Have you ever found yourself abroad watching football on ESPN and wondering who was the guy in the commentary box with the Irish accent? Maybe you heard him the time the camera picked out Lothar Matthaus's girlfriend in the crowd at a Bayern Munich match, prompting the Irish accent to comment: "Well, at 38 years of age if he can handle that, God bless him."

"That's me," says Tommy Smyth. Job description? "ESPN's colour guy, analyst, expert and all-round gabby 'hooer'."

Consider this: the international wing of the gabby "hooer's" employers, based in Bristol, Connecticut and the sporting equivalent of CNN, is seen in almost 200 countries, which probably makes this native of Knockbridge, Co Louth the owner of the most recognised Irish voice on the planet.

Example? "This kid from Bangladesh came over to America a couple of years ago and played for a football team I coached. He kept looking at me, kept saying 'I know your voice, I know your voice'. Eventually it clicked, he used to watch football on ESPN back home. Honest, if you stopped to think about it you'd probably lose the plot."

If they ever make a film of Tommy Smyth's life they'd need a sequel or three to fit it all in. Or if they go the book route they'd require as many pages as Harry Potter's biographer. Where do you start? Well, Knockbridge is as good a place as any.

Born in December 1945, Smyth grew up in what he describes as "the heartland of the GAA" where he played with local club St Bride's, making it on to the Louth minor team.

"There wouldn't have been much interest in soccer in Knockbridge but my Dad, God be good to him, brought me to Oriel Park every Sunday so I became a supporter of Dundalk. That's where I was indoctrinated, standing on the terraces, listening to the boys talking about what was going on."

When he was 17 he left Knockbridge for New York where he acquired 17 different jobs in no time at all. "The best of all was pumping gas during the gas shortage, so I never went without - you can't beat the boys from Knockbridge, smart till the end. I was a travel agent too, a maintenance man in a hotel, a mechanic, an electrician's helper but, most of my life, I was a house painter."

Tommy? "Yes?" Why so many jobs? "Well, I promised my mother and father when I was leaving that I wouldn't ever stay away longer than two years, but every August I would announce that I needed more than a week's holidays, because I was going home, and they'd say 'sorry', so I'd say 'see ya'. I'd quit the job and go to Ireland for three or four weeks and then I'd have to look for a new job when I came back."

While busy amassing enough P45s to paper Grand Central Station, Smyth asked himself what he missed most about home. Answer? The music, the sport, the news. Solution? "I bought myself an hour on a local radio station, WVOX, and I started producing my own show with Irish music and news from home."

Thirty years on the show is still going, making it the longest-running Irish radio programme in New York. "Because my life has become so busy I co-host it now with my wife, Treasa from Cobh - I'm only married two years, I left it late in life, just to be sure, to be sure.

"My brother Colm and sister Marian used to help me with the show, Colm would do the sport from home, Marian the news. Of course they're changed times now, especially with the Internet, but back then the show was often the only source of news for the Irish in New York. Best of all was the time we broadcast the All-Ireland football final - we had trouble with the connection from home so Colm sat in Knockbridge with the phone on top of the radio and that was the feed going out on air," he laughs. "Not exactly high tech, but it did the job."

So, DJ, travel agent, gas pumper. What else? Played football in Gaelic Park for 30 years. Managed the Louth team in New York and was president of the Louth Football Club. The "Voice of New York's Gaelic Park", no less. The first Irishman to commentate on the New York St Patrick's Day parade on American television (WPIX Channel 11).

And then. ESPN's soccer analyst, co-host of Latin Futbol Weekly, Gaelic games, horse racing, harness racing, Highland athletics and "Ultimate Heavy Athletics" commentator, to name but a few. The television "announcer" for Major League Soccer club New York/New Jersey MetroStars. Tommy? "Yes?" Have you ever slept?

"In 1990 I heard that ESPN had got the rights to the World Cup so I approached them about getting a job - I'd never done television before, but that didn't bother me. They didn't hire me but I got a job with ESPN International and it's gone from there. I started doing the Brazilian championships but then ESPN International exploded, we got the rights to the 1998 World Cup qualifiers, the Italian and Dutch leagues.

"At this stage I've done every league in the world. Our big commodity, though, is the Champions League - I do six games every week, two live and four replays. We do a lot of our stuff off the monitor here but we go to the games further into the competition. We show more soccer than any other TV station in the world - last year I did 321 games."

He started out as a commentator but "that didn't work so well so I eventually became myself, the colour guy, which worked out much better".

So, do the viewers love him? "Well, many of them question not only my pedigree but my breeding as well. Sometimes I say things just to get them going, I know they'll be up in arms but it's all about getting a reaction - love me or hate me, but don't ignore me. I'm a Manchester United supporter but I don't admit to it publicly very often because of the way people react. I remember one guy wrote a letter from Barbados complaining about me - he ended it: 'And it was quite obvious that the little Irish bastard wanted Manchester United to win too.'

"Another thing I've going for me is that people think I'm Tommy Smith, the old Liverpool player. ESPN get five or six emails every month asking if I played for Liverpool and what happened my accent.

"Generally, though, I try to approach my job from the point of view of a fan, I'm very opinionated and I know people expect entertainment so I try to use my wit, my Irish upbringing to provide it."

What about Pat Brodigan? "Yeah, Pat lives in Knockbridge, he's nearly 100 now. He's a very astute man who knows what's going on in the world - often when someone asks me a question on air I say 'well, Pat Brodigan always said . . .' - people have written from all over the world asking 'who is Pat Brodigan?' He's famous now, world famous."

So, is Thomas Michael Smyth a New Yorker now? "Well, I said to someone this morning 'I'm going home for Christmas' and they said 'I thought you lived in New York?' The truth is I'll always refer to Knockbridge as my home. New York is a great city, though. Of course these are very difficult times. Because of my association with the St Patrick's Day parade I knew so many of the firemen and policemen who died (on September 11th). It just tears your heart out," he says.

"I cross the bridge from Queens every day and I look to where the World Trade Centre used to be and I just feel like somebody took something from the heart of the city, it really feels like the city is wounded and that whatever sense of security we had has been destroyed."

He says it has "brought a lot of humanity back to the city - you notice it now, people will talk to you, people will hold a door open for you, look you in the eye, that never would have happened before".

One night in Los Angeles the dizziness of his journey from his home place, four miles from Dundalk, to where he finds himself now dawned on him. "I remember sitting way up in the top of the stand in the Coliseum, working on Mexico v Chile in the Gold Cup, and I could see the lights of Hollywood in the distance and I said 'Holy shit, it's a long way from Knockbridge'."

Long enough to call America home? "Ah no, I'd like to think that some day I'll put my feet up at the fireplace in Knockbridge, wondering what all them things were about. Hopefully I'll be fit to remember them."