Happy Hour or two at Townhall Theatre

REVIEW

Paul Heaton - better known as the Beautiful South’s frontman - made his triumphant return to Cavan on Thursday night.

The Townhall Theatre was as packed with fans as Heaton’s back catalogue is with hits - and he seemingly played every one of them over a two-hour show.

If you type ‘Paul Heaton’ into Google, the following is the top question asked: ‘Is Paul Heaton married to Jacqui Abbott?’ That’s how connected the two singers are in the public’s consciousness (incidentally they are not a couple). So a heartfelt ‘awwhhh’ rose from the audience when Heaton confirmed Abbott’s absence, though it had been publicised ahead of the tour she had received medical advice to rest her voice.

Attempting to fill the Abbott shaped vocal gap were his stupendously good band, which included a keyboardist and brass section of trumpet, sax, trombone. While Abbott’s absence was a loss, there was still much to delight in the phenomenal talent present. In fact let’s back up: why on earth is such phenomenal talent playing Cavan? The night before Heaton had wowed 5,000 in Belfast’s SSE Arena, yet here is one of the most preeminent English songwriters of the last half century playing a town at the end of bus route number 30.

The spark for Heaton’s Cavan’s gig was lit by his appearance on Jools Holland’s show where he mentioned his wish to play every county in Ireland. Intrigued, theatre manager Padraic McIntyre leaped on Twitter to see if he was serious. Next thing you know the The Beautiful South songwriter, and latterly one half of Heaton and Abbott was bringing his enormous touring buses to Townhall Street leaving just 13 more counties to go.

The capacity crowd of middle aged people were buzzing with excitement, and for one night only we all felt as young as when the Housemartins burst onto the scene with Happy Hour.

In one interlude, Heaton confided that he had actually been in Cavan before, hence this was actually a return of sorts. It’s half surprising he could recall the first:

“In the bad old drinking days in the Beautiful South, me and Dave Rotheray just got in a bus in the middle of Dublin that came to Cavan - and we said, ‘Let’s go and see what it was like’. We just stayed in one pub - I think it was McGinnity’s, and then tried to get the last bus home, after about seven hours of drinking. I puked up, he puked up and got thrown off the bus about two miles outside Cavan and slept in a little bus stop for the whole night waiting for the first bus the next day.

“The others asked: ‘What was Cavan like?’

‘Yeah, not bad.’

“Well, I’m sorry, for that bus driver.”

As endearing as the oul chat was, we were here for the tunes. The full throttle pace was set with the foot stomping opener ‘I Drove Her Away With My Tears’, where his voice sounded like it had yet to warm up. By about the third upbeat number in, he was in his full vocal pomp and delivered a fabulous rendition of ‘One Last Love Song’ - possibly this reviewer’s favourite song of the night. However, there’s a huge volume from which to choose - having played his cover of Harry Nilsson’s beautifully crafted ‘Everybody’s Talking At Me’ and his own ‘Old Red Eyes is Back’, he had still only scratched the surface. Rotterdam, and Pencil Case followed, where he invited the support act - Rumer to provide the female vocals. While the Londoner may not have filled Abbott’s shoes, she donned her own pair and her sumptuous rich voice more than shone through.

A particularly raucous rendition of ‘Don’t Marry Her’ followed before ‘Carry On Regardless’ thrilled all.

It was remarkable that after an hour and a half of banging out hits that he had any left for the encore, but that he did. ‘Happy Hour’, and the bawdy ‘Perfect 10’ set us up for ‘Caravan of Love’, the final strains of which were sung a capella by Heaton, Rumer, the band and 400 amateur crooners.

An unforgettable occasion, and another coup for the reborn Townhall.

Thankfully for Bus Éireann he had his own transport home.