This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to succeed in the music business." Reading these words in a newspaper advertisement or on a flyer handed out on the street, they might sound hollow.

Coming from Phil Coulter, however, the blueprint for his latest project, Celtic Man, carries significant weight. Coulter knows about success in the music business. Some people strive to connect with the wider public just once.

Coulter has done this consistently over five different decades. From success in the Eurovision Song Contest with Puppet on a String in the 1960s, through Bay City Rollermania in the 1970s and on through the more mature market of the Fureys and his own orchestral works, back into boy bands with Boyzone and on into his involvement with America's latest smash musical, Celtic Woman, Coulter has been a veritable production line.

Along the way, he has also guided Billy Connolly through D.I.V.O.R.C.E, had a song covered by Elvis Presley (My Boy), steered actor-singer-carouser Richard Harris approximately through a post-MacArthur Park phase, and produced the first three albums by Irish folk legends Planxty. It was also Coulter, with his then songwriting partner, Bill Martin, who started the football record fashion, writing Back Home for the England squad's trip to Mexico in 1970 - although hearing his Ireland's Call sung by 60,000 Irish rugby fans at internationals in Dublin gives Coulter the bigger buzz.

With fingers in such a variety of pies, it says much for Coulter that he's managed to command universal respect. Indeed, no less a curmudgeon than Van Morrison, whose association with Coulter goes back to Belfast in the 1960s, dubbed his friend "The Cool Filter" for his unfailing ability to find what's right for any musical situation.

"I think the point about working in different styles is that you don't look down your nose at any of them or place one above the other in terms of importance or degrees of difficulty," says Coulter, just off the plane from the US, where he has been checking Celtic Woman's progress.

"You know, I'm just as proud of writing Shang-A-Lang for the Bay City Rollers as I am of a more adult song, if you want to call it that, like The Town I Loved So Well. Because, no matter what people tell you, writing hits isn't easy and you have to respond to the area you're working in. There's a craft to songwriting just as there is to silversmithing."

Coulter's love of music stems from the traditional songs and tunes he heard at home in Derry. His father, a police officer, played the fiddle, his mother the piano, and if there was a party going on, it would be at the Coulters'.

On leaving Queen's University in Belfast, where he studied polyphony by day and Fats Domino by night, Coulter moved to London in 1964, intending to become a songwriter. Teamed up with Bill Martin and ensconced in a Denmark Street (or Tin Pan Alley, as it was known) office, he began to produce songs in much the same fashion as the Brill Building writers in New York. As a sideline, he did studio work on piano with Tom Jones, Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones, among many others.

"Every second Friday, we'd have to demo six songs to play to the boss the following Monday," he says. "Now, our boss knew what he was talking about - he'd written hit songs himself and nurtured writers - and he'd say, Look, Coulter, I know you spent five years at university and you know a lot of chords, but you don't have to prove it in every song.' And that was valuable advice because anyone with musical knowledge can write a song - the trick is to write a song that other people want to hear."

Puppet on a String, sung by Sandie Shaw, was the Coulter- Martin partnership's big breakthrough, winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1967. They almost repeated the feat the next year, when Cliff Richard came second by a point with Congratulations, before winning a second time - this time for Ireland - through Dana's All Kinds of Everything in 1970.

Working with the Dubliners, Planxty and the Fureys during time away from the pop industry in the 1970s convinced Coulter that he should finally realise his ambition of recording the Irish tunes he'd grown up hearing with an orchestra. Another industry was born as, first, Classic Tranquility became Ireland's biggest-selling album ever, then the follow-up, Sea of Tranquility, trumped it.

This led to sold-out coast to coast tours of the US, playing to an audience of 600,000 on Capitol Hill in Washington and achieving another ambition in recording with flautist James Galway. But, having become a successful recording and performing artist in his own right, Coulter was by no means finished behind the scenes. His production of Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull, Liam Neeson, Lisa Stansfield and Sinead O'Connor singing Van Morrison's songs on the No Prima Donna collection led to Coulter producing O'Connor's Universal Mother album, an experience which reduced the pair of them to tears in the nicest possible way.

Now, Coulter is set to launch Celtic Man and is auditioning for talent in Glasgow next Wednesday. Coulter insists it isn't a boy band. "It's a man band and we're looking for five singers aged 18 to 45, each with a distinct personality and each with stage presence, but we're looking particularly for a strong Scottish voice."

For the chosen singers, the potential, says Coulter, is limitless.

"Celtic Woman has sold out five US tours, the CD has sold two million and it's gone on to Japan, the Far East and New Zealand - and I think that, selling five guys, this has the legs to go even further."

  • Auditions for Celtic Man take place at Jury's Inn, 80 Jamaica Street, Glasgow, on Wednesday April 11 from 1pm to 8pm.