There would, on the surface, appear to be little common ground between the wife of stuffy old Malcolm Muggeridge and the latest bard of blue-collar America. Yet the unlikely ascendancy of Zach Bryan brings to mind Kitty Muggeridge’s killer putdown of David Frost as the superstar who ‘rose without a trace’.

You may be surprised to learn that Bryan, a 29-year-old US Navy veteran from Oklahoma, will headline two concerts later this year at Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium, as well as perform to 60,000 people each night in Edinburgh and Liverpool. He now ranks alongside Bon Jovi and Bruno Mars as a gold-star draw on the 2026 summer show circuit.

Bryan has never had a top 10 single or album in the UK, he gets next to no radio play, and I suspect he could walk the streets of London unmolested in his baseball cap and sleeveless T-shirt, yet he is a genuine musical phenomenon. Last year he played to a record-breaking crowd of 112,000 fans in the US. He is getting Champions League returns with an Isthmian League profile.

The numbers are indisputable. The matter of why Bryan’s music should have connected on a scale far surpassing that of........

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