The eggs factor

Something odd happened to Philippe Robrecht while hunkered down in lockdown on Inishbofin, a tiny island with just 170 inhabitants off Ireland’s Atlantic coast: he became, again, a pop star.

 The 55-year-old musician and singer had not made an album in almost a decade and was all but forgotten in his native Belgium when the Covid-19 pandemic reached Ireland last year.

 He and his wife supplemented their income on the island, their home since 2017, by selling eggs and fish to neighbours. Then Robrecht rediscovered his muse and wrote and recorded two double albums in his home studio. And a TV talent show in Belgium featured one of his old hits and catapulted it to number one in the charts. “It’s quite unusual. It never happened before,” he said this week.

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