Gilbert's back again, naturally

I AM never too sure who is cool and who is not, but friends and acquaintances I met last week were at one: Gilbert O'Sullivan is very cool. You cannot mention his name without people breaking into song. He is one of that small band of people who had No 1 hits both sides of the Atlantic - hits that people still remember the words to. My taxi man is fatalistic. "It will take me days to stop humming Matrimony now."

One woman tells me that the absolutely-without-question highest moment of her and her sister's teenage lives was opening a Christmas envelope to discover two tickets to a Gilbert concert.

Gilbert is a bit jaundiced with being 'huge' in Ireland.

"Ask her when she last bought one of my records. Probably 30 years ago," he says, laughing without a trace of bitterness. "I'm getting very defensive about the Irish connection. I've never gone platinum in Ireland, where people have so much affection for me. I sell more records in Mozambique than I do in Ireland!"

Gilbert is a working songwriter/musician who believes in doing it from nine to five, has had success, and is still hungry. "I have a naivety in me that I will write a song and something will happen again. Obviously I don't make records for them not to sell, but I am not too despondent if they don't, because I had to artistically and creatively get it out."

He is in Ireland to talk about his new 'best of' compilation, The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan, and takes the opportunity to point out that he is still very much here. His last album, Piano Foreplay, is worth picking up at the same time, and the €50 shopper has enough left over for the papers and a latte.

His hotel suite is like an office, with piles of correspondence and lyrics in progress on the desk. He is wearing a denim shirt with a double-button-down collar which is unquestionably cool. He and his brother Kevin, who manages him, are keen for Irish news. How is Gay Byrne? Is he still doing Millionaire? They wonder does he miss the Late Late. How is Pat Kenny doing? And is the footballer still on the other channel?

The family left Waterford when Gilbert was seven. His father, a butcher, moved to Swindon and most of the family of four boys and two girls are still there. Gilbert and his Norwegian wife Ase lived in Bunclody for four years in the early Eighties when he was embroiled in litigation against his record company and manager.

"When you are going to court you have to take the view that even if you have a good case you can lose, so to protect my family I moved to Ireland, where it would not be so bad financially if I lost. I didn't lose, but Ase was finding Bunclody too remote and was quite lonely. I liked it there. It is a nice community. I worked nine to five in the basement. We had sheep. I would go for walks with the kids. It was fantastic. A great place to raise kids, particularly Helen Marie, who was older. Tara was born two years into us living there. My mother moved back and lived down the road. But we were getting close to beginning school, and Jersey is very good for children. It has a small population, 80,000, and Ase made friends very quickly."

They are well settled in Jersey, where he lives a very private life. He thinks most writers are "hermit-like" anyway.

"I don't do any interviews on Jersey radio, because I feel I just like, for the neighbours, to be the person next door. People know who I am but I'm not seen having my picture taken going into nightclubs so I can blend into the background." Helen Marie now works for a record company and is "big into Oasis". Tara is in first year in university and "into all the contemporary bands".

Despite the legal wrangles he is eternally grateful to his first manager, Gordon Mills, who also managed Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck at the time. Because Mills was already hugely successful, he allowed Gilbert the time to write, where other managers would have sent him around the world to capitalise on the success of Nothing Rhymed. And that led to wonderful lines, some with an Irish flavour such as the charming "take off your shoes, the both of youse" in We Will. There is a slightly eccentric air about the man so determined to be normal and fit into the background.

"In the house if a record of mine came on I'd be running around turning the radio off. I just like to feel normal. My children learned more about what their father does from their cousins than they did from me." Yet he has enjoyed his success and is proud of his back catalogue.

So with the greatest hits out and a three-box set released in the USA, has he any plans to perform here in the near future? Well maybe, but the conditions have to be right.

"Look at McCartney. For years he said he would never do the old stuff, and now he's like a Beatles tribute band. He has these young American musicians behind him who are Beatles fanatics. It's like Brian Wilson doing Smiley Smile. He has these young musicians that just adore the Beach Boys. I think I am a contemporary writer. I don't just want to do a concert because of the memories."

He has a big gig coming up in London next month, and somehow I suspect you can keep an eye for him over here too. There will be new songs, but there will also be Clair, Get Down, No Matter How I Try and lots of others that you are probably already humming.

'The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan' is out now.

John Masterson