"There was so much Irish talent on show this year, from Annie Mac to Fontaines DC, The Mary Wallopers to Newdad. My personal highlights were Sprints and Kneecap — future headliners, viscerally refreshing, blasting us with furious joy"

"Whatever happened to old-school fan culture like those teenage Beatles fans who peed themselves in excitement, ripped the seats out of venues, flung themselves on moving vehicles and rioted?"

"...when a population has genuine grievances, it creates a perfect breeding ground for fake-ass populists to proliferate like fungus in the fridge, with their soundbites and their scapegoating and their social media savvy..."

"The room juddered with Gadd’s adrenaline, its audience mesmerised, horrified, our held breath punctuated with an occasional gasp of laughter."

"Not all heroines wear capes: this one wears stripper shoes, her own brand of perfume, and an aura of such buoyant fearlessness she’s like a pornified Joan of Arc."

"Can’t get affordable housing? Blame Mohammad from Afghanistan, not the fact that the only housing regularly being built is luxury apartments for the rich."

The beach read should be like the beach body – it’s whatever you personally bring to the beach.

The album’s release has been reported on the grown-up news. Even The Economist has been getting involved, asking bravely – some might say recklessly - if Taylor Swift “has peaked”

"The thing about Amy Winehouse is that she was very funny and very clever. This razor-sharp irreverence does not come across in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s beautiful film about her..."

"He would have been seven when they decriminalised gayness, 10 when they closed the last Magdalen laundry, and 11 when they allowed miserable couples to legally split; he would have grown up in a very different, rapidly changing Ireland, an Ireland that was psychologically decolonising at warp speed."