IRELAND HAS long had a reputation for being a prodigious exporter of Serious Musicians; furrowed-browed folk with more big issues to flog than an inner-city magazine vendor. Musically, us Paddies have never been famous for froth, frivolity or fun. Until now, that is.

The bubblegum bubble is ballooning: in the last two years there's been an explosion of domestically manufactured pop acts - not just "authentic" groups with a strong melodic sense who can play their instruments (The Corrs) but all-singing, all-dancing Angel Delight combos like B*Witched, Kerri Ann, OTT, Chill, The Carter Twins, NV, IOU, In Utopia, Boyzone, Gayzone and dozens more hopefuls (including the as of yet unchristened, but cruelly nicknamed trad-pop boy-band, Bogzone).

The days of homegrown windswept guitar-bands in long overcoats toting lyrics that read like a particularly nasty weather forecast are - for now, at least - over. Put the word out: The Reynolds Girls were ten years ahead of their time.

Post-Boyzone, the most striking of this new breed has been B*Witched. For the record, the group are Sinead O'Carroll, Lindsay Armaou, and twins Keavy and Edele Lynch (sisters of Boyzone's Shane); four young Dubliners with birthdates firmly pitched between 1978 and 1980, and reasonably strong musical backgrounds in trad, pop and hip-hop. Keavy was working as a mechanic in a Dublin garage when she met Sinead, and later ran into Lindsay at a kickboxing class. The group coalesced when the four began meeting in Sinead's flat, writing songs and singing into a cheap tape recorder.

Last month, the quartet's first single 'C'est La Vie' went straight in at number one in the UK charts. It was only the seventh debut single ever to achieve this, a feat even the Spice Girls and All Saints couldn't match. How did this happen?

Well, the most important player in the B*Witched story, more important even than any of the group's members, is Ray Hedges, a songwriter and producer who had already enjoyed a long and formidable career with boy groups such as Boyzone, Bros and Ant & Dec. Hedges set up his own Glow Worm record label 18 months ago, with former New Kids On The Block and Ant & Dec manager Kim Glover as a partner, and Epic MD Rob Stringer and Sony chairman and CEO Paul Burger as backers.

B*Witched are Hedges' baby for sure: he gave the group their name and signed them in early 1997, wrote and produced their first single and also set up a publishing company around them. For Hedges, having his own label was the realisation of a dream. That said, Glow Worm has only one other signing to date, a Sheffield/Burnley act called Spin City, who have been described as a cross between Noddy Holder and Adam & The Ants. B*Witched, however, were not strictly what Hedges had in mind.

"I've waited a long time for my label and the last thing I wanted to do was work with a girl band, but I signed them," he recently admitted.

"I gave them to him," Boyzone manager Louis Walsh reveals. "I knew them because Shane Lynch is the twins' brother. I met them in the Westbury and introduced them to Kim Glover, and she met the parents. That was a year and a half ago, so there has been 18 months of working on it."

So what did Hedges see in B*Witched, an act he has (somewhat unwisely) described as a cross between Chumbawamba and Aqua?

"I was looking for something to break the mould, and they came to us with great songs," he reckons. "They're just Dublin rascals. They came over and Edele started singing, and her voice was like Tammy Wynette meets Susanna Hoffs. They've all got really odd voices with no direct schooling."

So far so good, but how the hell did a bunch of virtual unknowns do such big business first time out of the traps? Is this a genuine case of teen-power or naked hype? Certainly, no pop-picker can view the British charts in the same way since last year's BBC2 chart-rigging exposés and Paul Charles' novel I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass. Tales of "independent marketers" (moles employed by labels to go around buying up copies of a single in order to hype it into the charts), bribing store employees to scan a single's barcode several times when logging a sale, and all-manner of promotional tactics (read: payola) are now the rule rather than the exception. As long as the BPI remains the industry's watchdog, it's a case of the record business policing itself. Besides, the fines for chart-rigging are so miniscule as to constitute but a percentage of a record's marketing budget.

But Louis Walsh dismisses any suggestion that the B*Witched single got to the top by anything other than fair means. "Look, you can only hype a record so much," he insists. "This record is not hyped. It's one of the few real hit records of this year."

Of course, many might argue that with sales being particularly weak at the moment (retail figures as low as 36,000 frequently secure the number one slot), and competition is hardly at its fiercest.

But while the B*Witched single enjoyed only a brief tenure on top, it did take 'Three Lions' and 'Vindaloo' to dislodge it, bang in the middle of World Cup fever at that. Also, 'C'est la Vie' didn't continue its downward trend after being ousted from its lofty perch, but, as this article went to press, was on the rise again, lodged at No.3 in Britain.

"The week before 'C'est La Vie', the number one sold 58,000, and on our first week we sold 153,000, three times the previous number one," Ray Hedges points out. "It's now done over half a million so it's been a big, big single. You can't hype half a million copies, you just can't. Anyone involved in the more mainstream pop side of the industry will always say, 'Oh, it's good marketing,' but all hype does is bring the record to people's attention: you can't make someone buy a record they don't want. Not to the large extent we've achieved with B*Witched."

And, not to labour the point, 'C'est la Vie' did not limp into the charts, then leapfrog upward after appearances on Top Of The Pops, or Richard And Judy, as is often the case with debut singles, be they the result of hype or hard work - it went in at the top. With the proverbial bullet.

B*Witched had the kind of opening shot any pop group would kill for. But, music apart, the group's image (less sophisticated and sultry than All Saints, less tarty than the Spice Girls) has undoubtedly stood to them in terms of a young audience identifying with the foursome.

"They came to me and had their own identity, but I just suggested taking that direction to the limit, in terms of the tomboy thing, rather than being another R&B pretty-girl band," Hedges recalls. "That's a lot harder to achieve: the first shoot we did with Elaine Constantine had some great shots, and the girls looked great, but the styling just wasn't tough enough and we had to go back to the drawing board a couple of times. There's a thing about B*Witched that speaks for itself, a 'girls in a gang having a laugh' kind of thing. That's what makes them tick; it sets them aside from being just another group."

It also helped that the quartet seemed prepared for the elevator's rapid ascent. Initial live appearances with Boyzone had broken them in gently (if excitedly), and a tour with 911 was well received. "And they had a really good marketing team," Louis Walsh attests. "They did all the roadshows, all the press, there was a lot of work put into it. Also, they're with Sony which is a huge, huge company worldwide. They have the machinery there, and if they get a track, they can make it a hit."

And let's not forget the song itself in all this. 'C'est La Vie' might be a very contrived piece of music, but it's also as catchy as the clap; a canny amalgam of lite hip-hop beats, a chorus that won't quit, and a punny hook - all tried and tested bubblegum ingredients.

"It's down to the song really," maintains Hedges. "A good track will find its own way. The same with Boyzone and 'Love Me for A Reason' - that was the single that got them started, really, because it was such a strong track. Admittedly, you have to have an act that looks credible, but you've got to have something really strong melodically that people just have to own somehow."

While 'C'est La Vie's trad Paddyisms might quickly date (and grate), they do mark it apart from singles by other girl groups: there's even the odd Dub colloquialism ("What're ye like?") and those "Hup! Hup! Hup!" bits over the fiddle break suggest just the right amount of Spice in the mix.

Also, the accompanying video is cheeky, with its garish crayon colours and cheesy Irish dancing shtick (now an internationally recognisable reference point in pop choreography, thanks to ol' Flatfoot).

"I used to do Irish dancing when I was a little wee one," Sinead O'Carroll admits. "I did it for six or seven years and I used to do all the competitions. We were working with the choreographer and he thought it was appropriate to put the Irish dancing in the video as well, so I showed him the steps' 'vocabulary' and he worked it in."

"The video appeals to kids," Louis Walsh points out, "and young kids are buying singles, regardless of what World Cup or anything else is on. Also, there's a music video channel in London called

The Box, and it knocked Celine Dion off number one there. So

they knew something was happening with this video, 'cos kids

were 'phoning up for it, that was the first sign that they had a hit.

The diddley-aye Riverdance bit in the video certainly helped. I

n the UK it's a novelty thing, it was different than anything else

out there."

"I'm surprised no-one's really done that before, to be honest," Hedges comments. "I took a chance on that, because it could've been very glib, but it wasn't. We made sure that it worked. The track is quite hip-hop almost as well, so we were lucky to get it to work. In pop you walk a fine line between what's credible and what's crass. That's what I try to do."

Having had the best possible start to their career, what's in store for B*Witched is anybody's guess. In a market as fickle as the soda-pop business, it's easy to falter on the second single, slip up, and never get out of the bargain bin.

"I think they're going to have a problem following it up," Louis Walsh observes, "but I also think that they obviously have a career."

Having seen the two days as a writer and producer, Hedges himself appears to be fairly realistic about it all. "Anything less than a number one will be seen as falling backwards," he concedes, "but to me, as long as we achieve top twenty again, you can't really moan at that. That's all we can hope for, really."

Be that as it may, the citizens of Planet Pop have always had the attention span of a cocker spaniel pup, and the B*Witched backlash has started early. Already, the NME have set up a special Who's Your Fave B*Witched B*tch poll on their website, and Hanson dropped the group from the bill of their June 16 Wembley show in favour of the virtually unknown Hillman Minx.

In an official statement, the Dubliners said, "B*Witched are saddened and upset about this, and are still unclear as to why this action is taken. The group have been rehearsing for the show for the past few weeks and had interrupted a packed promotional schedule to fly back especially to perform."

On Hanson's part, keyboard player Taylor stated at a press conference given on the day of the show: "They're very successful, and hopefully they'll have many other groups who'll love to have them support them. So, I don't think they need sympathy, because they're doing great. And we have, totally, nothing against them."

Realistically though, earning the ire of NME readers and getting booted off a Hanson gig is probably more of a boon than a bane for any group's credibility.

But B*Witched aside, how will the future Dub-pop acts fare? Well, the likes of Kerri Ann, IOU and NV certainly seem to be getting priority treatment, with labels spending more money on these acts' dental hygiene and glossy biogs than they would on your average indie band's album budget.

And perversely, these pop acts might win Ireland back some of the credibility it has lost over the last ten years of raggle taggle, shoegazing and stadium bands who couldn't fill a club. Certainly, the press-hounds have always loved the Pop Principle, whether it comes in the form of Chicks, Kylie or Kenickie. Dublin mightn't ever be the new Manchester, or Seattle, or even the new Dublin, but in a bizarre twist in the rock hierarchy's sobriety, A&R hordes are flooding back, not to find the new U2, Ash or The Cranberries, but the next Sinitta or Sam Fox.

Although he might never admit as much, when Bono sent Boyzone flowers the first time they hit numero uno in Britain, he may well have been passing the symbolic rock 'n' roll baton.

"We've a whole pop industry now," Louis Walsh trumpets. "We've The Corrs, Boyzone, B*Witched: any decent Irish pop band will get a deal - I mean, people return our calls now, that never happened. I couldn't get anyone to answer the phone to me when I was ringing around for Boyzone." n