The sensational CMAT was the talk of Day One at Glastonbury 2025 with her superstar-making afternoon set on the Pyramid Stage.

I was already a fan of CMAT but yesterday was one of those fabled “Glastonbury Moments” for the Irish singer. It should turn her into a superstar.

Combining catchy country-rock songs with emotional lyrics, lashings of self-deprecating humour and oodles of self-confidence, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s approach to entertaining a big crowd is part Dolly, part Robbie.

She began her set by mock-fainting in the heat – and ended it wandering far into the madding crowd. In between she constantly reminded us of her name, where she comes from, and how sexy she is.

It’s hard to put down in words exactly what her appeal is, but it’s a lot to do with her ability to reflect everyday life through a kitschy lens while remaining very much the Irish girl next door.

Seemingly stunned by her reception, she remains, as she put it, “literally just a young one from Dunboyne, County Meath” and her “very sexy CMAT band” is “the best country-rock’n’roll band in the world.”

She even gave her mum a shout-out on the balcony – “Hi Sinead!” she yelled… “I love that bitch!” – and milked her recent viral fame via the Tik Tok dance craze accompanying her recent single Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, from her new album Euro-Country.

But behind the fun there’s usually a message. She addressed our capacity (and hers) to hate on celebrities with a song called Jamie Oliver At The Petrol Station – delivered after revealing a big badge of Jamie on her bra.

Most pertinently of all, she addressed the online bullying which led to the BBC having to remove all comments beneath a post last year, not through anger but, characteristically, through humour.

Referring to the time she was fat-shamed on social media last year (cue a chorus of boos from the crowd) she delivered the perfect riposte by ripping off her blue plastic dress before bending over to wiggle and wobble her “amazing arse.”

Then she managed to get everyone – at least 50,000 of them; maybe twice that – to do the “Dunboyne County Meath two-step” – to this song, I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby (“always the cowboy, never the cow”).

It’s taken from her strangely-spelled 2022 debut album If My Wife New I’d Be Dead.