But if Hook's credentials are questionable, then those of Jean Butler and Colin Dunne are impeccable. Both are synonymous with Irish dance, but it was Butler whose coltish figure and 'cailin alainn' looks captivated many nations as the original female lead in Riverdance. In years to come, historians may well point to the moment when Butler's cloak was removed in the opening segment of a Eurovision act as the actual birth of the Celtic Tiger cub. Hey, it had to start somewhere.

She started at Minneola, Long Island, New York in 1971, the second of three children born to Josephine Byrne, an emigrant from Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, and Michael Butler, a fire fighter and later New York's youngest ever fire chief. Under her mother's guidance, she was attending ballet classes at age four;

a year later, her roots were showing and she signed up for Irishdancing classes with celebrated New York teacher Donny Golden. She continued to study ballet and tap throughout school, but Irish dancing became her speciality and she went on to win consecutive regional, national and world championships.

Her professional debut came in her teens, performing with an Irish-American folk group, Greenfields of America, and later with Cherish the Ladies. She was in her final year at high school when she made her debut with the Chieftains at Carnegie Hall on St Patrick's Day 1988.

Her relationship with the group lasted throughout her college years and beyond, and she has toured extensively throughout the US, Canada, Europe and Japan with them. In 1992, she performed at the royal premiere of Far and Away in London and represented Ireland at Expo '92 in Seville.

After a juvenile dream of life as, first, a circus performer and then a jockey . . . "I cried when my father told me I was too tall" . . . she always hoped to make a career on stage, but it was acting that was top of her wish-list. She spent a year studying theatre at Hofstra University in Long Island, before moving to the UK and Birmingham University to continue her studies. She graduated with an honours degree in theatre and drama studies . . . more importantly, at Birmingham, she met Colin Dunne, who became her dance partner and collaborator and remains one of her closest friends.

Dunne joined Butler on stage with the Chieftains and the pair regularly received standing ovations for their interpretation of 'Cotton Eye Joe'. They danced on several more Chieftains tours and also appeared on stage with the Pogues. In 1993, they raised hairs on necks with a riveting performance that they choreographed for Mayo 5000 in the National Concert Hall in Dublin; they were rewarded with three performances on The Late Late Show that year.

But greater rewards were just around the corner for Butler. RTE producer Moya Doherty had been in the audience at Mayo 5000 and was putting together an Irish dance-based interval act for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. Butler was cramming for her finals when she got the phone call. Riverdance paired her with Michael Flatley . . . another Irish-American with a jingle-jangle of awards for Irish dancing and a world record for tap . . . and a phenomenon was born. Extended from interval act to touring production and cash cow, Riverdance changed everything . . . not just for Jean Butler and Irish dancing, but arguably for Ireland itself.

By the time everybody in the world had seen Riverdance . . . twice . . . Butler had left it behind. A high-profile falling out between Flatley and the show's producers on the eve of its first London run cast Butler squarely in the latter camp, but also reinforced a sense that she was the support act to the star. Insiders maintain that once Flatley flounced off, Butler was never entirely comfortable in the Riverdance spotlight . . . in spite of the drafting in of Colin Dunne as his replacement. She famously didn't get on with Flatley, but his departure did seem to sour the world's favourite Irish dance show for her. "It was a learning curve in rapid diplomacy, " she has said of that time.

When she left it behind in 1997, she complained of tired legs and injury and announced her intention to finally use that degree. But her door wasn't exactly beaten down. "I just never got the gig, " she has said. "I got loads of auditions, I got called back three or four times, but I never got the job. . . And there came a point where my agent sat me down and talked to me and I thought: is the rest of my life going to be about waiting for a break in cinema?"

There were a few gigs. She appeared alongside Gabriel Byrne . . . another friend . . . in The Brylcreem Boys, a best-forgotten straight-to-video experience. More recently, she's appeared in Goldfish Memory, Old Friends and Revenger's Tragedy, alongside Derek Jacobi and Christopher Eccleston.

But dance (amplified by her agent) kept calling her back. In 1999, in the shadow of the continuing success of Riverdance's three companies and Flatley's Lord of the Dance, she and Dunne set to work on an ambitious new stage show based around the legend of Diarmuid and Grainne. By the time it opened at Drury Lane in London in November that year, Dancing On Dangerous Groundwas heavily backed . . . to the tune of £1.5m . . . and had soaked up a considerable sum from its two principles' purses.

From the start it creaked; soon it staggered towards a premature close. Lesser hoofers might have buried it, but Butler and Dunne stripped the show back to its engine, tinkered with it for a few weeks and opened in Radio City Music Hall in New York to full houses and rave reviews. Still, it had been a sobering lesson: the seemingly runaway momentum of All Things Irish Dance was finally slowing down.

When the show finished its US run, niggling injuries forced Butler to re-think her relationship with dancing. Maybe she should have given it up . . . instead, she went back to school. At the world music centre at Limerick University, she embarked on a masters degree in contemporary dance, learning whole new disciplines from scratch and finding some surprisingly physiotherapeutic results in the process.

She graduated last year with first-class honours and is currently artist in residence at the centre.

She had married fashion designer Cuan Hanly in 2001 when the Dubliner and his Temple Bar shop were the talk of the town. When the shop closed, the couple moved to Clare, where they're still based.

She is popular among colleagues and other former Riverdancers and if some regard her as a little high-maintenance, others see her exacting standards as a symptom of her professionalism. She can be suspicious of the media . . . though latterly, she has proved an articulate columnist for a range of women's glossies and The Dublinermagazine.

Over the next six weeks, her transformation from performer to pundit will be complete: but where the mother of the Celtic Tiger is concerned, performance will surely never be too far away.

C.V.

Name: Jean Butler Born: 14 March, 1971; New York Occupation: Dancer, actress and artist in residence at Limerick University Married: To designer Cuan Hanly since 2001 In the news: As a judge on RTE's Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels, audiences will see her move (gracefully) from performer to pundit