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Having successfully passed the half way mark (hip, hip, hooray!), we’d like to raise a glass to the devoted team of staff and volunteers who are keeping this entire monstrous show on the road; who are working their butts off around the clock for the full 18 days trying to keep more than 2000 musicians happy, across 300-plus events in 20 venues. Most important of all, they’re working to keep the festival’s 100,000-strong audience happy, without whom none of us would be here, so let’s just remember that!

Saturday’s line-up in the club was simply mind-blowing…Blazin’ Fiddles, Admiral Fallow, Breabach, RURA, the newly-merged Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson Trios, and the Peatbogs Faeries to finish, plus guests including Henderson again and former fiddler Adam Sutherland. Okay, so you have to stay up very late for it, but if there’s a better line-up to be had for eight quid anywhere in the world, we’ll eat a Celtic Connections hoodie. Every single act in that list Scottish, too…

…which somehow seems an apposite juncture to trumpet the announcement that England is to be our international partner at Showcase Scotland 2013, a deal inaugurated at a reception this afternoon, where this year’s delegates were thoroughly regaled by the Newcastle Kingsmen Rapper Sword Dancers (at pains to emphasise that they weren’t Morris dancers – which indeed they patently weren’t) and the brilliant young 15-strong Folkestra ensemble, based at the Sage in Gateshead.

Taking of announcements, we’d bet that Findlay Napier, in his role as host of the Late Night Sessions at the Concert Hall, never dreamed of making the following: “I’ve just found out that there’s a couple in here tonight who’ve been blagging their way in all week by saying they’re my Mum and Dad. Well, just to let you know: my real Mum and Dad are here tonight, so I’m afraid your game is well and truly up” – at which point one of the Sessions’ stalwart and gimlet-eyed security staff could be seen scrutinising the audience to locate the guilty parties. By the next day, though, Napier was nominated them for lifetime passes, on the grounds of outstanding brass neck.