Declan Lynch: Ranelagh today is all million-euro villas and fancy restaurants. The country people in bedsits have been replaced

My late friend, rock journalist George Byrne, used to call it “two-bar electric fire land” — that part of Dublin mainly comprising Rathmines and Ranelagh, where young people from “the country” lived in bedsits. Usually, George would be using that term in the context of the long-playing records by singer-songwriters that were favoured by these country people. Don McLean would be a “king of two-bar electric fire land”.