“MY first taste of the showbiz bug was in Coláiste Choilm in Ballincollig,” says singer and songwriter Jack O’Rourke.

“There was a wonderful music department there, Catherine Frost, Fiona Leahy, and Pat Kinsella, of course was the principal, Seán Lehane too, and they really nurtured music of all types.

“They put on a show every year, so we did the rock musical Chess, from 1985, I think, the year I was born, and it was written by the lads from ABBA, Bjorn and Benny, and then Tim Rice did the lyrics, and it was a metaphor for the Cold War. I was the Russian lead, I was kind of a tragic hero, and it gave me the bug,” he recalls.

“Before that I would have been very shy about singing live.”

The Ovens native first came to prominence in 2015, when ‘Silence’, his sublime song about growing up gay in an unwelcoming Ireland, captured the national mood during the marriage equality referendum. 

The following year, his debut album, Dreamcatcher, hit the Irish Top 5, and his 2019 EP Ivory Towers was critically acclaimed.

His most recent album, Wild Place, was awarded an eight-out-of-10 review in Hot Press, which said of it: “There’s an almost cinematic feel to the album, like a soundtrack to some classic Hollywood movie … Wild Place seals Jack O’Rourke’s reputation as one of Ireland’s most gifted performers”.

He works as a teacher at Gaelcholáiste Mhuire at the North Monastery, and helped to put on a version of Les Misérables in the school. Speaking to The Echo ahead of opening night, he said nerves were slightly jangling.

“Students and teachers have jitters, but it’s a really invaluable, wonderful opportunity for children to display their creativity and to have that little slice of stage life that some will then take on further.”

His own first stage experience made him a proud ABBA fan, he recalls with a laugh.

“Listening to those songs and learning them, when people disregard ABBA, you see how intricate and complex their melodies and harmonies and chord progressions are, it’s serious stuff, there’s no denying that, they’re up there with The Beatles and Burt Bacharach in terms of musical composition.

“I just got the bug, writing songs after that, not in the ABBA vein, funnily enough, more Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, words were just as important to me,” he says.

“I just think being on stage and singing those great songs in that show gave me a boost, it was something I liked, I liked the experience of it, it was another outlet for me. 

"I’m quite an introverted person. It’s almost a paradox that someone shy would like performing, but you get to work out stuff on stage, I think.”

He says he’s still on the crest of Wild Place, one year on. “It’s been a great year, a lot of opportunities, lots of lovely gigs.

“I have a show in the White Horse on the 30th, and I’m looking forward to having the band back for that, and then easing into the new year.”

And his plans for the future? “Last summer I won a residency to write music for a month in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and I was writing songs about Brendan Behan and Oscar Wilde when they were in Paris, so in the new year I’m going to get in there and record some of those, maybe for a mini-album.”

• Jack O’Rourke plays The White Horse, Ballincollig, on Friday, December 30. The gig sold out so watch social media for updates or ticket sales