However, as far as HMV versus Virgin in Ireland is concerned, HMV – even the smaller branches – have a far, far superior range of specialist music. Time was that the Virgin Megastore on Aston Quay was the best record store in the country but that time was long, long before it closed. HMV Grafton Street is terrific on that front. Possibly if you have very, very mainstream tastes in music, you’ll laud Virgin. However, by and large, their selection of stock is noticeably more limited than HMV’s.

As a declaration of interest I’d like to add that most of the music I have acquired in the past year has been acquired from iTunes, Play, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr and the Virgin Megastore in the Louvre, or FNAC in Chatelet and LeClerc in Quimper, Brittany. As this is not my blog I will not whinge that even allowing for HMV’s better offering in terms of range, music stores in Ireland are generally pretty dreadful. Even supermarkets in France have a better selection.