Nicola brings the house down in her hometown

If you happened to be in town last Friday, you may be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered onto a giant, relaxed movie set. For a few hours, women were wandering around nonchalantly with long dresses, feathers and silk shawls.  They were the lucky invitees to the first Irish premiere of Bridgerton – even though Netflix have shown two and half-series of the Regency-era period drama starring the fabulous Nicola Coughlan from Oranmore.

But it was quite the coup for the Film Fleadh to get Nicola – the lead in the third series – as well as her love interest Colin Bridgerton, played by Luke Newton.

After queueing for at least 45 minutes to get into Palás and waiting another 40 minutes for the event to start, some of us may have been a little grumpy when the Galway girl eventually arrived.

But all was forgiven when she spotted mammy after her Q&A and gave her the biggest, teary hug ever. Nicola has been on a world tour to promote Bridgerton – originally released in the pandemic without any fuss before it became an enormous global hit for the streaming service – and had already revealed she hadn’t seen her mammy for weeks.

She wasn’t the only one blubbing – a TikTok of the reunion embarrassingly captures me in the background balling at their embrace which some of my daughter’s friends managed to spot. Mortification!

Mortification is the word that most of the full house was feeling during the screening of episode 5 – yet to be released on Netflix - with a very tasteful lovemaking scene at its heart. Said mammy was looking on.

There were gasps and ‘awwwws’ as she lost her virginity to the love of her life. When it ended there was a rapturous round of applause, bringing home once again how lovely it is to watch something on a big screen communally.

Pictured: Nicola Coughlan and her mammy Beatrice at the Film Fleadh screening of Bridgerton.