It's not often you can put the words Hot Press and Bible in the same sentence but when the music magazine celebrated its 1998 Yearbook in Tosca Restaurant on Tuesday, the phrase, "the Bible of Irish music" was bandied about ad nauseum. The handy book is indeed fairly indispensable in the music trade and so there was a fair number of "industry heads" at its baptism, as well as many music commentators. Managing director of record label BMG, Freddie Middleton, Johnny Lappin of the Music Publishers' Association of Ireland and Danceline Record's Eddie Joyce were there. So too were Hugh Murray of Sony Records, Lord Of The Dance composer Ronan Hardiman, who brought his daughter Ali along, and Universal Music's Dave Pennefather who arrived with Boyzone manager Louis Walsh. DJs-cum-journalists Donal Scannell and Mick Heaney were there, along with No Disco presenter Uaneen Fitzsimmons, Aidan Lambert, manager of Blink, members of Little Sister Sage, and Chicks, an all-girl band that looked all of 16.
Tom Dunne of Something Happens (who moonlights as a 98FM DJ) did the honours while Niall Stokes, the magazine's editor, called for a new music board to promote the industry. All that remained was to get the party crowd to leave on time - not an easy task with these dedicated liggers - as a crew from Corona- tion Street had a table booked at the restaurant. Of course, the nice people at Hot Press had checked to see whether Ken, Deirdre et al would like to come along but they didn't put in an appearance on the night. Nor did the Spice Girls, although they arrived in Ireland the day before to record their next video and were also invited along to the bash. Could it be that walking into a room full of music critics put them off? Surely not.