A few weeks ago, I started an article with a story about a Donovan gig in the Purty Loft in Dun Laoghaire back in the late Eighties, which was most memorable for a comment made to me by an old rocker just before the show. "If he even tries to play some new material, I'll go up there and I'll fucking kill him," the rocker said.

Now it seems I've got to haul out that intro again, in relation to the remarkable response of the crowd at the O2 Arena to Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam as they were presented with a 40-minute interlude to promote Moonshadow, a forthcoming West End musical based on the songs of Cat.

"Play Peace Train you fucking bollocks," was perhaps the standout line from the audience, reported by a deeply perturbed Gerry Ryan. And though Cat had given notice in advance of last Sunday's show that he would be doing what he felt was "a show-and-a-half", and though he's apparently getting away with it elsewhere, he provoked an angry response from those of us who go by the name of Paddy.

Paddy is angry at a lot of things these days, but his ire on this night was especially righteous. He booed, jeered, slow handclapped and walked out of the gig, apparently in protest at this unwanted "try-out" for Moonshadow, which may not be the dreaded "new material", but which is probably even worse than that -- a new version of the old material. Indeed, it is worse again, Moonshadow being one of these so-called musicals which are not musicals at all in the true sense, but a greatest hits package strung together by superannuated rock 'n' rollers with some risible storyline or 'concept', and performed by actors other than the original artiste whose role in the performance is

mainly to count the money, and the pension plan which it is funding.

For those of us who revere the great musical traditions of Broadway, these cute-hoor shows thrown together by the likes of Queen and Ben Elton are to be unreservedly condemned. They are a marketing man's response to the fact that their audience has become elderly and tired enough to need the creature comforts of the West End theatre.

Not to mention the fact that the artistes are elderly and tired enough to need other people to do the gig for them.

Play Peace Train you fucking bollocks indeed ...

So, while Gerry Ryan felt deeply ashamed and conveyed his feelings afterwards to a deeply shocked Cat, there were others who took a more benign view of the traumatic events at the O2.

As one respected commentator confided in me, "There are few moments when I sit back and think, 'Paddy, I'm proud of you today.'" But, for him, this was one of those moments. You see, during the good times we would take any old nonsense that was thrown at us. In fact the Point, as it was known, was frequently a playground for Corporate Paddy in particular, who would happily have sat there watching Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats for about 10 years without a whimper of complaint.

Now, perhaps, we are seeing another side of Paddy. You could say that he used up all his goodwill on Cats, and had nothing left for Cat.

For what did it matter during the fat years?

Any feelings of disgruntlement at the decline in the culture were swept away by the thought that tomorrow you would probably be off on your holidays again.

When Paddy was poor, he somehow managed to send out Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy and U2. When he got rich, he sent out Westlife and The Corrs. There is a difference.

But nobody notices, when the champagne is flying. It is all just noise.

And when the party is rocking, all noise sounds like happy noise, baby!

It appears that only in times of trouble does Paddy really listen to what he's hearing, and ask for more. Only then does he remember that the music matters, not just as an excuse for another night of corporate alcoholism, but as a thing in itself, which can either dramatically improve your quality of life or horribly diminish it.

He gets serious enough about it to cause unseemly disturbances. But then, as my friend and colleague Dion Fanning put it, "Nobody ever saw the poet Kavanagh walking down the street and said, 'Here comes a beacon of serenity.'"

Cat, on his website, raised the issue of Paddy's relationship with alcohol, in the aftermath of what Cat wrongly felt was a depressing result against Australia at Croke Park. "The tendency of some to drown away the blues of a hapless draw with a few more gallons of Guinness obviously didn't help either," he wrote. As if you'd need to be a drunken alickadoo to rail against the phoney musical.

Then again, maybe it was just a bunch of utter gobshites, disgracing themselves again.

But one would like to think that this was Paddy making a principled stand for the music, and what it means to him, Paddy finally shouting stop.

He's better than that.

Sunday Independent