Daniel O'Donnell's unique connection with fans includes singing from council waste bins

HE WAS IN Adelaide on an Australian tour when the storm hit. "It was huge - thunder and lightning, lashings of rain," Daniel O'Donnell recalls in his soft Donegal brogue. "It was ten years ago and the storm was so severe it took out all the electricity. We couldn't get a generator for love nor money."

They could have postponed the sold-out show, but O'Donnell knew his fans had come from miles around.

"I went out and spoke to the people queueing and told the venue to let them in. We had a megaphone and we did the show acoustically through it for a whole hour.

"It was the worst sound you could ever have, but the audience loved it. Eventually the electricity came back on and we finished it properly."

Can-do Daniel, 62, is a phenomenon - the only artist to have charted at least one new album in the UK for 35 consecutive years. His mega new greatest hits collection, Through The Years, is certain to make that 36.

The venues the Irish star has headlined is equally impressive - London's Royal Albert Hall, New York's Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, the council waste bins in Middlesbrough...

"That was a while back," he recalls, smiling. "The venue was closed because of a bomb scare, and the police gave me one of their megaphones so I could sing on top of the bins..."

He was at in again during lockdown, borrowing a loudspeaker from an undertaker so he could sing from the back of his car outside hospitals and nursing homes in Dungloe, County Donegal.

He has always been close to his audience. "I've got to know a lot of the fans - not everybody, but I know many of them by name. Interacting with them is lovely. I get as much out of it as they do."

In the 90s, when he played a festival in his hometown, the fishing village of Kincasslagh, fans made pilgrimages to his house. Unable to chat all day and sing that night, he invited them back the following Wednesday, when he wasn't performing, for a chat and a cuppa.

"Hundreds came - my sisters made the tea, neighbours helped out. We had biscuits..."

It became an annual event until so many turned up, they ran out of tea.

The biggest fan Daniel never met was the late Queen Mum. "The artist Derek Hill lived in Donegal and he used to get me to sign CDs to 'Ma'am'. He used to paint with the King when he was Prince Charles, and Charles would deliver them to his grandmother."

A Daniel O'Donnell DVD sat proudly on the Clarence House the coffee table.

"I would have loved to have met her, and Queen Elizabeth - a great woman really. I met Charles at the millennium in Cardiff; he gave me the MBE in 2002."

The humble star made it to Strictly Come Dancing in 2015. "I was terrified," he tells me. "I couldn't remember the choreography but what an amazing show to be invited on - the glamour and panache..."

O'Donnell's wholesome style and older, largely female audience inspired Marie Jones's 90s comedy play, Women On The Verge Of HRT. And Father Ted parodied him as 'Eoin McLove', a singer and TV personality, adored by middle-aged women, whose niceness was all a front.

It isn't. Daniel is still the same modest, polite, and genuine person I filmed with in 1996. He lives with Majella, his wife of 22 years, has two stepchildren, and is a step-grandfather.

He has no vices; he doesn't drink or smoke. When I push him, he admits "I don't know when to stop sometimes. In 1992 I burnt out, my voice gave up on me. I was overtired, so I took time off and adjusted.

"I don't drive myself so hard now, I take things at my own pace and have a better life balance. I play a bit of golf, I play bridge. My wife says, I'm quite chilled; I don't flap."

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, Daniel immediately offered to cancel his tour. "Majella said, 'No. If we stop everything, cancer's in charge. If we do everything, we are in charge'."

Mercifully she won her health battle, and the O'Donnells are still in charge.

It wasn't always that way. Daniel, the youngest of five, grew up poor after his father died of a heart attack when he was six. The family struggled until his eldest sister, Margo, found fame as a showband singer in the early 70s.

Daniel was taking a business studies course at Galway College in 1981, when Margo asked him to be her backing vocalist. In 1983, he released a self-financed single, My Donegal Shore, but success didn't come overnight.

"It was hard," he admits. "From 1984 to 86, it wasn't working. I went to see the label boss and said I don't think it's going to work. He said they were getting good reach on the album and I should stick it out. He was right. 1986 was my pinch-me moment. It was like somebody switched on a light. Everywhere we went was packed. It was like a wildfire. I couldn't believe it."

Irish pirate radio fuelled his breakthrough. "They were playing all my stuff - maybe because I was young and they were young."

His set juggled country, Irish songs, and pop standards; his laid-back friendly style recalled Andy Williams.

"I just wanted to sing the songs I loved," he says. UK audiences loved them too. He graduated from Irish clubs to theatre shows and found new fans, breaking through here in 1988 with his fifth album, From The Heart - the first of twelve albums to go gold in the UK. Seven more went silver.

Daniel made the Top 20 with 1992's I Just Want To Dance With You which meant he debuted on Top Of The Pops in the week that The Shamen topped the charts with Ebeneezer Goode.

"I was in Singapore when I got the call saying I had Top Of The Pops the following week. It was fantastic because I'd grown up watching it. Never thought I'd be on it. In the studio there were two small stages, with a young couple dancing on one stage and I'm singing on the other.

"I think The Shamen were as afraid of me as I was of them. They were looking at me like 'Where the hell has this come out of?'."

The Scottish psychedelic combo might have appreciated the 2022 Halloween short film Night of The Daniels - populated by zombie O'Donnell dummies who the real Daniel vanquishes with a flamethrower to the sound of him singing Elvis's Burning Love...

In total, he has amassed 14 hits, going Top Ten in 1998 with Give A Little Love.

O'Donnell's US success was driven by his 2002 PBS TV show which opened up a whole new audience of Middle America.

"Now when we go there, I don't meet an Irish person. We play Iowa, Minnesota, Dakota, Nebraska..."

He also met his country music heroes - "Johnny Cash briefly, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn. I did a lot of shows with Charley and Loretta, I got to record with both of them. It was an amazing thing for me. If you had told me that I would one day befriend Charley Pride I would never have believed you. Loretta guested on the TV show, she was lovely."

Daniel's old-school style and older generation appeal didn't stop his 2011 version of Tipperary Girl becoming a huge cult club success in Ireland.

He's touring the UK next May, recording a new album for 2025, and allowing himself plenty of time with his grandchildren.

Regrets? "I still haven't had a walk-on part in Coronation Street," he says, his blueish-green eyes twinkling. "But it's been an amazing 40 years."

*Daniel's greatest hits album Through The Years is out now. Tickets for his 2025 UK tour are on sale 1st November at