HOORAY HENRY

IF Classic FM presenter Henry Kelly were to catch a brown trout, it would certainly be at least 20 feet long and would probably be smoking a pipe. That same trout would, most likely, also happen to be a discerning member of a golf club and it may well take the Spectator.

Exaggeration is Kelly's medium and he loves it. The wilder the better. He belongs to that band of successful Irish broadcasters in Britain who appear to be extremely popular in England yet are not overly celebrated at home.

With Kelly, though, who arrives in Dublin today to record the National Symphony Orchestra's performance for broadcast on Classic FM tomorrow, his success is more complicated because it comes packaged with the ghost of his former journalist self. And no one labours harder to ensure the legend of that career remains alive than Kelly himself. His conversation is anecdotal, complete with elaborate gestures - a mime artist who talks and talks and, well, talks.

Too sharp and laddish to be overtly charming, he looks a bit like Fred Astaire and enjoys playing the fool, assisted by his mastery of pub humour and the smart alec quip. But make no mistake this extremely thin, relentlessly smiling individual does want his listener to be sufficiently aware of his credentials.

"I was a great journalist, a great loss to The Irish Times and you can print that," he says, and remains convinced that he should have been editor, adding: "Any journalist who does not want to be editor of a newspaper shouldn't bother being in the game at all." A failure to fall about laughing at his gags elicits an accusation of not understanding irony. Kelly is used to applause, canned or otherwise - television audiences appear to love clapping and he likes approval.

Although claiming - more than once - to be "unoffendable", it is clear that he is serious and sensitive, possibly even preoccupied by the fact that his journalistic career begun with dash and confidence in 1968 - ended too soon for him, if by his own decision.

Resentful of the often asked question "why did you decide to move on from serious journalism to being a personality?", he quickly snaps: "Are you a serious journalist?" Any journalist, serious or otherwise, would have to be interested in Kelly's reasons for, his multiple career switches.

HE was one of the first to report from Northern Ireland, along with colleagues such as Fergus Pyle, Jack Fagan, Michael Finlan, Dick Walsh, Vincent Browne and Kevin Myers. "I was privileged enough to be one of that small group who knew the North was a serious story long before it became fashionable. It was a very exciting time. I loved it," pause, "I absolutely loved it." He mentions How Stormont Fell a book he wrote the Northern Editor of this newspaper. It was published in 1972. At times it seems as if his journalistic adventures spanning the late 1960s and into the 1970s were the best years for him. Perhaps journalism does have its own lost generation? Yet Kelly's jauntiness is more geared to evoking a Damon Runyon newsroom than a melancholic return to the past.

Interviewing him is difficult because he tends to respond to questions with lengthy anecdotes and does assume momentary gravitas as he reprimands each interruption: "Mind your manners, Sunshine," he cautions and another question falters into a gap which is quickly and fulsomely filled by a high speed anecdote from Kelly's inexhaustible story collection.

In fact, it is far easier discussing the west of Ireland with him than his career, and having co written a guide to Connemara with his partner Karolyn Shindler, he admits he is torn between "encouraging people to visit while at the same time I hate the idea of the place being destroyed as it will be by all those awful houses. It takes the Irish to become absentee landlords in their own country - haven't we learnt anything from our history?"

The offices of Classic FM are in Camden Town in north London. Camden proves drearier than usual on a dark February morning. The few people out walking appear cold. There is no conversation at the tube station except for an argument raging about an allegedly lost ticket. "I don't believe you ever had one," shouts the ticket collector to a man who has the dimensions of a professional basketball player. "I don't care what you think, mate," he retorts and lopes off into the litter blowing down the street as the irate ticket collector's voice soars louder, his language less formal.

Inside Classic FM a more civilised dispute is in progress. A listener has phoned in inquiring about the mug won in a quiz last October. Kelly, complete with red robin cricket tie, arrives; he has already completed his daily three hour programme, the interview is going to take place in his Hampstead local.

As he speaks about his daughters Siobhan, a barrister, and comments "you know she is the first professional in our family," a football appears in the sky, hoisted over a school wall and thud onto the road before his car. The children's faces appear at the gate which is locked and Kelly seems concerned. The kids want to play. They almost look menacing but the gate is closed. "I'd love to get their ball," he says, but there is a line of traffic behind him. Sunshine fetches it, the kids cheer. We drive off.

The school looks like a fortress and its ugliness prompts him to discuss the lack of beauty common to much 19th century church architecture. Able to sustain nonstop speech without even drawing breath, it quickly became obvious what divides radio and television performers from the rest of us. Kelly can talk about anything, as he later admits when describing his schoolboy self.

"I was good at Latin and Greek and English, and talking and not necessarily in that order." A mixture of confidence, nerves and habit means he will walk into a room and quickly engage with everyone present.

ENTERING his local feels like walking into a television studio: you find yourself looking for a camera and expect to hear one of his signature tunes. There is a club like atmosphere. He knows most of the people present and addresses them as if they were his flock. And they are. "I love the English," he says, and they love him. The air resounds with "ah lads" and laughter which is offered instead of words.

Most of the remarks he exchanges in shorthand conversations as he crosses the pub are about cricket, horse racing and the fact he was described in the British press that very day as "unsurpassingly bland". He says he still feels like a journalist and refers to an article he wrote last week about Tony Blair. In 1973 he was covering the Middle East and reported on the start of the Lebanese civil war. He also filed from Thailand Cambodia and Vietnam. In 1976 he joined BBC Radio 4 and worked on The World Tonight and The World In Focus. By 1981, he was prosecuting the TV prank show Game For A Laugh and in the 1983-84 season made his pantomime debut as Wishee Washee in Aladdin at Bath's Theatre Royal.

Life is strange, but Kelly's career pattern is more unusual than most, almost eccentric in its diversity. "I like variety and I hate having to justify myself. I don't feel I have to and I don't know what's wrong with doing lots of different things. I suppose the best answer I can give to anything that I've done is that I was asked."

Although appearing as if the entire idea of being interviewed is a joke, he is serious. His worried, wide eyed face looks tired. "There's a lot less to me than meets the eye," he says, but probably doesn't mean it. He has also had his share of being buffeted by the press, particularly when his marriage ended. One of the few glimpses of the private man emerges, his habitual boy wonder expression appears to relax when he discusses the wonderful relationship his daughter enjoys with his son Alexander, who is now eight: "They have a wonderful bond. When you see them together, you would think they were mother and son, not brother and sister. It's great, it's worked out well."

Kelly jokes about the fact that his partner Karolyn, a former BBC producer, has recently retired. She is the same age as himself - 51. "We've been together for a long time," he says. He speaks about the breakup of his marriage and says he is not bitter about the intrusive coverage it received. He also refers to tabloid stories alleging he had not paid training fees for his race horse. "That sort of stuff appears, there's nothing, you can do about it. So why try?"

Playing the part of the professional Dubliner is second nature to him. Was he headhunted for Classic FM? "Not at all Sunshine. Indeed I wasn't. I think you think I'm a much bigger star than I am. I applied for the job and was delighted to get it."

His morning slot has three million listeners and Kelly agrees that he is in the business of popularising classical music. He enjoys music but makes no claims to being an authority. "But I do my homework. I don't just come in and do the show - I prepare, sometimes maybe for three or four hours. Other times I just settle down and I could be hours at it. I love it. I think it's good to talk about the composers and say at what point they were in their lives when they wrote a particular piece of music."

THE approach is quite unlike any classical music radio I have ever heard: Kelly includes racing tips and recipes. To date, Classic FM has been mainly attracting listeners in the 40-45 age group. The station began in 1992, and its magazine was launched three years later.

It is facing a tough market; Gramaphone, founded in 1923, is the acknowledged reference bible, while the BBC publication BBC Music is excellent. "Our approach is more popular," says Jane Jones, the producer of Kelly's show, who also hosts her own programme each afternoon.

Kelly does not select the 30 pieces of music which are played during his programme. The choice is made by a computer.

The man behind the non stop patter and the stories was born in Dublin in 1946, the youngest of a family of five. His father, Harry Kelly, was a civil servant. "He was secretary of Kevin O'Higgins and he once showed me notes he had written about 20 minutes after O'Higgins was assassinated. I loved my father. We were very close. He was a warm, lovable, generous man. Never said a bad word about anybody. I adored him. He was wonderful." The family had moved to Athlone when Kelly was a baby and stayed there until he was seven. There are no happy memories. Kelly's childhood, and indeed his life, was marked by the tragic death of his eldest sister.

"Dolores reared me, she was more a mother to me than my mother. My sister died at 19 from diabetes. That's why to this day I get a chill when I go near Athlone. She died in 1953, and any time I have ever gone there, someone has come up to me and said something kind about her, she was loved." His elder brother died last year and another sister died as a baby. Kelly says he was not close to his mother, "now I don't want to get all Freudian about it. But no, we weren't close."

When the family returned to Dublin, he went to Belvedere and produces the usual roll of honour including Terry Wogan and a writer called Joyce. He remembers a teacher there who used to select potential" rugby players by the way a boy placed his feet on the ground. No, Kelly didn't plays rugby, "Aw now, come on Sunshine, would you look at me. I'm hardly your typical rugby player," he proclaims with mock hand on hip exasperation. As a cricketer, he says he was a slow to slowish bowler.

He did well in the classroom though, and, as history testifies, excelled at talking. Arriving at University College Dublin in 1964, he continued to perfect his skills ate talking and became a good debater. And walked straight from graduation to The Irish Times. His career seemed to have progressed at just about twice the speed of light. Kelly filled more roles in eight years than most journalists do in a lifetime.

Not for the first time in the conversation he announces: "There's a lot less to me than meets the eye." Henry Kelly, however, is probably the only person in the position to confirm this.