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.
