"Listen Paul, don't know when you're on at the Forum, haven't had a chance to listen to your new album (because it didn't arrive in the post) and haven't even had the time to go on the net to find out what you've been at this last few months."


Not exactly the best preparation for an interview with Paul Brady, known to be rather prickly on occasion. But 3pm has arrived so . .

As it turns out, the call to his studio in Dublin, where he does much of his media work, finds the Strabane man the very font of geniality. Forum date is on 3rd April, hasn't been there for a few years, will have his band with him, will do a mix from the new album and older stuff.

In fact, this legend of Irish music is in great conversational form and good fun. Even tells a joke about the Derry man who went to Strabane (although in Derry it's probably about the Strabane man who went to Derry).

Perhaps it's all down to this new album, 'Hooba Dooba'. The 'Urban Dictionary' online gives a definition - "Something really good. A hot chick walks by, you say 'hooba dooba'. When you eat something really tasty, you might say 'hooba dooba' to describe the goodness." That appears to be where Paul's at with this album and, at 62, with this stage of his life.

"I'm loving it, really enjoying it, I feel liberated. In a sense I don't care what happens to the record. I don't go out with any high expectations. I wouldn't have said this even a year ago. I'm really very happy with this recording and I think if I was knocked down on the road I wouldn't be at all ashamed at bowing out with this one. I'm getting more and more content with that I've achieved in my life, less driven, less pushy in terms of achieving more."

Strange times. What became of the Angry Young Man?

It probably helps that he's achieved so much. It seems like he had seven albums done with the Johnstons while still in nappies (well, at least by the mid-seventies). Then came Planxty, then the classic pairing with Andy Irvine, the solo traditional album 'Welcome Here Kind Stranger', the Dylanesque move to the rock world with another classic 'Hard Station'. All done and dusted by 1981. And so much that's happened since then - more albums, songs covered by everyone from Tina Turner to Cliff Richard, that remarkable run of gigs at Vicar Street, the RTE television series . .

That's without mentioning his work as a trad guitar backer way back then - the groundbreaking album with fiddler Tommy Peoples in 1976, and other recordings with the likes of Matt Molloy, Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds.

Okay, perhaps the really big breakthrough didn't happen for him in terms of the mainstream in the US or even in the UK, but it's been quite the music career. In terms of Irish music, his legacy is assured.

Hardly much wonder, then, that we like to claim him as a talented son of the North-West. He's a Strabane man, after all, and he was a boarder at St Columb's in Derry. But wait. Some Strabane people might tell you Paul Brady's not inclined to wax lyrical about the town. No better time to ask him .