Richie Kavanagh is the ultimate comeback kid. Just when some folks thought that Richie’s star was on the wane, the Carlow man has made a sensational return to the limelight.

A posting of his song Chicken Talk on Facebook and YouTube has resulted in over three million views in 12 days. It has been bowling them over from South Africa to Canada and around the world.

I take the road from the west to the midlands, down through Westmeath, Offaly and Laois, before crossing the bridge at Graiguecullen and meeting Richie on his home county soil.

The welcome is rural and warm from one of Carlow’s best-known people, along with his wife Nancy and their son Richie Jnr.

In many regards, Richie is the most unlikely star of all-time. His first song was all about pot holes and that was back in 1990. At the time he was employed by Carlow County Council.

For many years, he has been coping with psoriasis and that is the main reason he has worn dungarees on stage, together with his Carlow cap featuring the colours red, green and yellow.

On a lazy afternoon, less than two weeks ago, Richie Jnr decided to upload Chicken Talk to Facebook. Nothing could have prepared the Kavanagh family for what was about to unfold.

“Within hours the whole thing took off. Thousands began to view it and it went around the world. We had never seen anything like it,” says Richie. “We had no idea something like this could happen. After all, the song was recorded back in 2006 over in Moate. I did it in Ray Lynam’s studio. Ray was urging me to use the word bucking rather than the one I did. He is a terrible nice fella.

“We put the song down and Gerry Ryan on 2FM liked it and gave it a few spins. Everyone was a bit afraid to play it before Gerry Ryan, except Tony Kehoe from South East Radio in Wexford.

“Gerry Ryan was very good to me and was the cause of my first number one with Aon Focal Eile. He even sang the chicken song one night on the Podge and Rodge Show.

“Nearly everyone sees it as a bit of humour and something to laugh at. We recorded the video for it on a farm up around Mount Leinster. They are Paddy Foley’s chickens that are in the video so they have real Carla accents,” enthuses Richie.

While Chicken Talk goes around the world, Richie always had a belief in the song.

“It goes down fierce well at gigs. We got a chicken suit for an adult and when we play Tramore every summer, the chicken leads the children in a chicken-train and they all love it.”

Amid all the celebration surrounding the three million hits man, Richie is overcome with emotion as we do our interview. He chokes up for a few seconds as memories of his mother flash through his mind. Molly died just before Christmas. She was 97.

“She was a great auld character. We had her so long we thought we would have her forever. Richie (Jnr) put up the video of my song God Bless Ya, God Save Ya, on Facebook some days earlier. She would have loved that. I was telling them at home when this all took off in the last few days that nanna (Molly) had put in a word for us with Himself above. I got lonesome thinking of her there now.”

The Pothole Song launched Richie 25 years ago.

“I recorded it for £200 in John Kelly’s studio at the Hazel Hotel in Monasterevin. The Teenager in 1968 was the follow-up. The really big one was Aon Focal Eile which topped the charts in 1996.

“I have been doing gigs in pubs, festivals, parties, seaside resorts, overseas, concerts and a rake of places ever since. The Ploughing festival is one of my biggest events of the year. They are my kind of people, ordinary, decent, country people.

“There is this Power fella from Co Waterford who does a good take-off of me. He dresses up like me and even entertained people on a beach in Ibiza. ‘They thinks I’m you, Richie. You’re wicked good,’ he told me. He loves my songs. We get him up on stage at the Ploughing and he sings along with me for the craic.

“For the past few years, I have been coping with Parkinson’s as well. I am on daily medication and I work around it. The voice was in bother for a small while, but it is grand again.”

For Richie, inspiration can come out of the blue.

“I was watching George Lee on RTÉ and he was talking to a driver called Charlie with the Paddywagon buses. Charlie was playing Aon Focal Eile and some other of my songs. My son James got in contact with them and I wrote a song called Have You Seen the Paddywagon. I now have a CD with that as the title along with 14 more of my auld songs.”

For now, Richie is pleased to bask in the sunshine again.

“You could not dream about hitting that kind of a global marker without the internet. The demand for CDs and videos is going through the roof. There are Irish people in their 20s now abroad in America, Canada, Australia, England and other places, and they remember being brought to school and that tape going in the car. ‘That’s the quare fella we used to hear singing all those quare songs and us going to school. He has resurfaced again,’ they are saying. Still, it’s hard to believe I have topped 3m in less than two weeks. That’s the truth. Face her for Mount Leinster.”