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During the 70s, he sold many of his ballrooms but adapted others into rock venues. These included The Crystal in Dublin (which became McGonagles), The Carousel in Manchester (The International 2) and The Carousel in Camden Town (the Electric Ballroom). He made a point of turning up at the latter five months after it had opened to see Thin Lizzy play with Bob Geldof, Paul Cook and Steve Jones.

“Phil Lynott was good, he worked for me a lot,” he says. “And what’s the other boy called? A big tall boy from Dublin who played rock - Bob Geldof, that’s it! I remember one night there was Phil and Geldof and some other lads, there were three famous groups and I put them all together and I said, ‘How much do you want?’ They said they wanted 75 per cent of the door and I said, ‘You’re a right crowd of greedy bastards!’ When I went back to the Ballroom, there was a big poster with ‘The Greedy Bastards’ written on it. I could handle the contrariest of musicians, you know. I remember Jack Parnell wrote a jazz tune one time called The Fuller Bounce. He had the greatest bunch of musicians, but they were all headers in those days, and he used to reckon I was the only man who could run his tour. I’d look after the band and I’d roadie myself. After the show, we’d have a great party and then the following morning we’d pull out at round 8 or 9 in the morning, Which is a hard thing for musicians. But I’d get them into the groove.”

Asked about the secret of his success, Bill Fuller smiles and says: “I worked with the trends of the people. I gave them what they wanted and I gave them the best of it. It meant a lot to me to see people enjoying entertainment at a decent price. And I never went for any hocus pocus. But any fellas arguing with me about money, I’d stick it up his jumper [laughs].”

By the late-80s, Bill Fuller had decided to focus most of his attention on rock mining in Las Vegas. “I came out here and got an old mine going up the hill,” he says, “and decided to turn my life around another bend.”

The nearest thing that Camden Town has to a Bill Fuller these days is Vince Power, a one-time antiques dealer from Waterford who owns nine bars and live music venues in London and also organises five annual outdoor festivals, including Reading and the Phoenix. A big fan of country music, Power went to Nashville in the 70s and dreamed of building his own honky tonk in North London. That dream became the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden, which opened in 1981, after Power had spent a year building it himself.

“ It was a later version of Bill Fuller,” says Power. “Do everything yourself, because you really haven’t got the money or the know-how. I just knew that I wanted my own honky tonk - a really nice, clean place with cold beer, good music and a band playing at the end of the bar. The original drawing to get licensing was done by an architect, but after that we made it up as we went along.”

By the late-80s, Power’s expanding empire had crossed circles with Bill Fuller’s decreasing one. Power had set his sights on Fuller’s Dublin Castle club, McGonagles, and - like Bill Graham before him - realised that the only way to do a deal was by flying halfway across the world to meet the owner.

“ I got into Las Vegas at about 11pm at night,” says Power, “went to a dodgy hotel, because for some reason the place was booked out and I couldn’t find a decent one, and then I met Bill Fuller for breakfast at 9am in the Desert Inn. He came in and we started talking about everything apart from the deal. He told me about his mine and wanted to bring me out to have a look at it. Then when we eventually got around to talking about a deal on McGonagles, he just said, ‘How much?’ I mentioned a figure of what I thought the place was worth and he jumped about three feet off the ground and said, ‘If I was a young man I’d hit you’ - and he walked off. I had just spent 12 hours on a plane to see him, and that was the end of Bill Fuller. He didn’t even pay for the breakfast!”

The deal came to nothing, but there were no hard feelings on either side. “I usually bump into Bill Fuller in Camden or Dublin,” says Power. “He treats me like a young lad and tends to give me advice. He says, ‘When I was your age’ or ‘You should eat better and look after yourself’ and all that business. He’s a great character; he’s unique.”

Although Bill Fuller now feels at home in the other rock business - “up in the mountains, with the rattlesnakes” - he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning to rock’n’roll, even though it is now 60 years since he took over The Buffalo Ballroom on Camden High Street.

“ I might make a comeback in my old age,” he says. “I’d still like to build four of five big places - maybe in Seattle or in Portland, and then I’ll come down again to San Francisco and LA. I’ll set those places off again, before I kick the bucket.”

And what about his ballroom in Camden Town? “Oh, I’ll keep Camden until I move out of this world,” he says. “It was the first place of my own that I had, so I wouldn’t dream of parting with it. Camden will never be sold.”

Bill Fuller, November 17, 1996, Country Star, Las Vegas