MORRISSEY has provided a soundtrack to my life since I discovered The Smiths almost 25 years ago. He's an English man, born of Irish parents and his heritage has clearly influenced his music over the years, and perhaps more so in recent times with songs like 'Irish Blood, English Heart'.

I first came across him years ago when I was working in London and friends of mine were trying to turn me onto his music but I was oblivious to its attraction.

It was the '80s, and I had the shoulder pads, a dreadful lime-green jacket and used to listen to Rick Astley and Wham!

Morrissey didn't appeal to me because I was looking for bright colours, happy sounds and the jolly side of life.

I was living in a miserable bedsit in London and the last thing I needed to be doing was listening to a fella who'd make me want to stick my head in the oven. I wanted to experience the bubbly side of life, rather than the grim side, and it was only with maturity that his music began to appeal to me.

Morrissey was born Steven Patrick Morrissey in Manchester in 1959, and he has had a very varied musical career. He's certainly very different, and is definitely a flawed character in my opinion. He has a remarkable stage presence but there's something a bit disturbing about his concerts.

They're full of men of a certain age, with potbellies, who have been fans since the 1980s. I'm of a certain age and I have a potbelly, but I find it a bit weird because it's almost like a secret club or cult that you're part of, and the devotion at his concerts in unreal. I really don't know why so many heterosexual men have such a devotion to an ambiguous character like Morrissey . . . it goes beyond explanation really, other than that his music strikes a chord.

Life isn't always happy and poppy, and I think the melancholy appeals to many people, even though others say they want to throw themselves under a bus after listening to him.

People might wonder why I've chosen to talk about such an unfriendly, unapproachable character, but it's all about the music for me. I've spent many nights listening to his albums with an open bottle of wine beside me, and not many other artists do that for me.

Music should elevate you as well, and he's written a couple of my favourite love songs and I actually find a lot of his music uplifting.

I'm not nerdy about him. I'm not sure if Morrissey is a kind person and he almost has this disdainful attitude towards his fans. I went to see him in Killarney last year and he said the room was full of fatties with beer bellies. "Don't blame me, " he said, "because I'm just pointing out what I see." I was trying to hide myself!

He's so dismissive, and it's done in a way that the fans almost crave his attention at concerts, but he doesn't give a shit about them.

It's like being after this really goodlooking girl who doesn't care about you, and it's kind of embarrassing really. He has this magnetism and charisma though, and he throws his sweaty shirts out into the crowd during a concert, and you should see grown heterosexual men scrambling to get them . . . you'd think Kylie had thrown her knickers into the crowd!

It was the album You Are the Quarry that propelled him to another generation of fans and made him, to my mind, huge where he wasn't huge before.

We play our own music in the kitchens and you can be opening yourself up for ridicule because if you put on a selection that nobody likes, the others are quick to let you have it. This has happened to me on a couple of occasions when I put on people like Lloyd Cole, and they were still taking the piss out of me in the kitchen six months later.

So I played You Are the Quarry gingerly, thinking I'd be dismissed as an old fogey. It was remarkable though because it became the soundtrack to that particular summer, which was a very happy one in work, and several people became devotees of Morrissey as a result.

Morrissey is a bit of a transient character in terms of where he lives, and he's also sexually ambivalent. Nobody really knows if he gets up to anything, or who he gets up to it with, but he doesn't particularly care what people think, and he's right not to care.

He and I have very little in common really, because he's a vegan and advocate for animal rights and I'm a confirmed meat-eater and work with meat the whole time.

What I admire about him is that he's very outspoken, even when it would really be easier for him to go about his business without drawing attention to himself. He's made comments that were considered to be racist, had numerous battles with the record industry, and has been interviewed by the FBI and British Intelligence over comments he made about George Bush and Tony Blair.

He has come out in support of the radical methods of animal rights protesting, and while his views have caused uproar in certain circles, I think that you would have to admire him for the strength of his convictions, whether you agree with him or not. I think it's this determination that makes him special in the eyes of his supporters.

Paul Flynn is owner of the Tannery restaurant in Dungarvan, and co-owner with Louis Murray of the newly opened Balzac Restaurant, 35 Dawson Street, Dublin