A further €1m-plus Cork city bar and nightclub sale has just concluded, with the Bowery on Tuckey Street selling off-market: it comes just as Wetherspoons are poised to reopen a premises now standing them a total investment of as much as €3.5m, a bar investment level seemingly back to boom time values.

Hilly Kristal, whose rock club CBGB served as the birthplace of the punk rock movement and a launching pad for bands like the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads, has died after a battle with lung cancer, his son said today. He was 75.