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He's the Van Morrison of the art world. For Basil Blackshaw is even more reluctant to do interviews than the east Belfast singer songwriter who appears positively media-friendly by comparison.
And Blackshaw has at times gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that photographers and TV crews don't get any pictures of him.
In 2003 he tried to dodge UTV's cameras as I covered the launch of a lavish book about him in Belfast and later in Cork he even put a paper bag over his head at one of his own exhibitions.
So it is all the more remarkable that broadcaster Eamonn Mallie has managed to persuade the elusive painter to talk about himself on camera for a new television documentary called An Edge of Society Man.
Even Mallie, who produced the aforementioned book about Blackshaw 13 years ago, was surprised -- pleasantly so -- that the 82-year-old artist finally agreed to sit for him, so to speak.
"Basil's closest friend, the late film-maker David Hammond, had been trying to persuade him for years to let him make a documentary about his life. But he kept refusing," Mallie says.
"But after Basil's friend Seamus Heaney passed away, I asked him again to do an interview with me to put something on record and he agreed. His partner of 40 years Helen Falloon was a tower of strength for us.
"In the end Basil talked to me as if the camera didn't exist."
Mallie has long admired Blackshaw and his half hour documentary is clearly a labour of love. And in it he tries to mine into the psyche of the artist who has re-invented his style of painting many times during his illustrious career which stretches back over 60 years.
Mallie has also interviewed Blackshaw's artist daughter Anya Waterworth and a number of her father's friends about an enigmatic man who is undoubtedly one of Ireland's leading painters.
Anya says her father is very private, but very generous.
"He's not so keen on authority, she says. "He would toe the line, but he doesn't like to."
She says her father likes to call a spade a spade and hasn't much time for anyone who doesn't.
During the documentary Mallie asks the pipe-smoking Blackshaw if...