One of the approaches to nightlife starting to spread in Britain is having night time advisers – namely important sounding non-jobs which occasionally mean saying something whilst ultimately changing nothing. London has Amy Lamé, Manchester has Sacha Lord, to name but two.

As for the aforementioned Sacha Lord, it’s safe to say feelings about him in Manchester are quite mixed – and that’s putting it politely. Depending upon who you ask in the city’s scene, you’ll either get a response saying he’s some kind of genius doing great things – or a description of some kind of megalomaniac. And that’s one of the more printable words we’ve received.

So the good people in the Manchester club scene might not be best pleased at developments across the Irish Sea. The Irish government have announced a plan to help out nightlife in the country – badly hit by the pandemic, like it has pretty much everywhere else. Plans include allowing nightclubs to stay open until 6am, as opposed to the current 2.30am limit.

There are also plans to use cultural venues like Dublin’s National Concert Hall for live music and DJ sets – whilst the same venue is also working on a festival to celebrate electronic music. Nothing wrong with any of this, you might think? And Ears To The House would absolutely agree.

But those on the Emerald Isle who welcome the idea of appointing so-called night advisors across six towns – who have until June 24th to make their interest known – is likely to raise eyebrows in Manchester. As one put it to Ears To The House shortly after finding out about the plans, “one Sacha Lord is quite enough, never mind six of them”.

We suspect we’ll be coming back to this one…