YOU have to address the 1982 theme music from Harry's Game at some point when interviewing ex-Clannad singer Moya Brennan, who is performing in Northern Ireland later this month.
After all, it was this haunting piece of music, from the soundtrack of a Troubles television drama, that turned a generation on to Celtic soul.
But what became the Donegal family band's pension plan – Clannad consisted of Moya, her brothers Ciarán and Pól and their uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan, following sister Enya's departure in 1981 – started life as a simple bit of studio experimentation. Brennan modestly says the instant acclaim took them by surprise.
"I remember recording Harry's Game in the studio. We'd read the script, set during the Troubles, and laid the track down just like that in 25 minutes, no stops or starts. My brothers and I took turns tracking our voices on the console, stretching (the vocals) for the sound.
"When it was finished, we were on a short German tour but had to cancel two gigs and return home. The first indication of the reaction was that when we flew in, there were Limos waiting at the airport. Wow. We were used to our old Transit van which had ice inside as well as outside."
The track got extra playtime on the Noel Edmonds radio show, partly because of its brevity. "It was so short that after he'd played it and put on another song, he said there'd been so many phone calls, he'd play it again," Brennan recalls.
The record dominated BBC Radio 1 and got on to Terry Wogan's radar. "He started flagging it up the next morning, God bless him. We met Terry many times and sang on his talk show. The last time we worked with him was only a year and a half ago, and we miss him."
Everybody wanted to know how Clannad produced their unique sound, though this was a surprise to the group.
"To be honest, we didn't know we had a sound. We had to stand back a bit and realise that we did and that it had come about by letting something mature inside us."
Success, too, surprised them from early on. The band's musical influences were eclectic, although Clannad did relate to other groups in the folk revival corner.
"We listened to a bit of everything – the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, but we really looked up to Pentangle."
Today, in her three-storey Georgian house in Dun Laoghaire, south Dublin ("I had to be near the sea, coming from Donegal"), Brennan combines music and her home life with daughter Aisling (25), also a singer-songwriter, and son Paul (22), now finishing a degree in IT – "But he has asked me if I'd mind if he started in music instead."
On ageing, she has a pragmatic approach. "No Botox. You and I wouldn't survive in Hollywood where all they want to know is who's your plastic surgeon!" She does visit a beautician for facials, though, and is clearly good at the eye make-up.
The day we meet to chat in Belfast's Europa Hotel, Brennan's husband, Tim Jarvis, arrives first, and tells me that the couple had a good time in the Caribbean after Christmas. It was a working cruise, you understand, Brennan playing along with Phil Coulter.
When the singer herself arrives, she chips in: "We got a bit of colour and warm weather. Here I am, still doing this, 40 years on. It's amazing."
Faith and family are important to Brennan and she talks openly about the power of prayer. "Prayer is just an incredible thing, it even applies to the most minute details, like maybe finding a parking space. But you have to ask God for what you want."
If she's working away from home on a Sunday, she says she always asks at the hotel reception for a church to attend. "They'll say 'Which kind of church?' and I say 'The nearest.' It doesn't matter, we're all believers."
The Brennan family of nine had an idyllic time growing up in Gweedore in Donegal.
"We were a good Catholic family."
Irish was spoken at home and Moya's father Leo, who ran a showband and owned the legendary Leo's Tavern, was a big influence.
"People say I'm very like him. Recently we celebrated his 90th birthday and he sang all night long."
But Brennan's life was not always so happy. She admits to having been through some hell-raising years.
"Yes, when we were starting out on tour, we didn't stay in hotels. It was hostels, bad B&Bs or somebody's flat. And they'd hold a party for you one night, then another party the next night." And no doubt another the following night.
"We drank and I smoked dope at the time. I didn't do really hard drugs, though, apart from a bit of cocaine."
Earlier on, there was also the desperately difficult question of an unwanted pregnancy. She describes travelling to London at 18 for an abortion in her memoir, The Other Side of the Rainbow. Now she says she has managed to find healing.
"I wrote about it in case it helped one or two women, but my mother wasn't sure [about writing about it in the book]. Yet when the book came out, I got positive letters from nuns."
Brennan emerged from her wild-child phase via Christianity and a few months after finding God, she found her English soulmate.
"I picked up my grandmother's prayer book in January 1982 and asked to change my life. Although I wasn't looking for anyone, that August I met Tim." Her husband was working as a photographer for NME and it was love at first sight.
These days, Brennan enjoys gigging with her band and her daughter, performing old and new material with guitar, two harps and sometimes the tin whistle.
"But I still get nervous 10 minutes before a concert."
She says Irish musicians all know each other and she is fairly friendly with Bono, who duetted with her on Clannad's In A Lifetime back in 1985.
"Do I see him? Not with his busy schedule!"
She wants to encourage the next generation too. Once a month she runs singer-songwriter sessions in Leo's Tavern, now run by one of her brothers. Her kind of music today includes Adele, Imogen Heap and Jay-Z and she and Aisling have written the music for a kids' sci-fi show on Netflix, Prisoner Zero.
On the second pot of tea, the woman with the melodious voice reveals something really shocking. Asked the journalistic standard about how she relaxes, Brennan says: "Housework. I love ironing, hoovering and washing up. But you have to remember, I don't do it when I am touring.".
:: Moya Brennan plays the Millennium Forum, Derry, on March 18 (028 7126 4455; millenniumforum.co.uk); Market Place Theatre, Armagh, on March 19 (028 3752 1821; marketplacearmagh.com); and the Lyric Theatre on March 20 (028 9038 1081; lyrictheatre.co.uk).
