McCabe makes a brief appearance in the film of his novel Breakfast on Pluto, which opens this week, bringing his film appearances to four. He loves singing. He's realistic about the publicity machine used to promote his books and is an excellent reader of his own work. One observer . . . not at all a friend of McCabe's . . . said "he is the best reader I've ever heard of anything."

At his 50th birthday party in Strandhill, Co Sligo, his wife, Margot, gave him a Dalek, and the party was filled with musicians, including Shane McGowan. Music is a McCabe constant . . . like the small town.

His father was a musician.

"He was a quantity surveyor, a stone cutter and then a mental nurse, " remembers the son. "But he was a musician and a songwriter. He always had that bohemian streak in him that was never quite realised. Tin Pan Alley, that's where his heart was. That generation, they were the ones who took the hit for us. The Butcher Boy is an acknowledgement of that."

McCabe denies that there is a bit of the performer in him.

"No, no, I'm very solitary. Not a performer at all. I wouldn't have the discipline for that.

Any discipline I have would have been developed for solitary pursuits."

Most writers would eschew performing in public though.

"Ha!" says McCabe. "I could name a few boys who don't eschew it."

His agent, Marianne Gunn O'Connor, also from Clones, says: "I know what you mean.

He is solitary when he's writing but when he makes an appearance he's very, very social. A lot of artists throw around their own stuff. But I've never seen him do that and I've worked with him for eight years. He's very generous, very gracious."

"I'm not a pushover, " says McCabe. "When you've been unknown, it's just very easy to go back to that. It's your duty to what you're doing to protect it."

Six months ago, after living in London, Dublin and Sligo, he moved back to Clones, which is his heartland in every sense. "I live pretty much next door to where I grew up, " he says. "The community I grew up with doesn't exist anymore." Margot is from Longford town. " We're small town Paddy and Biddy really, " he says.

He does not drive and travels by bus. "You get to meet brilliant new dudes. Russian women, African women." The bus service, he says, is excellent. He has no complaints:

"What's all this f***ing complaining business? Tell them all to shut up. They're lucky to have a bus service."

Pat McCabe has made his own world, and stuck to it. In a way, McCabe is almost a brand name. When you buy a book by him, you know that you will enter McCabeworld. He doesn't object to this at all.

"I think maybe for every writer, there should be that, " he says. "Of course, the small town is everything. A way of tracking the development of your country in a non-journalistic way."

McCabeworld first brushed with this world through The Butcher Boy, published in 1992.

It was McCabe's third novel, and his masterpiece. The clarity of it, and the tragedy of it, meant that it could be transmuted into not only Neil Jordan's fine film, released in 1997, but also into an excellent play, Frank Pig Says Hello. McCabeworld is full of violence and music and westerns. It has a language peculiarly suited to describing Ireland. McCabe once remarked of Irish radio phone-in programmes: "everybody wants to be sheriff."

He reads gothic fiction now, but that's new. Mostly he reads biography and non-fiction. He doesn't understand "this book club thing. It's almost like reading for self-help, self improvement. In our day, you read for discovery, now they want to suburbanise it. A lot of houses now don't have books, and not because they can't afford them.

They talk about them as being untidy."

As a child he loved stationery. "I'm like autistic about it. When I was young I stole notebooks, " he says. "I had an office in the woods." He's tough and he admires toughness.

"Young Cecelia Ahern [also represented by Marianne Gunn O'Connor], she writes through the night. She's a very disciplined young girl and that doesn't come from nowhere."

He's had his failures and his struggles. "The Butcher Boy went through 120 US publishers before it was found by a small publisher who knew how to promote it. That was Ken Jordan, whose father used to run Grove Press, publisher of Samuel Beckett. If it hadn't have been for Grove Press, maybe you wouldn't have heard of Samuel Beckett.

There is an intersection between commerce and art.

I'm not foolish. When I write a book, I want someone to read it. When I sent my new book to my American publisher, she didn't understand it. I said, 'Right. Goodbye'."

He has had three UK publishers: Picador, Faber and now Bloomsbury, where he has signed what even Marianne Gunn O'Connor describes as a good two-book deal. He produces a book once every three years. "That just seems to be the natural gestation period."

He writes about six hours a day. "I read, then I float about a bit. I don't understand these guys who say, 'oh no, I've got to do 2,000 words a day'. I write long hand. Christ, I've about two-dozen computers but I don't use them until the end. I don't know what I'm writing. I just write and wonder what happens. With novels it's usually routine until the end. When you've tamed the mustang, then you write through the night. When you've kids, you write through the night. I used to write in their bedroom."

His daughters, Ellen and Katie, are now grown. "Neither of them is a writer. That shows you've done your job properly." Ellen is studying architecture at Queen's and Katie is studying occupational therapy at Trinity College.

He's looking forward to the premiere of Breakfast On Pluto, next Wednesday. "It should be good fun, " he says. "The movie isn't dark [like the book]. Neil Jordan sort of washed its colourf He improved it."

Neil Jordan was unavailable for comment, reportedly on holiday.

McCabe's new book, Winterwood, will be published by Bloomsbury in September.

Like so many of the significant people in his life now, his editor there is female, Rosemary Davidson . . . "she doesn't drive either". As to the future, he says, "When you get to this age you just hope you don't wake up and find the ticker is gone. All the cliches survive because they're true: As long as you have your health."

Patrick McCabe Born: 27 March, 1955, Co Monaghan.

Born: Writer Lives: Clones, Co Monaghan.

Married to: Margot. Two daughters, Ellen (20) and Katie (19) In the news: because the "lm of his novel 'Breakfast on Pluto' is released next Friday