"He is not a classic suit" - the words of more than one observer go some way to explaining why Osmond Kilkenny is one of the very best in the world at taking care of other people's money.
In an industry which views business types at best as square, at worst totally untrustworthy, he has built up an extremely lucrative operation sorting out the financial affairs of all the richest rockers. Pick a band, any band. Chances are O.J. Kilkenny and Co, with offices in London and Dublin, holds the purse strings. The Verve, Oasis, The Chemical Brothers, Bjork, Van Morrison. And then there's U2.
Now he has been appointed chairman of a think-tank on the film industry. He hates the name apparently, not least because he is prone to calling it the tink-tank. The Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands is clear about why Ossie Kilkenny was chosen: "The rationale is that he is an achiever who gets things done," said a spokeswoman. His investment, which originally appears to have been largely altruistic, in Ardmore Film Studios in Bray, Co Wicklow, has reaped considerable financial rewards. He also has wide-ranging interests in business, entertainment and technology.
For all the diversity of Kilkenny's business interests, he is known in this State for one thing. He is U2's accountant. The media obsession with his involvement in the band is said to irritate him and he is inclined to play down the significance of U2 in his professional life. Others suggest that he would welcome a wider role in the group's affairs.
Newspapers who recently suggested that all may not be well between U2 and Kilkenny re ceived a swift response in the form of a solicitor's letter. "Ossie is straight down the line," says an acquaintance, "but if you cross him, he will walk all over you".
"Ossie is the band's accountant and he is not mine, but that development occurred quite a long time ago now," says U2 manager Paul McGuinness, of Principal Management in Dublin. "U2 are my clients and it wasn't sound practice for Ossie to represent them and me. I take advice from a lot of people, including Ossie."
McGuinness and Kilkenny are partners in a number of businesses including Ardmore Studios, TV3 and a post-production unit in London called The Mill.
In the early 1990s, both became involved with Leisurecorps, a company which planned to set up entertainment venues in Rathmines and Dun Laoghaire. Kilkenny was a non-executive director. These sites were later sold off.
He has diversified in recent years, becoming more an entrepreneur than an accountant. He is involved in technology company Nua and celebrity food chain Planet Hollywood. He gets to the office most days at 6.30 a.m. He has unstoppable energy and is unusually driven, but not by money, say friends.
If things had been different, Kilkenny might have formed his own supergroup. At home in Dundrum where he grew up, he listened to Buddy Holly and dreamed of strutting his stuff in the music venues of the world. He played guitar for a while. The back of U2's Rattle and Hum album credits him as Ossie "knows all the chords but doesn't know where to put them" Kilkenny.
These days he sticks to air guitar. His other passion was aircraft. The house was filled with model aircraft and, like a lot of little boys, he dreamed that one day he would possess his own. His work means he now spends a huge amount of time in the air. "He can live on a plane the way that most others can't," says one friend. At the weekends, he gets flown around in one of his ex-US navy second World War sea-planes.
He is passionate about athletics and was an outstanding highjum per while at school in Gormanston College. He is understood to have expressed an interest in sponsoring marathon runner Catherina McKiernan and feels the achievements of our sportsmen and women are not appreciated enough.
Kilkenny joined a bank in 1965 after leaving school and was encouraged to take a commerce degree in UCD by night. A request by his employers to get his hair cut fell on deaf ears. He hadn't forsaken his rock 'n' roll roots.
He left the bank to move into accountancy and five years later he became involved in the music industry. One of his first clients were the Boomtown Rats.
He lives in Killiney with his wife Anna, a practising barrister. He has two children, one of whom is in the fashion business.
"I would describe him as a flamboyant genius," says one industry source, who adds that part of his success stems from the fact that he talks to artists on their level. "He talks the talk," he says. Others describe him as a "mean cat" or a "ruthless money-gathering machine". Most agree that he is razor-sharp, slightly eccentric and something of a conceptual thinker.
Socially, he is said to be charming and gregarious. More than one source describes him as very much "hail-fellow-well-met". He neither drinks nor smokes and is a vegetarian. When he is not in his seaplane, he is playing tennis, and the music he likes best is black soul.
To his clients he is said to be extremely loyal, doing his utmost to make sure their rights are protected. Says one admirer: "You can pinpoint certain things that have been crucial to the development of the music industry. U2 staying and making records in Ireland was one of them and another was Ossie Kilkenny's support of artists and developing expertise.
"When the history books come to be written he will have to be acknowledged."