Feile '96? What about the mud and the rain, the puking and the public displays of male teen genitalia?

Such moderately minor quibbles seem to dissolve into the ether at Denis Desmond's three day festival at the Point in Dublin as Pulp took the stage last night to the kind of applause the government would receive were they to put all this country's scum-sucking drug barons on a raft - and float it out to sea.

The Alan Bennett of Britpop, thirty-something Jarvis Cocker knows there's no point in re-living your youth, especially when you can re-package it. "Do you remember the first time, I couldn't remember a worse time," the north of England homme fatale waxes nostalgic on matters virginal as 8,000 football-clad teenagers smiled... knowingly.

Having single-handedly re-invented geek chic, Jarvis flounced about the stage like the camp-as-knickers Norman Wisdom of Cool. And all the girls, 13 right through to 17, absolutely loved him for it.

Concerning a certain voyeurism in the part of the British middle-classes towards their pies-and-chips pals beneath them, Common People was the New Labour song of the night. Only the sad-sounding-in-the-Point strains of Sorting For Es And Whizz got a similar frenzied reaction.

Six foot tall and, like Cindy Crawford, all legs, Jarvis Cocker showed last night he had all the ingredients of the modern superstar.