Almost famous (part two of two); Who are the next household names to

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Mar 17, 2002 | by Words Peter Ross, Lesley McDowell, Michael Grant, Sofa GormanMain

business Anne Heraghty When Anne Heraghty headed up the flotation of Ireland's second listed recruitment company, CPL, she made the headlines. Why? Because she was and still is the only woman chief executive of an Irish public company, a company who just last month bought out the bulk of the only other listed recruitment company, Marlborough, when it went into receivership.

Like many other companies involved in the IT explosion, CPL is feeling the pinch in recent months, but has diversified away from technological recruitment. Founded by Heraghty in 1989, it also has significant cash reserves to weather the current storm in that area.

So who is Ms Heraghty and how did she crash through the male glass ceiling? From Longford originally, she graduated from University College Dublin with a BA in maths and economics and has literally committed her adult life to the recruitment industry. Deciding to go it alone in '89, she left a secure job with Grafton Recruitment to establish CPL with her husband and the company's business development director, Paul Carroll.

"We have built a very stable infrastructure and we have evaluated all our business processes to ensure they are as efficient as possible," is how this 41-year-old explains CPL's power to survive. And there's a lot more to Heraghty than a power-hungry career woman. In the spare time she dedicates herself to being mother to a six- year-old daughter and is currently allowing herself a short career pause to care for her newborn.

MUSIC Gemma Hayes (below) She's come a long way from Tipperary, but for 24-year-old Gemma Hayes the journey is just beginning. Her debut album Night On My Side - partly produced by Dave Fridmann, knob twiddler for Mercury Rev and The Delgados among others - is a jewel box of shimmering guitar, crested by her spine-tingling voice. It's out on Source Records in May, so start counting the days.

Sitting in the snug of a Dublin pub, eyeing a badly stuffed fox (Ireland's answer to Badly Drawn Boy?) mounted in a cabinet, Hayes explains that she first knew she wanted to devote her life to music when she heard My Bloody Valentine while at boarding school in Limerick. She was miserable away from home and their Loveless album awoke something in her. "I could relate to the passion and emotion," she remembers. "It's so loud and achey and it really gave me hope that there was something out there that was really beautiful and I could go to it. I had never felt that before."

After school she moved to Dublin to attend Trinity College but soon dropped out and started gigging all over the city, opening for everyone from Al Green to local punk bands. Julian Lennon saw her play and invited her to sing a duet on his album, something she now seems faintly embarrassed about.

Night On My Side was partly recorded at Tarbox Studios in the wilds of upstate New York, where the local store sold bread, milk and bullets, and a neighbour kept lions as pets. Fittingly, this is a record which has teeth. "I like the idea of making music that has sweetness to it," she explains. "But it ought to have intensity too."

David Kitt (pictured over) David Kitt is something of an anomaly on this list in that he is already extremely famous - at least in Ireland. The Sunday Herald meets him the day after he has bagged the award for best solo male at the Irish music awards, beating the likes of Van Morrison and Shane MacGowan to the gong. In his acceptance speech he made fun of Bono and then stayed until 7am at the U2 aftershow party, where he was told by a bouncer that he didn't mind him smoking a spliff but could he please not dance on the furniture? Sleep deprivation has ensured that this normally mellow 26-year-old is so laid back you could serve drinks off him.

The music is like that too. Small Moments and The Big Romance are two albums of chilled folktronica, all acoustic guitars and somnambulent beats. He is often called the new David Gray but actually has more in common with Mogwai.

Kitt's father is Tom Kitt, a well known Irish politician, so he has grown up in the glare of the public eye, an experience which has prepared him for fame in his own right. His father also taught him to play guitar. "He taught me when I was about seven or eight," he remembers. "The first music I heard when I came home from hospital was probably his acoustic guitar. And he used to sing me to sleep. So I've got an immediate affinity with that sound."

UK success has so far eluded Kitt, but all that is likely to change next year when he releases his third album, which he promises will be one of "greater extremes, a bit unsettling".

SPORT john o'shea (below) The vast superstore that Manchester United opened in the centre of Dublin three years ago was recently closed due to lack of interest. Thankfully for manager Sir Alex Ferguson there is still a burgeoning trade between Ireland and Old Trafford itself.

John O'Shea is the latest from the conveyor belt of talent to join United from the Republic. The country has been such a rich source that Ferguson now acts more quickly than ever to snap up emerging prospects; while Roy Keane and Denis Irwin had to be bought from rival English clubs, O'Shea, born in Waterford, was a United trainee before signing his professional form at the age of 18.