Just like every other musician in the country, Hothouse Flowers Legends - they're very, very old - Fiachna Ó Braonáin and Peter O'Toole have been keeping their collective hands in while under lockdown. While Ó Braonáin's magisterial residency on RTÉ Radio One's Late Date with Fiachna Ó Braonáin (the clue is in the name) continues - it's like spending a few hours with a very knowledgable pal who won't let you near the record player - he has lent his considerable weight to the Bobstock 2020 Virtual Gig, a fundraiser in aid of Oesophageal Cancer. The event took place on July 4th but you still have a small window to help out this very worthy cause by going to their FaceBook page.

Luckily for us, Fiachna has made his contribution available through the magic of YouTube. This lovely thing is a song called 'Ghosts' that he recorded after an evening of "hard radio graft", accoording to him, at about 4am, which is the only time he gets a bit of quiet, due to the presence of small people in his house.

The song is taken from his solo album Bougainvillea, which he put together in Paris between 2006 and 2011, while holed up in a one-bedroom apartment near Montmarte, when the Flowers were on sabbatical. It's been unavailable for a while but it's now there for all on Bandcamp for a laughably small sum.

As fortune would have it, our other man, Peter O'Toole - described in this very magazine, by a truly great writer as someone who could "get a tune out of a ball of string if you threw it at him" - was also involved in that Bobstock gig, and that's not all he's been up to. He's put together a new album during our current crisis called Leaving White Cedar, which is available by email from [email protected], although it'll most likely be also available on Bandcamp shortly

Here's O'Toole arsing around, I mean working, in his gaff.

And here's a video for 'Far Off Beautiful World', offering incontrovertible proof the interpretive dance's loss is the music world's gain.

In other Flowers news, there are strong rumours of an appearance at the Buncrana Music Festival on August 2nd, and a definite acoustic show in The Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire on November, 21st. A long, and in no way overblown, look at their most recent album, Let's Do This Thing, is available for perusal over here.

Liam Ó Maonlaí is believed to still be on his walking tour of South Dublin, and was unavailable for comment.