Hooray For Hooleygan

Congratulations to Terri Hooley, who has now sold more than 1000 copies of his biography, Hoolegan. It's a mark of the affection that the guy commands locally and also recognition that it's a roaring story - Sixties revolution, Seventies punk action, followed by the lost years and finally the comeback of a Belfast legend.

I've been savoring the book over the last few weeks, not wanting to blast it all at a sitting. Many of the stories I know well, but there are details that add value. And the early days of the story are very illuminating - the father into his socialism, the mother into her church and the city momentarily opening up like a rare flower, before events poisoned the bloom for 30 years.

We also have a champion of sorts in writer Richard Sullivan, who organised the story, taking the multitude of fractured anecdotes and providing a narrative. Every musician and budding entrepreneur should read this. It's no model for best business practice, but it demonstrates that you can support fierce art in terrible times, facing down the thugs, the defeatists and the blowhards. In 2011, we can all bleat about the economics, but surely it will never be as horrendous as it was, back in the day.