In the early 1990s, the press dubbed this man a “smiling psychopath” and he was shunned by polite society. But at 67, whatever menace he once exuded has long since faded. As he fills the kettle to make tea, he seems a pretty unremarkable London-Irish pensioner. Actually, he is anything but. He is John Healy: erstwhile alcoholic vagrant; repeat violent offender; unlikely chess champion; bestselling memoirist; and now the subject of a fascinating documentary, You Have Been Warned, which airs tomorrow night on RTÉ 1.

Violence permeates every chapter of Healy’s extraordinary story, from the physical abuse endured at the hands of his father as a child, through fifteen years living rough on the streets of London. “We lived in derelict buildings with lice and filth and rats,” he says today. “We robbed our own kind and when there was nothing left to rob we went out and robbed others on the street.”

Frequent stints in prison meant the horrors of alcohol withdrawal, alleviated only by a £2 discharge grant and his next bottle. When Healy was introduced to the game of chess in prison, the rudiments of street crime were the handle by which he came to understand it.

“Chess is a jealous lover,” he later wrote. “It would tolerate no other, especially in the form of too much drink. I gave myself to her completely, body and soul, and for the first time in my life I began to live without the constant nagging need for drink.”

Now an ex-wino, Healy was to become the unlikeliest of chess sensations in the 1970s, winning ten major British championships – on one occasion even forcing a draw from the then second best player in the world. But having only come to the game in his early thirties, his greatest ambition was to go unfulfilled. “I wanted to be a grandmaster more than anything else,“ he sighs. “But I took it up too late.”

In 1988, Healy’s autobiography, The Grass Arena, won the T.R. Ackerly prize for literary non-fiction. Its mesmerising and unflinching depiction of life among London’s vagrant underclass earned the author comparisons to Charles Bukowski. He was hailed by Harold Pinter and feted on television by Jonathan Ross. But just as sudden as his meteoric rise was his dramatic fall from grace.

In 1991, a front page story in the Guardian newspaper reported that police had been called to the offices of publishers Faber & Faber, after an incident involving Healy. Rumours swirled. Management there ordered all remaining copies of The Grass Arena pulped and the book answered ‘out of print’. “When soldiers get back from Vietnam, they get debriefed. Well, my head was like a warzone. But I’m just lowlife, so who was going to debrief me?”

“There were Chinese whispers going around. I still had ideas. I still had stuff I wanted to write. But no one would publish me.” Healy would not find another publisher for two decades. “It was like something from one of those oppressive regimes,” he says. “If a writer from someplace else had been put out of print in his own country, they’d have invited him here. But because I’m from here, because I’m working class, they just silenced me. I had no voice.”

So what exactly happened that fateful afternoon? The full answer will be revealed in tomorrow night’s documentary. But sufficed to say, the incident in question seems to have been poorly handled on both sides. Healy was undoubtedly a highly strung character who expressed his frustrations in the bluntest of terms. But having traded so profitably on his notoriety to sell the book, Faber equally could have made greater allowance for his particular circumstances.

The indelible impression that emerges from Paul Duane’s documentary is of a man who overcame staggering odds to achieve what he achieved – and how casually he was destroyed. “They came from their world,” he says now. “I come from mine. They didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand them. But they could have tried.”

Today John Healy lives a quiet life. Having cared for his mother through the last years of her life, he now lives alone. He still plays chess occasionally, but only exhibition matches. He hopes the documentary will revive interest in his work and draw attention to his remaining unpublished works. But he’s not getting carried away.

Looking back on his life, is there anything he’d do differently? There is a sigh. “There is and there isn’t. Would I have preferred an easier life? Obviously. I’d have loved to have grown up in a nice house, with nice family, gotten married and had kids. I’d have liked to have had a normal life. But it didn’t just turn out like that. So I don’t dwell on it now.”

[Photo by great friend Yousef Eldin, whose kindness in putting me up over there I repay with this shabby crop job. Opps.]

I tell him Niall Toibin’s old gag about Carrantuohill being located in a hollow. There is stony silence in the car. Toibin signed his equity card when he was starting out as an actor, Gillen eventually volunteers. There follows another lengthy silence.

How was my hotel, he asks? Fine, I tell him. The room had one of those bath/showers. When he rang this morning, I slipped on a bar of soap and landed on the tiles. He laughs at that. It was incredibly painful, I add. I almost wasn’t able to stand up. He thumps the steering wheel in appreciation. Then he notices the mobile phone in my hand and his mood darkens. Is that thing recording? (It isn’t.)

With two decades of stage experience (including critically acclaimed performances in the West End and on Broadway), as well as a string of high profile TV roles (including Channel 4’s Queer as Folk, HBO’s The Wire and upcoming RTE crime drama Love/Hate), Aidan Gillen is one of Ireland’s most accomplished actors. But the Drumcondra native has never been comfortable in the spotlight.

He is distant. People know who he is, but he is hardly familiar. (“I’m Garbo-esque?” he smirks. But he doesn’t dispute that characterisation.) He has a dry sense of humour, compounded by a tendency to leer when it might be more profitable to smile. The facial hair he is sporting is for a role in the upcoming HBO series Game of Thrones (billed as “The Sopranos in Middle Earth”), currently shooting in Belfast.

His character in the series, Petyr Baelish, is a shadowy, mercurial figure. “So I based this look on Peter Mandelson circa 1984,” he says. His agent has made clear that Gillen will not be answering any questions about his private life. That is an absolute no-go area, I’m told. Now as a rule, I never ask the people I interview about their private lives. (It’s not a principled stand or anything. I just genuinely could not care less.) But this precondition is laid down with such emphasis that it rather piques my curiosity. What is he so sensitive about?

The actor’s home is a modern two-story house with a view of the sea. When he disappears into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, I snoop around. There are some bird skulls by the window. An X-Box on the floor. Some Talking Heads CDs and a Raymond Carver novel on the shelves. I would hazard a guess that he has children. (Well, either that or a bizarre enthusiasm for Tonka trucks.) But if he has a deformed twin brother hiding in the attic, well, it is on its best behaviour today.

We chat while the kettle boils. This portion of the conversation is off the record, so readers will have to live without knowing his thoughts on the retirement of Micheal O’Muircheartaigh and the suspicious longevity of Fungi the Dolphin. Finally, he returns with two mugs of coffee and we settle down to business.

I ask about how he got his start in acting. He followed a friend along to the Dublin Youth Theatre when he was thirteen, he says. His first role was in a production called The Do-It-Yourself Frankenstein Outfit. He was cast as a robot and it ran for a week. One night he didn’t bother to turn up and nobody noticed. “I’m more disciplined than that now,” he deadpans.

He went to school in St. Vincent’s Christian Brother’s School in Glasnevin. But he soon lost interest in his studies. Towards the end of his final year, he was thrown out of class for trouble making. He climbed onto the roof of the school gym. “It was a beautiful afternoon in May,” he recalls. “The sky was blue. That’s when it hit me, and it hit me pretty hard. Those teachers weren’t in charge of me. They didn’t control my life anymore.”

He sat his Leaving Cert in 1985, although by then he was only going through the motions. His views on education have mellowed somewhat in the intervening years. “I’ve got more respect for teachers now,” he says. “It’s one of the more admirable things you can do in life.” He takes a sip from his mug of coffee. “As long as you’re not a fucking sadist.”

We talk for a couple of hours and, for the most part, Gillen seems intent on merely reading his CV into the record. He has been a fulltime actor for a quarter of a century, appearing mostly in theatre, one-off television productions and independent films. His talent has allowed him to pick and choose the roles that most interest and challenge him, and he has not been out of work, other than by his own choosing.

He mentions almost every production he’s been involved with. Each had either an “incredible writer”, a “talented director” or some “excellent actors”. He delivers those plaudits not in the manner of a Hollywood luvvie, but more in the manner of a seasoned professional footballer who simply sees the world in terms of solid centre-halves and reliable keepers.

One could ask such a footballer, yes, but why tog out in shorts and chase an inflated ball around a field in the first place? But the question would not make any sense to him. He’s been doing this since he was a teenager. It’s the only life he knows.

Of his most famous roles he says nothing particularly revealing. He was cast as the ambitious Tommy Carcetti in the third series of The Wire after producer Bob Colesberry caught his performance in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker on Broadway. He’d never seen the show before that. “I watched a couple of episodes after they cast me and you could tell that it was different. You could tell these people were serious about portraying the city they lived in, the city they loved, even if that portrayal was negative.”

His breakthrough role, for television audiences at least, was as the promiscuous man-killer Stuart Jones in Queer as Folk. He was attracted to that part by Russell T. Davis’ scrip. He saw it as a story of empowerment for the fifteen year old character Nathan, who overcomes the bullying he suffers in school through his acceptance by the older, and more decadent, Stuart and Vince. I refer, light-heartedly, to an interview in which he recounted his mother’s reaction to some of the more graphic gay sex scenes. “Are you asking me about my mother?” he snarls. And that’s the end of that.

Pinter once described Gillen as a “dangerous” actor. Does he have any idea why? “No idea,” he says. “We met when I did [the film version of Jez Butterworth’s play] Mojo. We both arrived on set half an hour early. We sat together at a table like this and didn’t speak.” Did he sense that Pinter would be more comfortable with silence? “Nah, he was uncomfortable alright. But I had nothing to say. I hate small talk.”

It’s odd. If you’re familiar with Gillen’s acting, you’ll know that there’s a certain indefinable quality he brings to every role he plays. Whether it’s Stuart Jones, preening on the dancefloor in a gay club, knowing he could have any man in the place; city councilman Tommy Carcetti, with the audacity to dream of being the white major of a black city; or even John Boy, the ruthless crime boss of Love/Hate, he endows each character with a steely self-assurance. But in real life he is conspicuously lacking that confidence.

He is self-conscious. He labours over his answers to even the most throwaway of questions. He starts to say one thing, thinks the better of it and says something else instead. There are innumerable long pauses. I’m reminded at times of Garrison Keillor’s uncle, the one reputed to have “unfinished sentences dating back to the Hoover administration.”

On the surface then, he seems like a cold fish. But judge him by his actions, rather than his manner, and a different picture emerges. He changed the originally scheduled date of our interview because he felt it wouldn’t give me enough time to write up this article. He picked me up from my hotel and bought croissants for us to have with our coffee. Before I leave he will have given me instructions about getting back to Dublin. (I came by way of Mitchelstown, he wisely suggests I return via Limerick.) He even emails a few days later to clarify his response to a question he feels he didn’t answer satisfactorily.

That might not sound like a great deal. But it is a level of consideration for the humble writer uncommon among people of his stature. If he resents having to allow me, a complete stranger, into his home, to listen while I ask dozens of nosy questions, well, I can’t say that I blame him entirely.

I ask about Stuart Carolan’s Love/Hate, since that’s the reason we’re having this conversation. It’s a really excellent four-part drama set in Dublin’s gangland and his first foray into domestic television drama. “Yeah, I’d never worked on television in Ireland before,” he admits. “I wasn’t averse to the idea, it just never happened. But I really felt like it was coming into its own with stuff like Pure Mule and Prosperity.”

It was (again) the script that attracted him to the role. “I knew Stuart’s writing from before. It’s bold, daring. And the subject matter is red hot.” When I query the casting of the angel-faced Robert Sheehan as one of his supposedly hardened gangster acolytes – even when he vows revenge after his brother’s murder, Sheehan’s character is never more than a finger click, or an “Oh baby”, away from being the newest member of JLS – Gillen defends his co-star. “That’s just what he looks like.”

He attributes most of the credit for the lavishness of the production to Donal Gilligan, the Director of Photography, who had an uncanny knack for shooting at speed and on budget. (Three days after our conversation, the 46-year-old cinematographer will die tragically of a heart attack.) I ask Gillen if he will be appearing on The Late, Late Show to promote Love/Hate. He isn’t sure. “I appeared on Ryan Tubridy’s show when The Wire box set was about to come out,” he says. “But I’m not dying to do it again.”

Was he uncomfortable being interviewed on television? “Yeah.” Why? “Because you’re not acting. You have to be yourself. The first few times I did any press, I was intensely uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to act. I’m still not that polished.” For most people, it wouldn’t be an act. You’d just answer the questions they asked you. “Yeah, but it’s talking as yourself.” Most of us never speak as anyone but ourselves. “Yeah, but you don’t live your life sitting in a fucking television studio being asked personal fucking questions.”

“I acknowledge that it [publicity] is essential when you’re playing the lead part in something. But if I had my way, if it was up to me, I’d let someone else do it. It’s like the curtain call in a theatre. My mother always says to me, you looked really miserable up there. You’ve just spent two hours being someone else and then, right at the last moment, someone has literally whipped your fucking clothes off.” He looks out the window and is silent.

See also here.

We’re in the middle of a recession. The music industry has all but collapsed… So how does a rock and roller earn a crust these days?
In Dublin? You don’t. I scrape a living by frequently touring abroad. Germany would be one of my main markets. I have a small label over there that puts out everything I’ve done. If I go away for three weeks, and play my cards right, I might come home with a couple of months wages. That’s standard industrial wages. I also do the odd residency where I play folk music anonymously.

What, like Scarborough Fair?
No, not that kind of folk music. I mean, I play acoustic sets. Mostly covers – I do everything from Phil Spector to Bob Dylan. There might also be occasional “DJ” set [he mimes the quotation marks] here and there, which really involves just putting a CD in the machine and pressing play. Basically, I hustle for a living. The wages are modest, but at least I’m doing what I love to do.Any memorable gigs, good or bad?
We had an amazing time at the Benicassim Festival in Spain last year. While we were setting up the stage it looked like there was nobody out there. But by the time we walked out on stage and the place was completely packed. There were lots of English and Irish people up the front getting into the music, which took us by surprise. .

And bad?
Every other week. (laughs) On our last German tour, the gig I was looking forward to the most took place on an old ship in Bremen, which had been converted into a music venue. We arrived early for the sound-check and spent ages getting things ready. We were all really hyped up about it. But only seven people have paid in. It was pretty dismal. We had a group hug afterwards.

Do these things ever get you down?
They can. In fact, sometimes a gig can be going very well until you catch the eye of someone who you just know isn’t enjoying the show. So you decide that they can see right through you. That you’re codding yourself up there and they know it.

But the person might not be thinking that at all.
Of course, especially on the continent where audiences are just completely inscrutable. A German audience will sit there and stare at you stony faced for the entire gig and then come up afterwards and buy every t-shirt and CD that you have. So it’s hard to know. All you can do is just keep doing your thing. Not everyone will like it. Sometimes you won’t even like it yourself. But you just keep at it. You keep going.

Any dodgy jobs you’d care to tell us about?
Tonnes of them. I’ve worked on building sites, factories, I was a bicycle courier, a lounge boy. My wife likes to make a show of me by getting me to list the weirdest ones I’ve done. When I was a kid I worked in Dunnes Stores in town. There was a strike on and I was supposed to be on strike duty. But I got a little nixer on the side, guarding an inflatable can of 7Up in the car park outside The Square in Tallaght. This thing was a monster, about seventy feet high and there were legions of kids just constantly harrassing me “What is it, mister?” “Can I kick it, mister?” “Can I burn it?”

Which was the most humiliating?
That would probably be the time I worked as a chambermaid, making beds in the halls of residence, at the London School of Economics. The place did have it’s rock and roll credentials though. The lady I worked for told me that Mick Jagger had once studied there.

Doesn’t Bertie Ahern claim to have studied there too?
He does. Can you imagine? Bertie and Jagger out on the razz… (laughs)

If you have kids some day and one of them grows up and wants to become a musician, what would your advice be?
What would my advice be? Well, I’m in my thirties now. So by the time any child of mine grows up, I’ll be in my fifties. What would I have to tell them, really, that would even be relevant then? I’d just tell them to enjoy themselves, no different from what I’d tell them if they wanted to join Young Fianna Fail. I’d tell them it’s their life, to do whatever they wanted to do an enjoy themselves.

Oh, you’re far too liberal… Young Fianna Fail?
Yes, I’m so liberal I’d even allow them to become conservative politicians. (laughs) Or maybe I’d try to organise an intervention first!

The Mighty Stef’s new single Thank Christ For The Kids is available as a free download www.themightystef.com from July 16th. He also plays the Electric Picnic on September 4th.

Spies often tells us that the James Bond image is a myth, that intelligence gathering is a dull, unglamorous business. Your career doesn’t really bear out that theory though, does it?
Well, I always loved what I was doing. It was exciting to work undercover in foreign countries, using disguises and hi-tech gadgets. But I never spent much time at the craps table, let’s put it that way. I never owned too many sequined work dresses!

You joined the CIA straight out of college. What did your friends and family think you did for a living?
My cover varied, depending on what the circumstances called for. I usually posed as a businesswoman or a commercial traveller. I was lucky. When my identity was betrayed, my friends understood my reasons for deceiving them. The only thing they said – to my face at least – was, well, that explains a lot… How does one cope in a job that’s based entirely on deception? Some of us would crack if we were asked to organise a surprise birthday…
There’s an extensive vetting process. Officers will have had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of training before they go out into the field. When I was posing as a Canadian business woman, I was a Canadian businesswoman. I was even able to recall obscure facts about Canadian ice hockey because that was what the cover required.

Can you explain briefly how your cover was eventually blown?
In 2002, the CIA asked my husband Ambassador Joe Wilson to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had purchased 500 tonnes of yellow cake uranium from Africa. My husband went to Niger and reported back that the claims were entirely bogus. A year later, in the run up to war, President Bush repeated this claim that Saddam had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa in his State of the Union address.

When your husband blew the whistle, the Bush Whitehouse retaliated by exposing your role in the CIA.
Yes, there was a sustained character assassination campaign against both of us. Joe was accused of being a traitor and a fantasist. I was accused of being little more than a glorified secretary in the CIA. The central premise for going to war – which was that Saddam posed an imminent nuclear threat – had been undermined and boy was the Bush administration pissed off!

Do you think, if it had been an option in 2003, that your husband might have leaked the information in his possession through Wikileaks and saved you both a lot of hassle?
That’s an interesting question, but I don’t think so. Joe had done nothing wrong. He went to the New York Times because he thought it was his responsibility as a citizen in a democracy.

Dick Cheney’s chief-of-staff Scooter Libby was eventually convicted for his role in the affair but his sentence was commuted. Are you bitter about that?
I try not to be bitter, because it’s a wasted emotion. But I am still angry. We now know that literally in the car ride on the way to Obama’s inauguration, Cheney was still urging Bush to pardon Libby outright, saying that they shouldn’t leave “a soldier on the battlefield.” That makes me sick.

The film Fair Game has been well received by the critics but it wasn’t a huge hit at the box office in America. Is there a sense that people are fed up with the controversies of Bush years now?
What was the top grossing movie of last year? Jackass 3. Well, we weren’t trying to make Jackass 3, put it that way. I think it’s a grown-up film. It’s extremely well made. It features two great actors at the top of their game and I think it’ll stand the test of time.

Last year, Iran’s nuclear facilities were hit by a devastating worm virus widely suspected to be the work of US or Israeli intelligence. Do you still follow these events in the press?
Of course! I read everything I can about it. I’m out of the business now and I no longer have clearance. But that’s exactly the sort of thing you’d hope your side is up to. Because that is really extremely effective, it’s cost efficient and, of course, it non-lethal.

The last eight years of your life have been taken up with the campaign for justice, writing memoirs and now promoting the film. What’s next?
Oh, we’ve already moved on in our lives. Joe and I have moved to Santa Fe. I’m writing a spy thriller and I do public speaking. I’m also an advocate for Global Zero which works towards the elimination of all nuclear weapons – so that’s a continuation of my counter-proliferation work by other means. We’re raising eleven years twins and we’re very involved in our local community. So life is good. As for the political rough and tumble – I’m very glad that’s behind us!

Already I’ve noticed his partiality for the word ‘bullshit’. He delivers it as though tasting a fine wine, rolling the first syllable around his sandpaper gullet before spitting out the second: booull-shi’. Just imagine you’re talking to your mother, I suggest. The singer looks confused. “This is how I talk to me fuckin’ mother!” 1. Live at the Beeb
Presenter Craig Charles bounds out of his chair to welcome the pair. He is a lively interviewer; enthusing about the album, gently ribbing his guests for coming from the posh southside of Dublin and yelling HOLD UP! unexpectedly whenever the mood grabs him. Benjamin manfully attempts to muddy the geo-economic waters, claiming that there are plenty of affluent areas north of the Liffey, but the former Red Dwarf star shoots him down. “Clontarf, Howth and… where else exactly?” He lived in Rathgar for two years.

The only sour note comes when the Scouser compares Republic Of Loose to The Commitments. Mick winces but manages to avoid turning the airwaves blue. “The Commitments are fuckin’ shite” he tells me later. (“They’re not even a band, it’s a fuckin’ film!” Benjamin interjects.) “Just some guy who thinks he’s a blues singer” continues Mick bitterly. “He’s not a fuckin’ blues singer. Its booul-shi’.”

2. Takin’ a piece of the pie
Republic of Loose are five white guys from Dublin who are blatantly infatuated with black music. Gven that practically all popular music is of African-American or Afro-Caribbean origin, this shouldn’t be too controversial a state of affairs. But, for some reason, a lot of people seem to think it is. You see, the music these guys dig is funk, soul, gospel and hip-hop. Their heroes are Sly Stone and Rick James (R.I.P). And their method of paying homage is to these heroes of theirs is NOT by watering down their influences until they end up sounding like fucking David Gray. It’s by by kicking out the jams and going at it full pipe.

“I’m defensive about it because people keep fuckin’ asking me about it,” spits Mick. It seems an unfair thing to be singled out for the accent you sing in, given that every other Irish rock band from U2 to the Thrills does the same. “Exactly! Elvis Costello, Mick Jagger – they all fuckin’ sing in American accents as well. The people who ask me about it are just morons. In future I’m just going to swat them away like flies in the market place because that’s what they fuckin’ are.”

3. Introducing the band, Brixton
Inside the Windmill the support band are already onstage. Outside the headliners sit in their minibus smoking hash. It takes a while to match the names to the faces. Or the facial hair. The earnest, thoughtful fella with the heavy stubble is guitarist Dave Pyro. He looks tired, but remembers being less in demand well enough not to complain about the schedule. “If you think about it from the time when we were Johnny Pyro & The Rock Coma and were considered Doran’s house band, it’s such a massive leap to where we are now.” (The band tell me he once went twelve days on tour without masturbating. I’m not sure I had wanted to know.)

In contrast to Dave, the easygoing Brez Breslin (no facial hair) appears to have nothing more than a mop of long hair weighing on his shoulders. He may grimace in front of the camera a bit, but in person he could pass for Donny Osmond’s baby-faced grandson.

Which makes composing a seamless link from Brez to Coz Noleon (full beard) a little tricky. Coz is a gangsta rap aficionado who prefers to let his drumming and creditable map-reading prowess speak for themselves. But the last time this hombre could have been called baby-faced was when he actually was a baby, if even then. Next up is bass-player Benjamin Loose (‘tash, stubble.) Bouncing around on stage – rocking what one English newpaper memorably described as Mexican council estate chic – he is undeniably a cool motherfucker. He talks the talk, he walks the walk and most importantly he looks the part.

And then there’s Mick. Listening to the album This Is The Tomb of the Juice you might assume that the Republic of Loose frontman was locked when he recorded that spoken word rant. And for all I know, he may have been. But that grizzled, half-cut mumble of his also doubles as his actual normal weekday voice. It is a fine instrument for coaxing reticent hands into the air or relaying the gist of a chinwag he had with Jesus the other night to a roomful of strangers. But over breakfast – as I am to discover – it can take a little getting used to.

Certainly, the band seem terrified of him. My mate spotted you on the Ha’penny Bridge Inn a couple of weeks ago, I tell him. “Oh yeah?” Said you were having a bit of bother putting your jacket on. For once, he doesn’t rise to the bait. “Ha ha, well I’ve always had a little trouble with that technical shit!” he cackles.

4. Bugaloo, Archway Road
The coked-up brother of a middle-of-the-road Irish crooner is at the bar. He’s mouthing like an auctioneer and buying pints for anyone with an Irish accent who ventures within five feet of him. As much as the band have railed against the cliquishness of the Dublin rock scene, but they’ve no problem accepting support from the Irish mafia in London. They’ve been crashing in this famous North London pub for the last two weeks, sharing the place for some of that time with celebrity fan and unofficial Bugaloo resident Shane McGowan. He’s not here right now but there was a message for him on the answering machine from Bono the other night moaning about the theft of some songs from his latest album.

There’s a really shithot jukebox by the window and, when the customers clear out, our hospitable host Gerry O’Boyle throws on a load of free credits. Mick and I are soon roaring along to Iggy Pop’s Turn Blue, while the rest of the band swap festival stories. Such as the one about trying to get some mid-afternoon kip in a tent set up right behind the main stage at Glastonbury. Or the one about the festival in the Basque country where Benjamin inadvertently took to the stage wearing the Spanish colours. (He was politely asked to change a couple of songs in.) Or the one… Well, this one they can explain themselves.

“We did this biker festival and two stippers got onstage!” boasts Brez, wide-eyed. “I was sitting down playing slide guitar and this one had her back against mine and…” Mick interrupts: “This bitch comes over and she’s fully naked right? And she’s like ‘Can I sit down here?’ And she gets down and the other bitch is, like, eating her out. And its right there man! I can see the inside of her and everything. I was playing guitar…” “Not for long you weren’t”, jeers Benjamin. “You were just standing there pointing and smiling”.

“They didn’t want to do it, you know,” Dave Pyro chips in. “I saw them arguing with their manager beforehand. They reckoned they were only hired as topless waitresses. But he made them do it.” “And the fact that they didn’t want to do it definitely made it more of a turn on…” concludes Mick.

Where was this? Germany? Holland?

“Tramore.”

5. Truck Festival, Oxfordshire
The Truck Festival is shit. Its run by an indie label called Truck Records – so it has nothing to do with trucks or truckers. And the five “stages” are packed so closely together that at least two acts drown each other out no matter where you’re standing. Dazed and Confused magazine has said that it’s “shaping up to be one of the more entertaining alternative festivals of the season.” But you can bet your life the nancy boy who wrote that preview never bothered his arse actually coming out here. Because this is a fucking travesty.

The whole event revels in a sort of self-consciously eccentric, ‘More spacecake, Vicar?’ Englishness you either find quaintly charming or blood-boilingly fucking irritating. Practically everyone here seems to be called either Tom or Pippa – and even the dealers are polite. I want to punch just about everyone we meet. Sufficed then to say: come back Ticketmaster, come back corporate sponsorship – all is forgiven!

Aside from a foray out to pay their respects to Damien Dempsey on the main stage (a lorry trailer) the band don’t seem much enamored with the festival either. There are no dressing rooms and no backstage area, so they lounge around in the back of the minibus, sipping some of the 12 or so cans of not-exactly-premium lager they’ve been given by the promoters. (This may actually constitute their pay packet for the afternoon. It seems impolite to ask.) So what would this bunch of reprobates be doing if they weren’t Republic Of Loose?

“Playing with another band,” reckons Dave. “Well, either that or back in college for another eight years.” Wouldn’t he get pissed off being broke all the time? “We’re pissed off being broke all the time now!”

So what do they want out of this? Is it money? Sex? Drugs? “Yes,” Benjamin deadpans. “All of the above.” “It’s great playing to people onstage,” reckons Mick. “It’s great fuckin’ puttin’ your shi’ out there. I suppose its ego driven, all artists are ego driven. I’d like to say I’m not but…” He stops for a second and recalibrates his tone. He doesn’t want to sound like a wanker. “Once you get used to the attention,” he shrugs, “it’s hard to do without it.”

Who’s got the biggest ego in the band?

Dave Pyro gives a wry smile. “Who do you think?”

There’s a nervous silence.

What do they say to those who accuse them of simply cashing in on their looks? The bus explodes with laughter. “I tell them we’re broke,” says Benjamin.

6. On the town, Oxford
The Truck Festival was shit. By the time the band headlined the Trailer Park Tent, the Dublin contingent probably outnumbered the actual punters. The band put in a characteristically wholehearted set anyway and, afterwards, their manager insists on bringing us all for a drink in Oxford. The town is dead this late on a Sunday night but Dermot Doran is undeterred. It’s the end of the tour. They try one place where, after letting the band, the crew and this writer pass without comment – and, believe me, they could definitely have said a thing or two – the bouncers take exception to the tracksuit worn by one of the band’s sisters and refuse her admission.

Dermot swings into action. He’s a reasonable guy and expects the people he comes up against to be reasonable people too. His standard tactic seem to be to (1) find out the first name of the person he’s dealing with, (2) pay that person a compliment of some sort and (3) get down to brass tax. But there’s no budging this fucker. The rest of the group depart, but Dermot stays behind for another fifteen minutes fighting for a cause that has by then pissed off and found a better place twenty yards down the street.

In the Moroccan bar a rather opulent-looking glass bong containing flavoured tobacco is offered around. “There’s no whiskey in this,” spits Mick into his glass. “I ordered a fuckin’ whiskey and coke and there’s no fuckin’ whiskey in it.” The others are too busy jostling for a draw to pay much heed. I suggest to Mick that he complain to the barstaff. He doesn’t like that idea much and, instead, waits helplessly for Dermot to return. “There’s no whiskey in this, Dermo!” They confer briefly and the manager approaches the bar. “Excuse me my friend, what’s your name? Ari? Ali. This is a nice bar you have here Ali, is that mahogany? Listen, this gentleman ordered a whisky and coke…”

By the time that crisis has been resolved, Dermot’s firefighting skills are required elsewhere. A lump of hash has mysteriously found its way into the hukka making its way around the table. The contraption magnifies the smell much more than if the lads had just sparked up a couple of joints. It’s immediately seized by irate staff members and we’re threatened with eviction. “It won’t happen again guys. We’re very grateful for your hospitality… I really like those jackets by the way.”

The night is going pleasantly off the rails. Time to wrap up. If Graham drove the minibus over a cliff tomorrow, I ask them (their horrified reactions suggest this hypothetical scenario might just be a little too close to the bone), what would be the one thing they’re happiest about having done?

“I’m glad we made the album,” says Mick, to general noises of agreement. “I’m glad it’s out there… in the stratosphere.”

“I’m also glad we went to Tramore,” says Brez. And no one disagrees.

More on this article are here.

You’re not a climate change denier, but you believe the effects of climate change have been grossly exaggerated. Is that correct?
Yes, environmentalism has become the dominant ideology of our age. It is an ideology of limits, restraint and caution. Humans are having an impact on our climate, that’s pretty clear. But environmentalism has turned into an extremely illiberal moral crusade. So who is responsible for this distortion?
There’s a real club mentality between climate scientists. They know that if they do their research a certain way, they’ll end up making the front pages and being quoted by Al Gore. Radical environmentalists present themselves as outsiders. But in fact, they’re taken very seriously and have the ear of practically every government in the world.

Surely the major vested interests are on the sceptic side of the debate?
It’s true that Exxon Mobil, for example, funds certain groups that question climate science. But it just doesn’t compare the vast amounts of money being poured into environmentalist campaigns. Climate change sceptics are definitely in a minority.

But what ulterior motive could environmentalists have for pretending things are worse than they are?
Environmentalists always refer to The Science, in capital letters. It’s almost like The Gospel, the truth we all must live by. This is a very moralistic campaign about demonising mankind’s gumption in industrialising the world. It reminds me of the church, a hundred years ago, telling people that it is godly to be poor. They’re rehabilitating the sin of gluttony in language like “sustainable development” and “carbon footprint”.

You don’t believe we should reduce our carbon emissions?
It’s no coincidence that the emphasis on reducing carbon emissions has come at precisely the same time as Western countries are manufacturing less and, therefore, producing less carbon. The flip side of this is that more productive countries, like China and India, are being presented as evil and dirty. But in the past 25 years, Chinese industrialisation has been responsible for 64% of all poverty reduction in the world. I think the focus should be on investment in nuclear technology and geo-engineering. Because wind and wave power are never going to help industrialise Africa, or ensure that everyone in India can take as many cheap flights as we do.

So you have no time for energy saving lightbulbs, weatherising your home, energy audits, recycling, hybrid cars etc.?
(laughs) That stuff is a load of nonsense. It has no impact whatsoever.

Aren’t you a bit like the flatmate who refuses to help clean up since the landlord is a bastard and he’s going to keep the deposit anyway?
No, I don’t think the solution is to do nothing. It’s bizarre though because, on the one hand, environmentalists tell us we face the worst disaster in human history, worse than the Nazis. But then they tell us we can rectify the situation by changing lightbulbs or putting a thermostat in our house. There’s a real disconnect there.

Surely the British people who cooperated with blackouts and dug vegetable patches and so forth contributed, in some small way, to the defeat of fascism?
Well, that’s a very good point. But it’s worth remembering that many of the austerity measures imposed in Britain were very unpopular. Besides, just changing our lightbulbs would never have defeated the Nazis!

I tried to think earlier of any universally accepted precept in history that didn’t later turn out to be flawed. The best I came up with was “Don’t eat the yellow snow…”
(laughs) Exactly, I’m instinctively suspicious of consensus. People say, oh, you’re a contrarian, you’re just trying to wind people up. But I think it’s healthy to suspicious of consensus.

Would it be fair to say that some of your bedfellows, particularly on the other side of the Atlantic, are unashamedly philistines and corporate shills…
Oh absolutely, but I don’t consider those people my bedfellows.

Are you uncomfortable though being on the same side of the debate as the “Drill baby, drill…” lady?
Yes, a lot of the critics of environmentalism are quite crazy. Some of them believe Greenpeace is secretly running the world. They don’t understand that environmentalism has really been embraced by governments as a smokescreen for economic decline.

Are you worried at all that if environmental catastrophe does proceed, your children and grandchildren will call you to account – as Al Gore has suggested?
Environmentalists always claim to speak on behalf unborn generations, which I think is really cynical and undemocratic. If we continue down the road we’re on, where development and progress are portrayed as bad things, I think future generations are more likely to upbraid us for being so meek and cautious, for accepting environmentalist dogma when we could have put the interests of mankind first.

www.spiked-online.com

Beyond sustaining us, and (hopefully) not poisoning us, why does food matter?
I believe that the heart of every house is the kitchen. We all grow up at the kitchen table, with our family and with our friends. And I think that’s where the importance of food is born.

You’re opening two new restaurants in Dublin. Isn’t there a recession on?
I think a recession is the most obvious time to open a restaurant. Look at Ireland last night, look at Ireland today. Weren’t the streets packed last night? Aren’t the streets packed today? Aren’t the restaurants going to be packed tomorrow?

Well, that’s the question.
Look, here’s my logic. Number one: in doom and gloom, you’re creating something that’s exciting and fun. Number two: everything is cheap to do. Number three: you get the lion’s share of publicity, ’cos no one else is doing it. So it’s entirely logical to open a restaurant during a recession.

You occasionally eat in McDonald’s.
Why not? I’m no different to any other man. It’s 7.30am. I’ve just finished deer stalking. What are my options? I love walking into McDonald’s and interacting with the people of Britain. Just because I’m Marco Pierre White doesn’t mean I’m special. [The proprietor of Fitzers asks whether it’s okay to turn on some music. He nods.]

How do people react when they bump into you in McDonald’s?
I don’t pay them any attention. I’m eating my McMuffin.

Gordon Ramsay once falsely accused you of stealing a reservation book. Do you hold any grudges?
Well he’s a fantasist, isn’t he? You can’t believe a word he says. He said he’d played for Rangers. He’d never played for Rangers. But he’s won three Michelin stars. You can’t knock him for that.

As a reality star, does it trouble you that far more people know your bolshy TV persona than have ever tasted your cooking?
I’m not confrontational. I believe people should express themselves. I don’t like cowards. A coward is somebody who dies a thousand deaths because they haven’t got the courage to express what they think. But I don’t swear, I don’t scream, I don’t shout. Did you see Hell’s Kitchen ?

Yes. In one episode, a woman complained that there was a hair in her dinner. You told her to get lost.
Well, you can’t take for granted that it was my hair. She was a journalist. You’re a journalist. We know what journalists are, don’t we? Well, you do anyway. Your job is to fabricate, to exaggerate, but not go over the line to the point where it becomes libellous.

It depends on the journalist. I could as easily say it’s a chef’s job to be arrogant and obstreperous.
Look, you could get a hair in this restaurant this evening. Right or wrong? It happens. But why did that person come up to complain? There’s a camera on them. It’s their ego. Right or wrong? You should be bright enough to realise that she was trying to get a reaction out of me.

In general, though, chefs are allowed much more leeway to be rude than, say, hairdressers or landscape gardeners. Why do you think this is?
Well, I don’t think chefs are rude. Service is service. You have to shout instructions. You have to drive the troops forward. It’s like being a sergeant-major in battle. He has to shout out the orders, right or wrong?

But it’s not a battle, it’s not war.
It is a battle. Feeding 100 people in an hour is a battle, trust me. It’s like a warzone in a kitchen.

Do you think the stakes are as high in a kitchen as they are on a battlefield?
The reality is you have to feed everyone to a standard. If you don’t feed everyone to a standard, they’re going to start complaining. Once they start complaining, they’re not coming back. If that continues to happen, you’re closing down, aren’t you?

[P.S. After the interview finished, some more stuff happened.]

“This one, I’ve seen already” he says, discarding a copy of the February issue. Then his eyes light up. “But this one I haven’t seen.” He flicks through our hot-off-the-presses March issue. He’s probably just been briefed on the magazine by his press people, but it’s still a rather surreal moment. There’s an awkward silence – I’ve been given the signal not to ask any more questions, so the Taoiseach just freestyles for a bit. “The big thing now is to try and keep the economy strong, to keep employment up. It’s by doing that, and delivering for young people, that you hope you do get the knock on. Okay?” Yeah, far out.

—-

Patrick Bartholomew Ahern has been Taoiseach now for ten years. And, with the bookies offering 1/3 on him to lead the next government, he looks likely to remain in office for another four. Ahern has presided over an era of extraordinary change in Ireland. Since 1997, the number of people in work here has risen by an astonishing 54% – from 1.38m to 2.12m. As a result, ours was the first generation since the famine which wasn’t forced to seek employment abroad. Foreign migrants meanwhile, almost unheard of here a decade ago, now make up over 10% of our workforce. And in the North, where the Provisional IRA was still officially at war when Ahern came to power, Sinn Fein will soon share power with Ian Paisley.

How much of the credit Mr Ahern deserves in all of this is a matter for debate. Certainly, the foundations for his major successes were laid by previous governments. External factors too played a large role. But even his harshest critics cannot deny that he has offered a steady hand in government at a time of unprecedented change. Then, in September 2006, came the scandal that almost toppled him. The Taoiseach still insists that he did nothing wrong in accepting a €50,000 “dig out” from wealthy businessmen when he was Minister for Finance in 1994. And the gut feeling of most observers is that Mr Ahern is not personally crooked.

But considering the endemic corruption that has plagued this country for so long (much of it within the Taoiseach’s own party); and considering the widespread cynicism that is turning young people away from politics like never before; shouldn’t even the appearance of impropriety have been enough to prompt his resignation? Every day commuters on the Luas in Dublin pass posters that warn: “Wrong ticket, Wrong zone, Wrong direction, Wrong ID – No Excuses. Pay The Fine.” Is it not strange that we demand higher standards from the users of public transport than we do from the holders of public office?

I decided to ask the man himself.

—-

“I don’t want to get back into the events of last September. But what I will say is that they were definitely not a highlight of the past year for me. One thing that stands out though is the amount of understanding and support I received from people all around the country at that time. People are fundamentally good-natured. They do not take pleasure in other people’s difficulties. Most people like me have at some stage made an error of judgment along the way. It meant a lot to me to know that people were prepared to accept that I am a person of integrity and that I am genuinely trying my very best.”

For the record, I haven’t asked the Taoiseach how he coped with the personal scrutiny he found himself under last year. Nor have I asked him what the reaction since from people around the country has been since then. What I’ve actually asked is what effect (if any) he thinks the payments controversy has had on young people’s attitudes towards politics in this country. If his reply seems evasive then, listen, you don’t know the half of it.

Organising this interview is a torturous process. Our first approach to Mr Ahern’s office is made in October 2006 and there follows a steady stream of phone calls back and forth. When eventually it is confirmed, in early 2007, that it’ll be going ahead, it seems as if the groundwork is finally complete. Far from it. A succession of pre-conditions slowly trickle out. The first is that I will submit all of my questions in writing in advance. Although not ideal, this at least sounds reasonable, since the Taoiseach might wish to be briefed on something that I’m going to raise. So I agree. The questions I submit, however, are not strictly identical to the ones I’ll be asking on the day.

There are two good reasons for this. The first is that a date for the interview hasn’t been set yet, and if my tone is perceived to be antagonistic then the process may well be strung out indefinitely. The other is that I intend to pitch some curveball questions in the interview. I intend to ask, for example, why a recreational drug user should accept his or her portion of the blame for the recent upsurge in gangland violence, when Mr Ahern’s government will accept no portion of the blame for the Iraqi invasion and its bloody aftermath. (The Irish government helped facilitate the invasion and occupation of Iraq by allowing the US military use of Shannon Airport, against the expressed wishes of the Irish people). I’d rather not get a rehearsed answer.

The questions I submit cover much the same territory as the questions I really intend to ask. But they’re watered-down and boring. They’re Lazenby to the real questions’ Connery; Buble to their questions’ Sinatra; squidgy to their Pakistani Super Skunk. Unfortunately, the Taoiseach’s press people don’t just have my number. They’ve got my library card and dental records.

“Politics is lived in the public eye and under public scrutiny. That is how it should be. Being in politics is about doing the people’s business and there must be accountability. I think that transparency and accountability in politics has hugely increased over the past decade. That too is how it should be. Nobody is conscripted into politics and nobody who has a problem accounting for their actions should come into politics. Public life is just that, public.”

The date for our meeting is finally set, but there’s a kicker. The Taoiseach will not be able to schedule as much time with me as had originally been hoped. Consequently, (I’m told) he’ll now be replying in writing to the questions that I’ve submitted. In other words, he’ll be answering the lame, watered-down questions I emailed his office. And it won’t necessarily be him that answers them; it’ll more likely be one of his press officers. He’ll just sign off on them. Not to worry, I’m assured. There’ll still be plenty of time in the shortened interview to pick him up on anything I need clarification on.

Let me give you an idea of how this works out. One of my written questions for the Taoiseach asks, if the US is a friendly nation, and if we believe the assurances they’ve given us about the rendition of terror suspects, why do we think they’d object to us carrying out aircraft inspections in Shannon? The written response:

“Ireland has consistently made clear its complete opposition to the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is illegal under our law. Ireland was one of only two countries in the EU whose Minister for Foreign Affairs agreed to attend a meeting of the European Parliament’s Temporary Committee investigating extraordinary rendition. The Government have a number of serious criticisms of the final report of that Committee, but we welcome the finding, implicit in the Report, that prisoners were not transferred through Irish airports…”

It’s like interviewing the speaking clock!

Even the assurance that I’ll be able quiz the Taoiseach on these answers in person turns out to be false. I don’t receive the transcript until seconds before the interview commences, so there isn’t time to read it. And, when I arrive at St. Luke’s, it’s suddenly not being referred to as an interview anymore. They’re calling it a conversation. I’m not quite sure what the distinction is. But whenever the Taoiseach’s press guy doesn’t like one of my questions, he pulls me aside and reminds me that its just a conversation. “It’s a getting-to-know-you session” he says. “If this goes well we can do something else down the line.” Don’t hold your breath, mate.

—-

“Howye lads? Howye keepin’?” The Taoiseach, in person, is exactly as you’d imagine. Albeit, he’s wearing rather a lot of make-up for the leader of a centre-right political party. He’s affable and asks lots of questions about the magazine. He’s also extremely compliant when it comes to posing for photographs. (“We shoulda asked him to stand on his head” I whisper on the way out.) After a bit of GAA-related banter, I go for the scoop. When are the elections going to be? “A few more months now. We’ve a very busy period up till Easter with the North. So we won’t really get into election mode until after Easter.” I mention that I haven’t decided who to vote for yet. What does he advise?

“There are two big issues for us with young people. The first would be education. We put an enormous commitment into education.” He talks about the Science & Technology Innovation Plan which he says is all about creating new opportunities for young people. Then he talks about jobs. “We have created 700,000 jobs in our period in government. The thing now is to sustain what we’ve achieved and to develop it further.” I try to draw him on the subject of apathy among younger voters but he repeats the same answer, this time with references to sports facilities and Ogra Fianna Fail thrown in for good measure.

After further interventions from his PR, I’m reduced to asking which, of all the dozens upon dozen of world leaders he’s pictured with here, was his favourite. I’ll be asking what his favourite colour is next. “Clinton” he shoots back immediately. “Clinton was definitely my favourite by a long shot. Tony Blair is a good friend. I’ve worked with him a lot. But Clinton is just so charismatic, a great guy to be with. He still keeps in touch with me.” And what of the current American president? “Well, I wouldn’t have had anything like the same involvement with him. And obviously some of his policies would not be ones that we’d support. But, as a person, he’s a very nice guy.” Bush’s photo includes an inscription from the president thanking the Taoiseach for all his support. In my best Louis Theroux, I ask Mr Ahern what he thinks that refers to. “No, I think that’s just… He’s thanking me for… Usually they just send you a photograph after Paddy’s Day, when we do the shamrocks thing.”

He’s thanking you for the shamrocks? “Okay lads, thanks for coming”. Mr Ahern stands up and brings what has been a profoundly unsatisfactory encounter to an abrupt end. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not deluded enough to believe that the he really owed us anything. Mongrel’s readership doesn’t wield that much electoral clout that he’s obliged to placate us. But looking up at the photographs of all the powerful leaders he’s gone one-on-one with down the years, and then down at the embarrassingly prominent hole in my runners, I can’t help wondering what he had to be afraid of.

Everyone remembers the ‘Karl Spain Wants a Woman’ programme. Would it be fair to describe you as Ireland’s answer to Flavor Flav?
No, I’m Ireland’s guy that everyone shouts “Hey, did you find yourself a woman yet?” at on the street. I actually met my girlfriend Rachel through that show and we’re still together after three and a half years. We were having dinner the other night and it came on Sky News that Katie Price and Peter Andre had broken up after three and a half years. So we were laughing – we’ve outlasted Peter and Jordan! What were the odds?

That’s amazing, so you did a show called ‘Karl Spain Wants a Woman’ and you actually got a woman out of it? Why didn’t you do a follow-up, like, ‘Karl Spain Wants a Bungalow and a Flat-Screen TV’?
Well, it’s funny you should mention bungalows, because there was some talk of doing a series in which I would try and buy a house. But nothing came of it. I still joke with Rachel that she cost me a second series of Karl Spain Wants a Woman .

You’re doing the Carlsberg Cat Laughs Festival later this month.
That’s right. I’ve been doing it since 2002 and I’m really looking forward to it. I tend to go down for the opening Thursday night, even when I’m not playing, because I’ll have been waiting 51 weeks for it to come around. All the comedians love Kilkenny. They all want to do it. I’ll be playing one of the comedy clubs in England and the other comics will be asking me to put in a good word with the artistic director, Eddie .

You’ve gotten a lot of mileage over the years talking about, shall we say, your girth. Even the press clipping on your website seem to be having a go. See him now before he gets too big!
That wasn’t about my size. I don’t think so anyway. That was genuinely a rave review. It was my first ever Edinburgh write-up, I think, and I got four stars.

What about the Metro: “Karl Spain had the audience in the palm of his hand . . .” That’s gratuitous. I mean, no one’s that big.
That was actually a bad review. The guy actually wrote, “Well, he had the audience in the palm of his hand, but I just didn’t like him.” I took that line out of context to make it appear good. I try to find positives where I can.

Tell us about your work on the Eircom Soccer Republic website.
It’s great. I get to travel with the squad, interview Mr Trapattoni before and after each game, talk to the players and the fans and do different video reports. We do an awful lot of content. There’s just Jim the director, John the cameraman and myself. The three of us are almost like a married couple . . .

That would make you Ireland’s answer to Jacob Zuma, I think…
Yeah, that didn’t quite come out quite the way I intended. The site is a labour of love, but we really enjoy doing it. It got a big launch before the Bulgaria game and it’s proving very popular with the fans.

What’s Trapattoni like in person?
Incredible. The first time I met him was in Norway for the friendly. I wasn’t as star struck as I expected to be. I mean, this is someone whose career I would have followed since I was eight or nine, when Liam Brady went to Juventus. But he’s a very impressive guy. The kind of guy who’d inspire you to go out and just run through brick walls for him.

The fact that you speak to Trapattoni through an interpreter must limit the potential for comedy.
That’s true, but the comedy is elsewhere. I’ve had great crack with the players. Trapattoni does have a sense of humour. We have had funny moments with him, but they’ve been mostly off camera.

Do you secretly hope some day he’ll say ‘Listen Karl, Kilbane’s cruciate is after snapping. We need to fill in on the left’?
Funnily enough, that is actually a bit of a running joke between us, because one day I had to tog out in an Ireland kit for a video we were doing. I asked Trapattoni if he’d consider giving me a run out with the team. He said, yes, but maybe on the bench. Actually, he compared me to Richard Dunne, but I don’t think he was referring to my defending abilities.

Growing up, your father was in M*A*S*H but your first name rhymed with dufus. Which had the more impact on the school yard?
Oh ‘dufus’ by far! I grew up in French Canada where they didn’t even know what M*A*S*H was – they probably thought it was a show about potatoes. But being Rufus and not having that name be the name of some saint – there was no Saint Rufus – that was far more affecting.

You were in a Catholic school?
Yeah it was a very Catholic school and a very Catholic province – you can probably sympathise – and… that’s where the drug use started! [laughs]

What made you finally go into into rehab?
Oh, I really crashed. I used to do crystal meth once in a while but every time I did it I’d do it for like four or five days. And the last time I did it I sort of coupled that with a lot of ecstasy and a lot of Special K and a lot of cocaine and by the end of it I went blind for about an hour and I just had this moment where my mind… I wasn’t sure if I was gonna come back. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna regain my sanity and that’s a really frightening place to be.

You’re very frank about your personal life. Is that easy for you?
Well I’m just a terrible liar and I feel that I deserve to bask in this – let’s hope not too brief – period of acceptance towards being gay in show business. I mean, 20 years ago I would have been sweating bullets most of the time [that he would be outed] and now I don’t have to be that way.

We’ll talk about the gay thing in a minute but, you know, you spoke just there about rehab. Does being so honest and open about stuff come naturally to you?
Am, I-I find it more interesting to talk about that kind of stuff than… I don’t know. What else would one talk about? [gestures, we’re sitting outdoors] Grass? As in green grass! I dunno, I just enjoy stimulating conversation.

Your family life is fairly public too.
Well as I said, being from French Canada I was never aware of the extent that my parents were famous. [His parents are the songwriter and actor Louden Wainwright and the folk-singer Katie McGarrigle]. Maybe that’s the reason why I sort of over-compensate at times talking about my family or my friends or fame because we were not very well known at all as kids. The truth of the matter is that as well as being a performer I kinda have the soul of an agent and I’m not too confident in the state of society these days. We need material in case, you know, the walls come crashing down and we gotta go sing on the beach. Hahahahahaha.

You mentioned opening for Sting within seconds of our meeting today. Are you a bit of a name-dropper?
Hahahaha. [blithely ignores the question] One story of mine is that literally every time I’ve met Britney Spears and we’ve been introduced to each other nothing comes out of our mouths. We’re like totally living in these separate universes. We have nothing to say to each other. I also had a funny experience with Celine Dion. I met her when we were doing a TV show and I was wearing this green shirt and the only thing she said to me was “That shirt looks yellow on TV” and then ran away. You know like that’s how her mind works, like, to immediately see how things will look on television.

Everyone immediately spots the bit you stole from Ravel on Oh What A World [from Want One]. Are there any other blatant nicks?
Well there’s certainly a lot of influence from French music in general and a lot of Ravel type chords, especially in Dinner At Eight there’s that [hums] sa na na-na chord change in there. But no blatant nicks. There was this song, Greek Song, on my last record where I sort of lifted a melody from an opera but no, I’m a great composer myself.

Tell us about the song Gay Messiah.
Well it was originally written as a joke because I was so sick of hearing about Muslim fundamentalists or the Christian right-wing. Some of their arguments might be interesting and profound even, but as a gay person I don’t really figure in their world at all. There’s no gay chapter to the Koran or the Bible or the Torah. So I figured I’d help them out, write a little addendum or appendage or whatever and call it The Gay Messiah. Because we’ve been around for just as long – it’s about time that we were at least dealt with, whether its throwing us into hell or bringing us into heaven.

When did you come out, who did you come out to and what did you say?
I came out to myself when I was 14 and subsequently had to crawl back into the closet for a bit with my family and friends cos it was a little odd. I was a very young 14 year old, I looked very young.

Did you talk to anyone about it then?
No, there was no one I really talked to but I would go to bars and stuff. It was a weird summer. I waited until I was of age legally and sort of announced it to my family.

All at once?
[sadly] No, no I just… Each member… Let’s just say it wasn’t easy for anyone. I feel very much that I had to figure out that whole section of my life on my own. And I think that it’s very common. I don’t think that it’s very easy for any parent to realise that their kid is gay, no matter how liberal or cool or educated they are. It was a frightening prospect in the Eighties, cos AIDS was so prevalent. and it still is of course. Nowadays though you have stuff like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.

Actually I saw an article in an American magazine that said “Sorry ladies but Rufus’ sexuality is strictly of the Queer Eye For The Straight Guy variety.” It’s almost like ‘Homosexuality – as seen on TV!’
[laughs] Yeah it’s probably a good thing that mainstream America is becoming more acquainted with homosexuality as a non-threatening force. In terms of the gay community itself though, I have a lot of issues with it because historically the gay world was a bastion of… Well on one hand, yes, there were no rights, and for the common gay person it was a nightmare, I don’t want to romanticise that. But on the other hand it was a bastion of creativity and of intellectual prowess. There’s no denying the fact that Western culture owes a large part of its existence to gay people. And it was that non-acceptance in mainstream society that gave them that sharp edge. I want to inherit that myself and not two kids in the suburbs.

Does that contradict what you’re saying about making homosexuality visible and accepted in The Gay Messiah?
Perhaps. But there’s no alternative in America right now, there’s no other conversations going on. I mean we gotta start talking about the fucking environment, about the war, we gotta talk about the rising gap between rich and poor.

Right now?
Well, no. Not necessarily right this second! [laughs]

In photographs and in your songs you seem like a fairly serious guy. Whereas onstage, especially with your family, you come across as an impudent upstart almost. Do you find yourself reverting to prescribed roles in family situations?
No I’m usually that way. Because the songs are very long and tragic, I feel it necessary to pepper my performances with a kind of uplifting non-serious atmosphere. It’s a device. And if I’m going to have people sit there for two and a half hours I want them to get their money’s worth and people like to laugh.

What’s Leonard Cohen like?
He’s… [pause] He’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz in a lot of ways. On the one hand, he kind of presents himself as this mystical, larger-than-life character – which he certainly is in his material. But once you sort of sweep away the surface he’s actually a very kind of sensitive frightened little boy. He’s very shy and he has to kind of do a lot of work spiritually to keep it together.

He has his lighter moments though surely.
Oh yeah. He can be funny. But I don’t know him that well. I’ve met him many times and I’ve hung out with him but he’s a hard guy to… I think he likes women a lot.

[impolite guffaw] You think?
No I mean a lot of women know him a lot better than I do. He opens up to them more.

Were you worried about how the line “I realized that everything really does happen in Manhattan” would be received given that the song 11.11 is about September 11th?
It was just really necessary for me to just kind of acknowledge that event without taking advantage of it. No one could pull that off unless you’re going to write a mass or an opera or you’re Woody Guthrie or something.

Last night in Vicar Street you dedicated Pretty Things to Michael Jackson.
That was another moment of levity. The chorus ‘So what if I like pretty things?’ could be taken in so many different ways; whether you’re Jackie Kennedy, whether you’re Michael Jackson or whether you’re me talking about handsome university students… [The singer, it transpires, is batting his eyelids at me here – a cloying tactic that might have been more successful if he’d taken his sunglasses off first.]

….…?
I’m sorry my brain is starting to fry in this sun.

Do you want to be famous?
Yeah of course. I want to be as big as they get, right up there with the greatest legends of showbiz. The Judys, the Sinatras, the Oliviers, the Burtons, the Clark Gables. I wanna be a bona fide classic celebrity.

What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told in an interview?
I think I told one article that before I went to rehab I’d lost forty pounds. I think I’d lost about six! Hahahahaha.

And what’s the stupidest question you’ve ever been asked in an interview?
Stupidest question I’ve ever been asked? I’ve definitely erased it out of my mind.

‘Do you want to be famous?’ maybe?
Yeah. Hahahaha.

[One of the more impressive people I've ever met. We met on a very sunny day in a garden somewhere on the southside of Dublin. I've forgotten where now. He professed to be clean at the time, but I doubt he was. Nonetheless, he gave thoughtful answers to even of my most idiotic questions. For the record, this is my favourite thing he ever did. Also, he laughs exactly like Fran Drescher in the The Nanny.]