People: Gubbeen's Fingal Ferguson brings home the bacon

He winces at the comparison with the Naked Chef, perhaps because in truth Fingal is more craftsman than showman and, as he admits himself, probably not nearly as shrewd as someone like Oliver at the money side of things. "I never had a business plan" reads one of the quotes on Gubbeen's website. "If there had been one we'd never have done it."

Despite that, Gubbeen is possibly one of the best known artisan food brands in a county full of them. The sweet, mild flavour of the cheese - owing in part to the warm, wet West Cork climate where the cows graze - produces just the right blend of butterfat and protein, has won multiple awards and now appears on menus all over the world. The succulent cured salami that Fingal himself produces has made fans of celebrity chefs like Darina Allen and Clodagh McKenna and along with his knife collection ("a hobby" he bashfully calls it) helped Fingal forge his own identity within the food producing family.

Fingal is the fifth generation on the 250-acre family farm which lies just outside Schull in the shadow of Mount Gabriel. Tom Ferguson, Fingal's father, is the herdsman. He inherited Gubbeen in the early 1970s when he married Giana who originally came from London of an Anglo-Hungarian family. Growing up, Fingal was exposed to different food cultures at a young age, a situation which owed itself in part to the breakdown of his grandparents' marriage. "My grandfather was a playwright who (after splitting from Fingal's grandmother) married an actress. They lived part of the year in Spain", he explains. "They were very flamboyant and dramatic."

The result of this split was that the grandkids - Fingal included - had their minds as well as their palates broadened. "Of course we had the traditional Irish meat and two veg", he explains. "But then we went to Spain and you had garlic, chilli, olive oil and the whole spillover of the food culture from Morocco. But some things were the same: just like in Ireland nothing went to waste."

Growing up, Fingal wasn't an academic child - "more of a maker and doer." He attended Newtown, a Quaker boarding school in Waterford, where the Allen children also attended, and went to agricultural college after that, taking a year out in the meantime to go travelling in New Zealand where he worked on farms. On his return, one of his jobs was to help build the smokehouse on the family farm. He was helped in this task by a local man, Chris Jepson, whom Fingal describes as " a wonderful country gentlemen with a ferret in his pocket and whippets behind him."

Once the smokehouse was built Ferguson began crafting the salamis, bacons and pates that would help him carve out his own niche within the family brand. He is hands-on about every aspect of the making of the products, except for the slaughtering of the animals, which he sweetly calls "piggies."

Slowly but surely the business grew but it wasn't all plain sailing. "It goes back to me being absolutely terrible at maths", Fingal sighs. "I had an accountant of course but he was only as good as the information I was giving him."

As time went on he steadied the ship, got married to Ciara (with whom he has three boys - Olan (5), Oscar (3 1/2) and Euan (a year old)) and the business became more profitable.

Today Gubbeen is almost as synonymous with his meats as it is with his parents' cheeses.

"I don't regard myself as in any way successful" he says. "I'm just humbled to be part of this wonderful group of food producers in Ireland."

Gubbeen: The Story of a Working Farm and its Foods by Giana Ferguson is published by Kyle Books, €25.