From acclaimed film-maker to film censor, John Kelleher tells Michael Dwyer, Film Correspondent, how he came to his new post.

This morning, the poacher turns gamekeeper, when film producer John Kelleher becomes Ireland's official film censor. Having worked in the media for over 30 years - in television, film production and publishing - Kelleher will take on the new responsibility of guarding the nation's morals.

The country's first film censor was James Montgomery, a baker who admitted that he knew nothing about film, but he knew the 10 Commandments and would take them as his code. In 1924, his first full year in office, he banned 104 films and cut 166 others.

It was not until the 1970s, with the appointment of Dermot Breen as censor, that a more enlightened approach was adopted, and this continued with Breen's successors, Frank Hall and Sheamus Smith. The role of the censor is now primarily one of classifying films for different age groups.

Kelleher is understandably reluctant to talk in any detail about how he will approach his new job. "I want to get my feet under the desk first," he says. "It's always been a job that fascinated me. I'm a great believer in making changes, and my whole career reflects that. You should never stand still. I've never seen a career as something static."

He was born in Dublin in 1944, and his father was a doctor with the British army, which entailed moving the family to Egypt, Austria and Germany. His parents were determined that their three children had an Irish education, and the young John Kelleher was sent to Clongowes Wood as a boarder when he was 10.

"Too young, really," he says, "but I don't regret it. I know so many other people, including cousins of mine, who never came back and became completely Anglicised.

"It was a great experience, going to school here and spending holidays with our parents wherever they were based. We grew up knowing different cultures, but we always regarded ourselves as being from here." He studied law at UCD, where he immersed himself in directing plays at Dramsoc, and he went on to take a BCL from UCD and a Masters in Drama from the University of Kentucky, where he received a scholarship.

On his first day at UCD, Kelleher met fellow student Vincent Browne, and when he returned from Kentucky in the summer of 1969, he joined Browne as a journalist in a new monthly magazine venture, Nusight. "It was very political, and it had a great young staff - Kevin Myers, Declan Burke-Kennedy, Anne Harris, John Feeney. It was the most extraordinary place to be at the time. We were all aged around 23 or 24, sharing this small office in Harcourt Street.

"Editorially, it was far ahead of its time, a forerunner of what Browne was to do more successfully with Magill in its heyday. If somebody felt strongly enough about something, they would think nothing of doing 30 pages on it. I was the least successful of the team because I was the least political. I was far too balanced and measured."

At the end of 1969, Kelleher was appointed as a producer with RTÉ. "It was a very exciting time," he says. "Even then, some people were saying RTÉ's great days were over, even though it was only on the air about seven years." Some months earlier, three - Bob Quinn, Lelia Doolan and Jack Dowling - had left and written a radical attack on RTÉ in the book, Sit Down and Be Counted, which Kelleher read five times before he did his job interview with RTÉ.

"It was funny," he says. "Having read the book, I knew everything about each of the people who were interviewing me, and where they were coming from. But I felt that the book was completely misdirected because it was substantially critical of how RTÉ relied on advertising. I believe in a mixed market."

Kelleher's first assignment in RTÉ was Newsbeat, edited and presented by Frank Hall, who, ironically, went on to precede Kelleher as film censor. "It was a light current affairs programme which employed actors for sketches, and it evolved into Hall's Pictorial Weekly. I only stayed with it for a year, but I'm really proud to have been associated with it. It was a unique show." In a further irony, Sheamus Smith, whom Kelleher replaces as film censor, was also an RTÉ producer at the time. Smith was due to produce and direct a documentary on the Spanish civil war when he left to become managing director of the National Film Studios at Ardmore, Co Wicklow. Kelleher replaced him on the documentary, Even the Olives Are Bleeding, which was presented by Cathal O'Shannon and received rave reviews and many awards.

Kelleher cites it as one of the programmes of which he is most proud. He also mentions an April Fools' Day spoof devised by himself and O'Shannon - Margaret Kildysart, an elaborate mock-documentary on a non-existent character described on the show as "the forgotten lady novelist of Loughrea".

Several landmark productions were to follow, including the documentary, The Greening of America, which Kelleher produced and directed and earned him a Jacob's Award, and he was executive producer on the ambitious mini-series, Strumpet City, adapted by Hugh Leonard from the novel by James Plunkett, and directed by Tony Barry.

"The scripts were excellent," Kelleher says. "The budget, at £850,000, was huge for its time, and RTÉ was the sole producer, but it sold to over 50 countries. That was a time when you could back hunches and take risks if you passionately wanted to do something at RTÉ. I believe that's all gone for many reasons."

He was appointed controller of programmes at RTÉ 1 in 1980 and established the Today Tonight current affairs programme in the same year. "At 36, I was the youngest controller of programmes appointed by RTÉ," he says. "Noel Pearson used to call me 'the teenage director-general'. I could have hung around RTÉ for years and years and played the politics and maybe become director-general, but I didn't want to do that. So I went to the \ Tribune, which was a big mistake, but it was a chance to try something different."

In the spring of 1983, with the backing of millionaire businessman Tony Ryan, Vincent Browne revived the Sunday Tribune, which had collapsed a year earlier. He became the editor and he persuaded John Kelleher to become its managing director. "Browne made me feel I was necessary to this huge journalistic endeavour that was about to happen," he says. "All my life I have loved starting things and the prospect of a newspaper just really appealed to me, especially as it had failed in its first incarnation, and there was a real gap in the market at the time."

Within six months, Kelleher had left. "It became very apparent to me, and to Vincent and to Tony Ryan, that I was the wrong person for the job. I rapidly had to re-invent myself." He secured a contract from Channel 4 to make the Irish Angle series, presented by Pat Kenny, and to package an edited version of The Late Late Show. And he took on another new challenge, making the leap into feature film production with Eat the Peach.

He was attracted by Peter Ormrod's script for the film, an engagingly whimsical comedy of two rural Irishmen (played by Eamon Morrissey and Stephen Brennan) inspired by the Elvis Presley movie, Roustabout, to build a Wall of Death. With producer David Collins, Kelleher set up the production company, Strongbow, in early 1985, and the company made the film that summer with Ormrod directing.

It was a rare indigenous production for its time, a mainstream movie aimed at the international market, and it was launched with a now legendary party at Cannes in May 1986. "It was hugely ambitious, and we made huge mistakes," Kelleher admits. "I totally believed in it. If we had waited, we could have honed the script more and got third-party finance. But money was lost for the investors who backed us, and I personally lost a lot of money. If we did it today, we would do it very differently.

"The film did very well in Ireland - over £315,000, which was more than My Left Foot did on its original release, before it was re-released after it wonOscars. Barry Norman loved it and he put it in his top 10 films of the year, but that made no difference at the box-office in the UK. Nevertheless, if I got a euro for everyone who said how much they enjoyed the film or that it was ahead of its time, I could have financed George Bush's war!"

Kelleher threw himself into more television productions: When Reason Sleeps for Channel 4, and the Irish-French-Australian co-production, Act of Betrayal, written by Nicholas Evans before he wrote The Horse Whisperer. And Kelleher became involved with James Morris, Paul McGuinness and Ossie Kilkenny in developing the proposal for TV3.

"It dragged on forever," he says. "The franchise was awarded in 1989, and then was taken away by the IRTC. The High Court upheld the case, and then it went to the Supreme Court. It was very painful, especially for James, who gave so much to it. The goalposts seemed to be moving all the time." It was a very difficult time personally, Kelleher says. "In any country, if you are good at what you do and you have proven that, people will offer you work," he says. "I've spent so much of my life working in broadcasting and I've been responsible for so many programmes, but nobody in RTÉ ever approached me to do anything. It seems that, if you blot your copybook once, they don't want to know. Individuals there are fine, but collectively, it's not a generous organisation. Attitudes seem to have changed with some of the newer people in charge, which is good."

Instead, he worked for TV3 when it eventually came on the air, and for the past four years, his company, Fastnet Films, has made the current affairs show, Agenda, presented by David McWilliams, for TV3. Kelleher counts it as one of the four productions of which he is most proud, along with Strumpet City, Even the Olives Are Bleeding and Today Tonight. "I love the sheer eclectic variety of people we've had on the show - Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger, Anthony Minghella," he says. "David McWilliams and I have fought like cats and dogs over the years, but by and large, they were healthy debates. My last show goes out this week. I will miss it terribly."

He says he is surprised, but very happy that both his children have followed him into the business. His daughter, Roisin, has been a producer and a presenter with the BBC in Belfast for six years, and his son, Macdara, is now taking over Fastnet Films from him.

Kelleher speaks with great warmth of The Halo Effect, the feature film he has been producing with his son. Written and directed by Lance Daly, the low-budget film, now in post-production, stars Stephen Rea, Grattan Smith, Simon Delaney and Kerry Condon. "It's a streetwise Dublin comedy with a dark and sexy heart," he says.

So dark and sexy that it will get an 18 certificate from the Irish censor? "Because of my involvement with it, that's a bridge to be crossed," he smiles.