Jim Corr the truth-seeker: the baffling rise of an unlikely rock contrarian

• The website of soft rock guitarist Jim Corr makes for an unlikely gateway drug. It is plastered with photos of the goateed 56 year-old mucking about in the studio with chart-topping sisters Andrea, Caroline and Sharon. As The Corrs they have sold over 30 million records and forced us to consider at length the all-important question of whether Fleetwood Mac melodies and Celtic fiddles can live in perfect harmony. As far as their huge fanbase is concerned, the answer is very much in the affirmative. The emotion conjured by this tableaux is a heart-warming sense of family. It is precisely what you would expect of the online presence of a middle-aged rock star who hasn’t had a meaningful hit since the early 2000s but can still command a loyal global following (when The Corrs reformed in 2016 they packed the 20,000 capacity O2 Arena in London). Yet alongside these visual keepsakes is a rolling feed of Corr’s Twitter account. This is somewhat less cuddly than The Corrs's music. Here, the more appropriate soundtrack would be ominous death metal. One headline retweeted by Corr declares “The virus is a ploy to bring in the global corporate takeover”. Another laments “lies, damn lies and UK health statistics”. Welcome to Corrland. Strap in as it will be a bumpy ride. “It was 911,” Corr said in 2010 when asked on Irish television why he had become a conspiracy theorist. “I got very curious as to what actually happened that day. I had a lot of questions. As I began to study it…it became obvious to me that the official story could not be true.”