Vince Power: Mean fiddler who made the nation dance to his tune

Once described as 'a 6ft lump of Irish meat and gristle', he is now Britain's richest, most successful live music promoter. And his empire is expanding fast

In 1963, an impoverished 16-year-old Irish boy had to make a choice between the artificial insemination of cattle and Hemel Hempstead. The decision was to change the course of his life and, ultimately, of live music in Britain.

Much to the chagrin of his mother, who wanted him to accept the scholarship he had earned at agricultural college, the lad chose the latter – taking up the invitation of his aunt to move to Hertfordshire, in the hope of making his fortune.

This weekend, nearly four decades later, 54-year-old Vince Power is worth more than £30m and will watch his fortune grow even bigger, as 80,000 music fans descend on the Reading Festival – most paying £80 for the privilege.

Under the aegis of his music promotion company, Mean Fiddler Holdings, Power has become one of Britain's most successful music promoters. As well as the Reading Festival, to which this year he has managed to attract acts such as Eminem, Travis and The Manic Street Preachers, he is also responsible for the majority of highlights on the live music calendar. From Homelands and Tribal Gathering to the annual Irish Fleadh in London's Finsbury Park, which is now the capital's longest-running music festival, artists, agents and aficionados alike dance to Power's tune.

The Irishman's empire grows year by year, well beyond mere music promotion to something far more solid. Today, Power is the owner of some of the most famous music venues in the country, including London's Astoria, the Forum, Subterania, Point 101 and the Jazz Café. Last week, he added Home, the eight-storey superclub in Leicester Square, to his collection, after the £18.5m takeover of its former owners, Big Beat. Mean Fiddler has even started eating up the restaurant market, with its most notable recent acquisition being one of the capital's best – Michelin-starred chef Conrad Gallagher's eponymous eaterie on Shaftesbury Avenue.

In total, Power's assortment of venues, restaurants and bars is now valued at £32m. The chairman of Sony Music UK, Rob Stringer, has encountered Power in the professional arena many times. "Vince is a very shrewd businessman, and he's prepared to go out on a limb if he has to," he said. "He's very much his own man – a bit of a maverick. In an industry where there are a lot of huge egos, he just gets on with it."

Nevertheless, the City has not always proved the best arena for him to "just get on with it". Last week, Power was forced to postpone plans to float his group after investors failed to come up with £5m for a reverse takeover deal. The deal would have allowed him to merge his music interests with his website, Meanfiddler.com.

Yet, away from the suits and boardrooms, Power has proved his ability to raise real cash. Nine years ago, at Madstock, one of his festivals, a string of events – including the mugging of a member of staff while she was carrying a five-figure sum of money – left him unable to pay Madness, the headline act. Power rushed around the site, collecting cash from stall holders, and called in favours. Within hours, he had handed the group a dustbin liner containing £250,000 in cash and cheques. The show went on.

John Vincent Power was born on 29 April 1947 in Co Waterford, the fourth of 11 children. Four of his siblings died at birth, including his twin sister. Growing up in 1950s Ireland was hard, but at the age of 16, Power, who was educated at the local village school, managed to win his scholarship to study artificial insemination at Galway Agricultural College. However, the lure of Britain proved too strong, and he set off across the Irish Sea to Hemel Hempstead.

There, he obtained work as a shop assistant in Woolworths, but found it hard to settle – returning home six times in the first six months. Things began to pick up when he moved to Kilburn, north London, with a friend from Ireland. From here, he embarked on a string of jobs ranging from the biscuit line at McVitie's and the baked-bean line at Heinz to selling beds in a department store.

Power's big break came when he began working in demolition – smashing roofs for £2 a building. He was surprised by the amount of furniture abandoned in the old houses, and began collecting and renovating it, at first selling the polished tables, chairs and wardrobes from his own home. But by the age of 19, he had enough money to open his first furniture shop.

Sixteen years later, Power had a chain of a dozen stores throughout north London, and enough money to indulge his real passion – country and western music. For many years, he had been holidaying in Nashville, Tennessee. He decided there was a market for "country music and cold beer" in England, and, in 1982, bought a small music venue in Harlesden, North London. He renamed it The Mean Fiddler as a tribute to the large number of musicians in his family. He booked live acts, and business was good at weekends, but on weekdays the crowds vanished. Power was forced to broaden the range of music to attract more customers.

"Once I'd got rid of my own personal tastes, it began to work very well," he said.Over the next 19 years Mean Fiddler continued to expand, both across the musical spectrum and across the country, making Power one of the most influential people in the British record industry.

In spite of his success, Power is some way from the stereotypical music promoter. A staunch vegetarian, he is a devotee of yoga and says he has never tried drugs. Although he has eight children from three partners, he has been with his current wife, Alison, for more than a decade. He still lives in Kilburn.

"He's polite and unassuming, but also very tough," says Stringer. "I'm not sure I'd want to fall out with Vince Power." Once described by a journalist as "a 6ft lump of Irish meat and gristle", he has said of his personality: "I'm two extremes. I'm very soft and I'm very hard, and I'm trying to find the middle ground. If anyone tries to turn me over, I take a very hard view of it."

Not content with taking a large slice of the UK's live-music scene, he now plans to explore digital television and take his brand into mainland Europe. The world, it seems, will be hearing a lot more about Mr Power.