The Script: 'Nights like this are so bittersweet for us' after Mark ...

Electric Picnic: Danny O’Donoghue on the main stage on Sunday night. Photograph: Alan Betson

Darkness is creeping in as The Script start their Electric Picnic main-stage set on Sunday night. Superhumans quickly cuts through the chill in the air, frontman Danny O’Donoghue working the audience from the word go. Surprisingly, this is the band’s first time playing Electric Picnic; it’s also, fittingly, their final gig of 2023. “This is the loudest crowd we’ve had all year,” O’Donoghue tells the crowd during The Man Who Can’t Be Moved.

The audience are happy to keep the energy up even without conducting from O’Donoghue. “I’m not going to stop ye in the middle of an Ole, Ole, Ole – go for it!” Balloons then bounce out across the crowd for Paint the Town Green, which features some bodhrán playing by O’Donoghue and a power percussion performance from Glen Power.

Tonight’s special guest appearance is by Pat, courtesy of Niamh in the front row, who hands her phone to O’Donoghue when he goes looking for someone’s ex to call. Having Nothing sung to him over FaceTime by the band and thousands more must be an odd way for Pat’s Sunday evening to go.

Electric Picnic: The Script during their career-spanning set on Sunday night on the main stage. Photograph: Alan Betson

Electric Picnic: Script fans create a sea of smartphone torches. Photograph: Alan Betson

Electric Picnic: Danny O’Donoghue tells the crowd that Mark Sheehan, their guitarist, who died in April this year, at the age of 46, 'was dying to do EP'. Photograph: Alan Betson

Electric Picnic: Script fans in the main arena on Sunday night. Photograph: Alan Betson

“We haven’t had this much fun in a long time,” O’Donoghue says before adding that “nights like this are so bittersweet for us” because of the death of Mark Sheehan, their guitarist, in April this year, at the age of 46. He “was dying to do EP” O’Donoghue tells the crowd as he sits down, with Power on bodhrán, for a stripped-back If You Could See Me Now in tribute to their friend.

Keeping Sheehan to the fore, and as the audience applaud, they start into Before the Worst, which O’Donoghue says was the first song the trio recorded together. After a career-spanning set that incorporates so many of the songs that made The Script an international success, the band end with Hall of Fame, which comes complete with flames and sparks that the audience match with a sea of smartphone torches.

Despite the evening’s sadness, this gig has been a celebration of the music The Script made together and the friend they and their fans miss so much.

Glen Murphy is an Irish Times journalist