Ivan, The Incredible

When I was a homesick boy in London, I used to console myself with cultural scraps from the old place. It was about the humour, the poetry, the tastes and those maverick characters who'd done well from the Tayto nation. Sometimes there was a sporting result and always there was music. I made myself a mix tape, full of tunes to feed the heart, to rend the sentiments and I'd play it often.

Van Morrison was all over the playlist of course. He gave us a sense of self and he knew all about the lonesome blues. You could hear it on 'Celtic Ray' and 'Sense Of Wonder', all over 'Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart' and 'Astral Weeks'. You could say I indulged.

Now here we are, many years later, part of a redefined, freshly motivated Norn Iron. Our music tends to be upbeat these days. Our poets are recognised, the cityscapes have fresh aspects and the event schedules are busy. Therefore Tourism Ireland has thrown a celebratory night at St James' Palace in London, bigging up our prospects for 2012 and beyond.

You may know some of the guests: Eamonn Holmes, Christine Bleakley, Barry McGuigan, Patrick Kielty. There's Feargal Sharkey in a dinner jacket and Bronagh Gallagher, enhancing the Derry dimension. I'm standing coyly before Amanda Burton while Jayne Wisener glides into the Queen Anne Room. The walls are all crimson and gilded, with a Rococo tendency that would make Liberace blush. But hey, it doesn't bother Dermot Murnaghan, while travel writer Simon Calder is more interested in pictures of the Titanic Buildings and the Peace Bridge over the Foyle. Neil Hannon's 'Songs Of Love' is sweetly intoned by Music Theatre For Youth and the evening revs up.

Simon Callow takes to the stage, remembering his days at Queen's University and raving about the new Lyric Theatre. He reads some Seamus Heaney with booming gravitas. Martin McGuinness says he is happy to be in Derrylondon and Peter Robinson makes some jokes about taking his colleague on a tour of the royal palaces. How many varieties of surreal do you need?

And then blimey, Van Morrison is up there. He's playing the hits, but pepping his interest by adding some jazz flavours. Which is no bother for 'Moondance', seemingly quoting from Miles Davis and 'So What'. But it's quite a stretch for 'Star Of The County Down', that's now only slightly north of 'A Night In Tunisia'. Van makes a friendly remark to the audience and masses up the bounty with 'Here's Comes The Night' and 'Gloria'. I'm looking around at the faces in the crowd and it seems that they too have relied on Van during the bad old days and are now rather delighted with this shiny new context, the happy narrative.

He ends with a version of Sonny Boy Williamson's 'Help Me'. This was a staple of Van's Caledonian Soul era in the Seventies and tonight he's emphatically playing it for himself. It whirls and it swings, the singer's timing and timbre hasn't sounded this intimate in years. By the end of it, we're all taken off into this perfect rapture. "It's too good to stop now!" he wails, taking a new steer on a lovely old line. And you know, I think the man may be right.