David Bowie in 1987; and Queen in 1988. The bigger crowds that started arriving brought trouble and tragedy with them: riots followed the 1985 concert; in 1987 one person drowned trying to swim across the river, and two were stabbed; in 1995 two people drowned.
Slane itself has never been entirely happy with the thousands who periodically descend on the village and residents have long been vocal in expressing its unhappiness. In 1984 a local shopkeeper summed up past concerts as "youthful intoxication, public fornication and massive urination".
As a result Lord Mount Charles has been in and out of the High Court for years, fighting a case for his concerts against various local protest bodies. Some years there have been no concerts as a result of pending appeals to permission already given. In 1998 Lord Mount Charles was granted permission by An Bord Pleanala to hold one one-day concert a year until 2002.
The road to Slane will be crowded today with buses and cars, but concert-goers travelling there, if stuck in a traffic jam, will have ample opportunity to note how straight the approach road is. That's because King George IV was keen on the wife of the first marquess, and so anxious was he to get to Slane to whisper sweet nothings in the wifely ear of another, that he straightened the road to get there faster.
The major titles of the Conynghams date from this time. Lord Mount Charles's own first marriage ended in divorce in 1985, the year he married Lady Iona Charlotte Grimston. He has three children: the Viscount Slane, Alexander Burton (25); Lady Henrietta Tamara Juliet (24); and Lady Tamara Jane (9), a daughter by his second marriage.
In 1985 there was rumours about him setting up a new political party with Desmond O'Malley. He was permanently disenchanted with Fianna Fail and temporarily so with Fine Gael. In September 1985 he commented: "You have the extraordinary phenomenon of Garret FitzGerald stating that the economy is really in pretty good shape, while the majority of the population know that the country is in a shambles.
"The solution does not, however, lie in pumping our depleted resources up the garden path. That is Haugheynomics, which is better suited to the fairy-ground, the kind of thinking that sets out to convince us that it's Christmas 365 days a year."
Well, we all know now who was leading who up the garden path at that particular time.
Lord Mount Charles did have discussions with O'Malley, but he went on to set up his own party, the New Departure Party, which he described as "radical, left of centre, but not socialist". It never became established, a fact which caused some widely-reported amusement at the time.
Years before Queen Elizabeth used the phrase, 1991 was Mount Charles's annus horribilis. In June that year he lost a considerable amount of money after being identified as one of the 300 Lloyd's Names resident in Ireland. In November Slane Castle went on fire early one morning. By then Mount Charles and his family were living in nearby Beau Parc, from where they awoke to see the flames.
The castle was severely damaged. It took five hours to put out the fire. The roof fell in, and much of the most valuable plasterwork and furniture was lost. However, work has been going on ever since, and much of the castle has since been restored, unlike Powercourt House, which befell a similar fate two decades before.
U2, who recorded much of their next album at the castle, went on to entitle it The Unforgettable Fire, and carried a picture of the castle on the cover. The cause of the fire at Slane has never been satisfactorily explained.
Lord Mount Charles seems to have responded to considerable adversity with admirable pragmatism, resourcefulness and determination to oversee his responsibilities as curator of his historic family home. He says that much of the profits from the concerts go back into the restoration of the castle.
Certainly, he's already packed a lot into his life. He wrote his autobiography, Public Space, Private Life (published by Faber and Faber) in 1989. Another will likely follow at some stage. At 49 he's still a relatively young man, who has packed a lot into his life already. More packing seems likely, although he may require a few porters to help him with the baggage as the years go on.