When Enda Kenny's mobile phone rings, there is a split second before his ringtone recognisably becomes a rock 'n' roll download. In that split second, however, there is time to wonder what kind of ringtone you expect from the Fine Gael leader.

Incorrectly, you might assume he'd go for something simple and straightforward, a basic ring, no silly stuff. Instead, Enda Kenny not only has an actual song as his tone, but is mightily proud that Bruce Springsteen sings out every time someone phones him.

"Come on up for the rising," Kenny repeats as Bruce trails off, and you get the impression that he understands full well what his ringtone says about him. He means the invitation, wants to lead a rising, wants to be seen as the boss. It's an ambition that informs everything about Enda Kenny, right down to his mobile phone ringtone.

There is something in the way he draws attention to his love of The Boss that speaks of Enda Kenny's desire to be known and even understood. He accepts that as the leader of the opposition -- particularly in the face of Bertie Ahern's popularity -- we are familiar, but not intimate, with him, that we have an impression of what and who Enda Kenny is, rather than any real sense of the man. Particularly when you are not in government, people see a very edited version of you, he explains.

"They think of you as confined to a rut, stilted and formal, in the question-and-answer theatre of the Dail, giving out and whatever. And then when they meet you, they say: 'Oh, you're a different fellow altogether.' It's not that you're an actor, but you're not going to go down to the Dail chamber and start talking like you're in the back of the ball alley on a Saturday evening," he says, and the metaphor jars, and suggests a rootedness in an older Ireland, rather than one where half the population is unlikely to be acquainted with ball-alley bad boys. "But these are the constraints of the job," continues Kenny, "and you might know the image, but it takes a long time to get to know the personality behind it."

And Enda Kenny wishes to move that familiarity along. After all, he can't have stayed in politics for 33 years just to be the other guy, the also-ran. He believes his time to be the main man is rapidly approaching and, while he works towards that on a political level, Kenny's also striving personally, putting himself out there, projecting himself as the man with whom we'll soon be on Bertie-style, first-name terms.

Still, he's not necessarily entirely comfortable with the process, and it's unlikely we'll ever see him pose for a glossy magazine with a popstar son-in-law. Kenny's route to making acquaintance is more traditional, and, to some degree, not really working for him in terms of breaking into the consciousness of the people.

For example, his opening gambit with me is to keep my handshake in a tight clasp and enquire if I'm related to a branch of Caddens in Mayo.

No, I tell him, we have only one 'd' and come from a different part of the county. And I know he's disappointed a bit, because we could have broken the ice with chat about my people, and he fishes around to place my lot but never quite manages it, and that seems to bother him because that's what Irish politics was once very much all about: place and people and joining up dots to feel connected to our politicians.

In this day and age, however, Kenny kind of knows he has to take the modern route, show us something of himself and his life, and he's trying. All the same, there is restraint in any chat about his family -- though it was agreed this interview was to be a personal one -- and I think I really alarm him when I suggest that his teenagers will soon have their eye on his Dublin bolt hole as a potential party pad. He talks a little about his wife, Fionnuala, and their three children -- Aoibhinn, who put Springsteen on his phone, is 16, while sons Ferdia and Naoise are 14 and 12 respectively -- but does that classic politician trick of talking in rings, to the point that you forget the question and then doubt your sanity when he says, "but getting back to your question", and then doesn't return to it. Still, Kenny's keen to flesh out his public image, though the thought must occur that this was never the way when he grew up a TD's son in the Fifties and Sixties.

Enda Kenny has been a TD since he was 24, voted into the Mayo seat in the by-election that followed the death of his father, Henry. Enda was working as a primary school teacher in Castlebar at the time, and had been happy with that career before drifting into helping out with the clinics and constituents when his father became ill with cancer. He had not, he insists, grown up with any yearning to follow in his father's footsteps.

He is the middle son of five boys; the others were variously in school and college and working in Dublin when Henry's 18-month illness began. Enda had grown up with politics in the house and, despite lines of people turning up at the house to talk to his father in the days before formal clinics, politics had not exerted any great pull on him. When the time came, however, he stepped up, and was elected.

Interestingly, Enda's path into politics is not dissimilar to that of the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, who likewise won his late father's seat in a by-election. Kenny laughs at the comparison and concedes that it's a route not without its issues. Henry Kenny was -- like Ber Cowen -- a big character, an All-Ireland medal winner, a man who made an impression on people.

"My father was 62 when he died," Enda says. "And even though he was sick, you still don't believe it -- your parent is your parent and you think they'll always be around. My father was a strong, fit man, he played football for Mayo; you don't expect people like that to just go away like that.

"It's a thing you always reflect on," he says, adding that, yes, as he approaches his 60s, the relatively early death of his father plays on his mind.

"And, you know, in those early years," he continues, "you're faced with the thing of: 'Oh, you'll never be the person your father was,' or, 'Oh, I supported your father for 20 years and you'll never measure up at all.' Oh, yes, they'd say it straight out to me, but they were a different generation, and time moves on, and you let it wash off you and you make your own way."

Time has, indeed, moved on and Kenny has moved on, too, beyond Mayo politics, into leadership of the party and, he hopes, into the role of Taoiseach. He's not necessarily in the business of proving people wrong, or bettering his father who went before, but those comments must have put a bit of steel in him, helped him shape the determination that keeps him going despite Fianna Fail's dogged retention of power, election after election. What everyone wonders about Enda Kenny, after all, is how he maintains the optimism. He has been praised, since taking over the leadership in 2002, for providing vigorous opposition, but that's not what he wants to do: he wants his party to govern.

"Well, you must not drift through it," he says, before moving, the way politicians do, into analysing last year's general-election results with an utterly positive slant. "[Fine Gael] had a 20-seat gain in the last general election," he explains. "That was never done before since the foundation of the State. So here you are at a time when you took on the invincibility of Bertie Ahern and beat him on his own ground. Right, so, that's outstanding."

Yes, but Fianna Fail remained in government. Did that not knock the stuffing out of his party's success? Did it not knock the stuffing out of him, when even unprecedented success simply wasn't good enough?

"At two minutes past seven on the morning of the count," he recalls, "when your man read out that the exit poll was 45-point-whatever for Fianna Fail, I thought: 'Holy Jesus, here we go again.'"

Any indulgence of despondency was brief, however, as is Kenny's way. "I'm good at switching off the negative," he says. "Look, if you went around with the negative images and thoughts and all of that, you'd pack it in and go and hide. You just can't let it get to you. You have to have a strong belief that you can actually do this, and that you can actually mould your party to where it's going to convince sufficient numbers that you can win, and that you can do it."

"You can't drift through it," he repeats, "but shouting louder and giving out doesn't achieve anything either."

Before meeting him, I had been told by one of his people that Enda Kenny never loses his temper, a comment that seems to set him up as the opposite of our current Taoiseach. When the reputation of his even temper is put to him, however, Kenny laughs. "Well, I don't tend to lose my temper," he says, "but if I do, then God forbid. But I don't really lose it. I've learned to control it. I'd fight my corner with the best of them, and in my youth on the football pitch I could hold my own, but you learn to know your mind, and to know that restraint is the best route. There's no point displaying aggressiveness as if it's going to achieve anything. I haven't forgotten my temper, but I know where it's appropriate, and it's for when I'm out on the hills, walking."

In politics, says Kenny, there's room for adversity but not necessarily anger. You have "professional rows" is how he'll put it, and whether there's real animosity there, he will not be drawn on, going into great long answers that have you wondering after a few minutes what the question was. It's a great skill, one which Enda Kenny, as the longest-serving TD in Dail Eireann, has had plenty of time to perfect.

"I used to have rows with Bertie Ahern," he recalls, "and it was very hard to have rows with him. No matter what you said, it was just absorbed into the features and that was the end of it, it went nowhere. His ordinariness was the thing that worked with the people, and he had a very particular style which was very open up to a point. He was always out and about, always moving among the people, and that gave a great impression of openness, when really people didn't know him beyond that. A social loner is how I describe him, very hard to get to know the man.

"But Bertie could accommodate a different point of view in whatever form; but Brian Cowen has a different method entirely, far more confrontational, and he can be aggressive in his response. But that's his personality and it's very different to Bertie Ahern's, and it's my job to relate to that."

Would there be any amiability outside the professional adversity with Brian Cowen? Is that even possible?

"Ah, sure, I know Brian Cowen 20 years or more," says Kenny, in the manner of an adult putting a young person in their box by pointing out that they once changed their nappies. "I was on the British-Irish Parliamentary Association with him [in the Eighties] and we'd have a lot of get-togethers, both here and in England, when it was a time of trying to break down barriers of mistrust between Irish and British politicians. And there was always a deal of camaraderie."

Would you have a drink with him?

"Oh, yeah."

Then or now?

"I haven't had one with him recently," he laughs. "Look, when people are appointed ministers [Kenny was Minister for Tourism and Trade under John Bruton's 1994 government] that takes them into the structured part of government and you don't have the same occasion to meet people the way you did before, and since Brian Cowen's been appointed Taoiseach, I've had two meetings with him."

While Kenny's acutely aware that people wonder why anyone would want to be a politician, particularly in these troubled times, his interest in the top job is undimmed by our current circumstances. He still wants Brian Cowen's job, even if running the country will be more difficult in the coming decade than it was in the last.

"The place to be is in government, always," says Kenny, who eschews a glass with his bottle of sparkling water, drinking it by the neck instead. "There's no point continuing if you've no ambition to lead from the top, and that's no matter what the time or conditions."

Does he feel any sympathy for Brian Cowen, though, given he's become Taoiseach at a time when it's more difficult to do anything right?

"Look, there's no sympathy in politics," he laughs. "It's a merciless business. In terms of personal relationships, yes, I can see that. But from a political point of view, no. I think the credibility of the Government is in tatters. Everything they've turned their hand to since July has turned into a disaster and I don't think they'll stay the course for another three years in government."

And Kenny believes Fine Gael will win the next election. He says so with absolute confidence. He does not allow himself to consider the chance that it may not happen, or happen without him at the helm. He will concede, however, that even if his ambition is never realised, it was still worth trying.

That said, he cannot imagine settling into life without politics. The thought of knowing what's on the calendar three months down the road, or feeling certain of what lies ahead does not please him. Still, he talks about dispensability, and remembering always that the job is more important than you, personally.

"The more you see of politics, the more you realise that -- but also the more you have to make the effort to remember it," he says, adding with a laugh, "and some are never aware of it in the first place. I've seen ministers going around as if they were members of a world power. I'd be very conscious of the fact that you are just doing your job and serving the people."

That is, perhaps, a lesson you learn from a long time in opposition and that perspective is something Kenny probably would find valuable as Taoiseach. And it's one rare among Fianna Failers, with their deep-rooted sense of entitlement to power. Personally, though, Kenny has an understanding of the value of arriving at things slightly later than most. He didn't get married until he was 40, and lived at home with his mother in Castlebar in his early years as one of the Dail's youngest TDs.

"I was elected in 1975, gallivanting around the county and then back home to my mother," he explains. "And I was very active in those years, either in politics or in sport, and I didn't think about marriage then."

In his 30s, Kenny concedes, it probably occurred to him that marriage might never happen. He laughs at how men are with commitment, always happy to put it on the long finger, possibly to the point it may never occur, and he is in the position now where he wonders if he wasn't ready for marriage until later than most.

"Sure, who knows?" he sums up. "If I had met the right person younger, and that was the way it should be, then it would have happened. I don't regret not marrying younger, and I met the right woman and that was it."

At the time they met and married, Fionnuala O'Kelly was Head of Government Information Services under Charlie Haughey, and, later, Head of Public Relations in RTE. Politically, there was never any conflict, Kenny laughs. "She's from Clontarf, Co Kerry," he answers when I ask where she's from. I momentarily wonder why I've never heard of Clontarf, Co Kerry, and then it becomes clear her family roots are in the Kingdom and that the joke is an old-school notion that to be from Dublin is to be from nowhere, that real people are country people.

"When the children were of school-going age," he adds, "we moved west, like all good people. Fionnuala made a big move to leave Dublin and her work, to give it all up and go down to the West where she didn't have any connections other than myself, and take on the business of rearing a family and getting involved in the political scene down there."

I suggest that may be particularly difficult since he's not there all the time, and he agrees this is true, but not a problem for them. Until he took over the leadership six years ago, there was no need for them to have a place in Dublin, but now he arrives in the capital each week in the small hours of Tuesday morning and is not back home in Mayo until the weekend.

"But there's this," he says, picking up his mobile phone and explaining that he calls the children every morning without fail, and always makes room in the calendar for concerts and First Communions and Confirmations. If it makes him reflect on how he was once that politician's child, accustomed to the parent's absence, he's not keen to admit it, though he says modern technology makes a big difference.

"Children don't care where you are or give a damn about distance," he says, "so long as you keep talking to them."

Enda Kenny believes he is a better father for having come to it in his 40s.

"For everyone, life changes completely once children come along," he says. "They make you understand relationships better and the meaning of life and, for myself, I think I benefited from being a bit older. I think I know better how to give them character and a sense of humanity.

"And in life and in politics," says Enda Kenny, getting back to ground where he feels more confident, "the time you have is relatively short. You have to remember that. I go to Brussels every two months for the meetings of the European People's Party, and every time there are one or two different people around that table. The last person is gone, the next person is in their place.

"Yes," he admits, "it rattles me. But it makes you understand how unimportant you are, but how important the job is, and that it just keeps going. As a person, I'm of no consequence, it's just a question of whether I can do the job."

And, yes, Enda Kenny believes he can. Further, he believes he'll be the next man to do it.

"As James Dillon said, this business is a vocation and it draws you into stormy waters as well as calm, and if you don't feel it, get out of it. And for me, I'm still as excited by it as I ever was, but I understand it so much more.

"And when I walk away from it," Enda Kenny says, "having put back-to-back governments together, I will walk away with a wealth of experience and a lot of friendships, and you have to value all of that."

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