Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Already experienced performers in their own fields, eight celebrities volunteered to learn an instrument for a new TG4 series, but first-night nerves returned when they played live with top trad musicians, writes Siobhán Long

'I FEEL LIKE I'm about to give birth - the labour room awaits." Belfast playwright Marie Jones makes no bones about the heights her stress levels have reached as she waits in the wings to share a stage, and a pair of tunes, with Máirtín O'Connor and Cathal Hayden. She's spent the previous eight months grappling with a dastardly accordion; figuring out which way was up for starters, then slowly, laboriously, getting acquainted with its keys and its bellows, finding ways of eking the right notes out of those endless pleats.