“Kermit The Frog… Thanks a lot… I want to drop my trousers.”

Here’s hoping that Phil Kieran follows David Holmes into sound-tracks, because if he ever wins an Oscar, his acceptance speech will truly be a thing to behold.

The second Oh Yeah Northern Ireland Dance Awards, held amongst much PA pounding and engineered denim at O’Neill’s in Belfast, gave Phil every opportunity to practice his podium patter (and, disturbingly, to carry out his threat to lower his keks) by bestowing three awards on everybody’s favourite ginger, techno warlord.

Visitors to www.ohyeah.net voted him Best Alternative DJ, Best Live Act and, for ‘Vital One’, Best Recording Act and, judging by the raucous reception he got when the announcements were made, there don’t appear to be many doubters in the dance congregation. That Homer was on hand to dish out one of Phil’s gongs provided plenty of scope to speculate on matters of heredity.

Are we looking now at the next Nordy beats maverick to bag some wider acclaim? Who knows? But it’s safe to say that, for the moment, Phil has built up a head of steam that looks set to propel him on to much greater things. And don’t let the dippy, mad-isms fool you. Once he gets there, he’ll know exactly what to do. Let’s just hope he changes his boxers.

Other big winners on the night were mega club Shine, who have recovered from the disappointment of millennium eve to rack up another year of top nights and big names. The QUB-based shindig was named Best Large Club, with co-founder Alan Simms happy to accept the accolade, and one for himself as Best Techno/House DJ. Best Small Club was Evolution, while, breaking up the Belfast monopoly were the people from Deep Fried Funk in Derry who collared the award for Best Alternative Club.

Providing music for the night, and contributing greatly to the generally good-humoured ambience were Welt, Cappo Regime and recent Hit The North-ers Jupiter Ace. A big pat on the back then to Stu Bailie who, between organising this, the Van Morrison theme day for the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and the Subtext spoken word night with Will Self, still found time to run the Belfast marathon. His able deputies Lyndon Stephens and Twitchy Neill didn’t fancy the five-hour jog. Maybe next year, boys?

All in all it’s been a hectic few weeks for the clubbing fraternity, with the welcome return of the annual Digital T Belfest providing quite a few late nights. The sister event of our regular autumnal band overload, this year’s festival was trailed as ‘a celebration of contemporary electronica’, and a cursory glance through the programme would be enough to show why Northern dance, in all its shapes and forms, appears to be in such healthy nick at the moment.

Sure, established names like the mighty Asian Dub Foundation, UNKLE, Adrian Sherwood and The Lo-Fi Allstars all made welcome appearances, but the nub of the entire enterprise was in providing a platform for the more gifted of our local talents. And it’s safe to say that at the moment quite a few are bursting to take advantage.

Take the Flava Collective – an umbrella organisation that covers the likes of Audiosyncracy, Solarise, Desiato, Roo Nation and various other drum and bass fanatics – whose night at The Front Page was a triumph of old fashioned collectivism and new-fangled aural trickery. A few nights previous at a Showcase at the Limelight and Katy Daly’s, the variety was such that the melancholia of old faves Foam could happily share a bill with the widely admired Calibre.

Throughout the course of Digital T, Crash Daddy, Basic, Clive Moore, Olympic Lifts, Welt, Self Preservation Society and the ubiquitous Mr Kieran were all on hand to showcase the enervating and entirely applaudable diversity of sound and approach that makes the dance scene up here so worthy of attention.

The festival CD containing tracks by many of those mentioned above is now available for £1 at Virgin Megastores in Belfast, Derry, Dublin and Cork. It would be a good place to start. And, if it takes off, Phil Kieran may well appear at a town near you, spreading the word with his trousers round his ankles.