The Irish in Britain, including those of Irish descent, make up a significant part of the UK population. Here, you will find news, entertainment, events, sports and features from the local Irish Post newspaper.

TO mark the Apostle of Ireland’s day, this column is pleased to present a short history of Ireland over the last 12,000 years:

10000 BC: The Ice Age. Perpetual winter the whole year round. Ireland is a bleak, desolate land, incapable of sustaining normal human life. Even in Temple Bar there’s barely a sign of a hen party.

7000 BC: First human settlers arrive in Ireland. Somewhere near present-day Coleraine. Property prices immediately go through the roof.

6000 BC: First Irish people lived by hunting. You had to catch your own aurochs (before they got you — hence the expression: ‘Very nasty, he got caught by the aurochs’).

5000 BC: Hunter-gatherers turn into hunter-ditherers and farming begins. Still not much time for celebrations. EU subsidies a distant dream. March 17 passes without undue fuss.

4004 BC (Tuesday): The genesis of the world, according to creationists. They didn’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day back then and for the most part continue with that policy in north-east Ulster.

2500 BC: Passage-grave and dolmen-building all the rage. Our ancestors try to communicate with we-know-not-what by building stone monuments which look curiously like bus-stops (but probably aren’t). Still no Christian celebrations — Halloween and May Day are the big ones. Possibly also Mother’s Day — the Irish mammy has always been important, after all.

500 BC: The Celts arrive. These people knew how to party. Some etymologists even believe that the word ‘fun’ comes from the Gaelic for a merry tune, ‘fonn’. Riverdance looks on the cards for the first time.

0: The year dot. Pagan celebrations still widespread but events in the Middle East top the news agenda.

200 AD: No sign of the Romans. In fact they don’t show up at all in Ireland. The only noticeable absentees in Ireland’s long line of invaders. Ironic, really. All those straight roads would have proved handy to St. Patrick in spreading his message — although they might have had local opposition to any road past Tara. However, the Romans do at least bestow on Ireland its poetic alias, Hibernia.

(circa) 432 AD: Patrick arrives in Ireland, probably from Scotland. Drives snakes out of Ireland in a religious ceremony — tabloids headline this as “Mass Hissteria!”

450 AD: Moderate success in converting Ireland. After telling the newly-converted king of Connacht about the Crucifixion, said king declares that if he had been there with his chieftains he would have made Calvary Hill run red with the blood of Christ’s enemies. There’s an embarrassed silence and Patrick goes: “Er, right, let’s go back to the beginning.”

(circa) 461 AD: Patrick dies. Receives the top award back then — sainthood.

800 AD: The Vikings arrive. Even by the standards of the Dark Ages, these are an uncultured lot. Much of St. Patrick’s work is undone by the Norse men, with churches and monasteries destroyed. Ninth century tabloids run with: “Ain’t nothing like a Dane” and “Hung like a Norse”.

900 AD: The Vikings calm down, establish cities like Dublin and Waterford. St. Patrick’s monasteries still in charge of forgiving the population’s sins.

1000 AD: The last ‘peaceful’ St. Patrick’s before the Anglo-Normans arrive. Feast day is celebrated in humble fashion by the faithful. Not many parties; craic only up to about 17, well short of the 90 normally recorded. Norman wisdom by name but not by nature.

1169 AD: Strongbow arrives (has changed his name from Mellow Daisy to sound tougher). The Normans mean business. The Vikings merely made a nuisance of themselves; the Normans seriously rearrange the landscape, both materially and politically, forever. Native Irish put to work by Norman overlords — everybody’s gone serfin’.

1500s: Emerging from the Middle Ages, still not much craic about. Peace still an exotic concept. Anarchy widespread: Imagine Grafton Street the Saturday before Christmas and multiply by a factor of 50.

1558-1603 AD: Reign of Elizabeth I. System of counties widely adopted, paving way for inter-county GAA matches. Armagh and Down emerge as the winners in the St. Patrick stakes — Armagh the site of his ministry; Down his last resting place. Kilkenny, however, wins the hurling Championships.

1630 AD: Waterford-born Luke Wadding promotes the Irish cause in Rome, getting St. Patrick’s Feast Day on to the Church’s universal calendar. Luke is not sainted — a pity, as he would have made a fine Patron Saint of Warm Water.

1691 AD: Patrick Sarsfield killed at the Battle of Aughrim. His efforts on behalf of Ireland make the name Patrick popular throughout the country. Heretofore it wasn’t a big mover in the baby-naming stakes.

1737 AD: The world’s first ever St. Patrick’s Day parade, held in Boston, Massachusetts. Soon the Americans go mad for the day, dyeing the beer green, dyeing the rivers green — even doctors demand that urine samples be dyed green.

1836 AD: The remains of St. Valentine arrive in Ireland, a present from Pope Gregory XVI to Father Spratt. Despite the popularity of Val (and his continued presence in Whitefriars Street Carmelite Church, Dublin), St. Patrick holds off the competition and remains, in Roman parlance, Numero Uno.

1903 AD: St. Patrick’s Day becomes a public holiday in Ireland for the first time following agitation by the Gaelic League. Dublin’s chances of becoming party-time central greatly enhanced.

1916 AD: Easter, not St. Patrick’s, is the big one to celebrate this year. President of the Provisional Government, Padraig Pearse, continues the good work of Patrick Sarsfield in popularising the patron saint’s name.

1922 AD: It’s a State! Next day Antrim, Down, Armagh, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Derry head off to seek their fortune elsewhere.

1931 AD: Ireland’s first ever St. Patrick’s Day parade takes place in Dublin. But it’s more of a military affair, reviewed by the Minister of Defence. Celebrations go on until about 8:10pm.

1951 AD: First inter-party government collapses — over the price of milk.

1973 AD: Ireland joins the EEC (later to become the EU). Fears that Brussels might insist on Ireland taking back all the snakes driven out by St. Patrick prove unfounded.

Circa 1990 AD: An Cat Mór Ceilteach spotted on Ireland’s shores for the first time. An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured — which is roughly speaking what happened. Ireland forgets the teachings of St. Patrick and his disciples and moves from the half door to the gated community in less than a generation.

2008 AD: St. Patrick along with St. Nicholas and St. Valentine are now the celebrity A-listers of sainthood. The ‘party saints’, as the Vatican doesn’t call them — in as fine an example of a full circle as you could find — are celebrated with pagan abandon.