There's a bit of a word around about The Script, a word that in olden times might have been defined as hype.

These Dublin lads have apparently hung out on the West Coast with stars such as Justin Timberlake.

They have purloined an award meant for Radiohead. They are marked down as likely lads, the next big thing.

A packed Scala is ready to raise the roof. While the most irritating roadie ever checks each instrument several times, the greatest hits of David Bowie are playing on the PA.

Two lessons need to be learned here: get the roadies off stage as quickly as possible; don't play great pop music before you come on, or it might embarrass you.

Not that Danny O'Donoghue, vocalist, keyboard player and undisputed frontman, is likely to blush.

He is keenly aware of his place in the scheme of pop things.

The Script have cunningly grafted a little hip-hop and urban R&B on to songs that might otherwise have come from the palsied fingertips of snow Patrol or Keane.

Songs such as last single We Cry, or This Is The end Where I Begin, have a certain propulsion, courtesy of admirable drummer Glen Power, but dissolve into a puddle of anti-climax.

Through the effluvia of O'Donoghue's vocal posturings drifts the ghost of Bono.

I don't need to tell you that this probably means The Script are going to be the next big thing. But I would like to add that it doesn't have to be this way.