The doorman has no mercy. Mary Coughlan and her partner, Frank Bonadio, are kept waiting outside Temple Bar's Belgo Restaurant in the balmy night air until someone points out that the woman in the spectacles patiently lingering out there is one of the country's best-loved singers. The same treatment is meted out to Siobhan McClafferty, Miss Ireland for 1991, who has to search for her invitation before the doors are finally nudged open. The only couple to sail through turns out to have the best connections - Richard Coates is executive chef of the restaurant group. He arrives with his partner, Carol Decker, lead singer of the recently disbanded group T'pau.
And, could it be that the producer of Rent, the musical which has just opened in the Olympia Theatre, is being kept out of his own party to celebrate the show's opening? No, Evan McAuliffe from Listowel, Co Kerry, is simply held up outside by a sea of well-wishers. His sister, Sinead McAuliffe and their parents, Zavier and Marie McAuliffe, of Spectra Photos, are inside already.