In Ireland, conspicuous celebrity replaced politics. The press didn’t get to interview the Taoiseach so they documented the social activities of his Press Secretary P. J. Mara. Obviously the Journalist Of The Year must go to Angela Phelan for her unsurpassed economic, political and rock coverage.

The same cult of conspicuous celebrity was foisted on the bright and unbashful young things of the brash new Irish media industries. The Pogues’ Phil Chevron might write ‘Thousands Are Sailing’ for the new migrants in steerage, but the media was more interested in how many millions were selling. Still if the great Irish invasion hiccupped, there were The Flowers, Sinead and the surprising but carefully orchestrated rise of Enya to balance against the overall mood of pessimism. Worst tidings, of course, centred on the demise of Microdisney.

By the end of the year, I’d become as interested in the void that surrounds U2 as in the group itself. Especially in Britain, where only the pre-punk, pre-Eighties Pet Shop Boys – damn it Neil Tennant is comfortably into his thirties – produced both popular and substantive music. Unless you include teen Tanita Tikaram – and then perspective about goths, grebos and Uncle Tom Cureheads get exceedingly skewed indeed. Not Ireland but England needs The Pogues.

Despite the Acid silliness, Yazz’s ‘The Only Way Is Up’ was incontrovertibly the year’s most superior single but the entire House/Hip-Hop scene will shrivel up and die unless it and other black musics get exposure on the new legal radio stations – an issue that should concern Arts Council Popular Music Office, Keith Donald.

But my most profound experience of ’88, visiting Concern and Band Aid operations in Ethiopia, was entirely humbling – like having a spindly, starving hand suddenly reach out from the television screen and pull you into the true realities of the species Homo Sapiens. Don’t just stick the silver in the collection-box, pause and think awhile.