"Dapper and neat, Quinn is in a yellow Portmarnock Golf Club jumper, beige trousers and bright blue and green stripy socks. He volunteers that he is regularly given gifts of socks since wearing pink ones on Tubridy Tonight. He had solved the nation's problems, he jokes, but all anybody noticed was his socks. "These ones are from Saks Fifth Avenue."

The marketing veteran is suitably image conscious. Anxious about chatting while posing for photographs, he prefers to concentrate on keeping a smile. "I don't like to be scowling in photos."

This garden on Howth's Baily is not one to scowl in. Groomed and lush, it rolls down to the edge of Dublin Bay. The view is big, blue and breathtaking.

Quinn has lived there since the 1970s. When his children were young, he would take afternoon breaks from Superquinn's nearby head office in Sutton to ride their horses over Howth Head.

At Christmas, Denise, his wife, gave him a camera for a nesting box outside the window at which the couple sit to eat. He hasn't installed it yet, and is mildly panicked to see a tit making investigations. "I will have to get that done today."

Busy, busy. But at least he has more time than usual because the Seanad isn't sitting. "Do you know why it doesn't sit this week? It's because of Cheltenham." He laughs.

Once we are settled at that window table, Bridie, the housekeeper, produces a tray of coffee and biscuits. He tut-tuts cheerily that she has brought saucers. "We never get saucers, she is showing off."

Among a pile of books and brochures is a copy of Quinn's bestselling Crowning the Customer. He just received a pocket-sized Japanese translation. "It is now in its 12th language, Arabic," he said proudly.

There are also two books he has picked as favourites: a translation of Boccaccio's The Decameron and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. No pulp here.

Quinn is publicising the RTE series Feargal Quinn's Retail Therapy, in which he visits six shops to work a bit of the old Superquinn magic. Two episodes, which announce the "return of the retail street fighter", have aired so far.

At 73, Quinn is an unlikely looking street fighter, but he loves dishing out advice. The series came about after Labour councillor Denis Landy "coaxed and bullied" him to Carrick-on-Suir to advise traders.

"I then found myself coaxed to come to Bray, I found myself challenged and got a great sense of satisfaction."

Among his tips was to roof part of the main streets. He declares himself delighted that Bray is going to do just that.

In the first show, Quinn clearly irritated the female half of the couple he advised to overhaul their Finglas department store. Viewing figures were good all the same.

Since Quinn stepped down from Superquinn in 1995, his posts have included chairing the St Patrick's Day Festival.

"It's probably the job I enjoyed most." Retail gigs included chairing EuroCommerce, an industry association. "I had to coax Denise to allow me. She said I hadn't learnt to say no." He loves tripping around to forums, swapping experiences.

Back home, he is clear on where retail must go. "We've got to get our costs down."

He was shocked by staff in Superquinn in Dundalk, which he opened 50 years ago but which closed last year. "I was talking to two of the butchers and said you will always get a job in Newry. They said, 'They pay a third of what we get here'."

Energy costs are a bugbear. "I have never understood the idea that [ESB] is not profitable enough and we have to put prices up to encourage competition. I have argued it out with Lochlann [Quinn, ESB chairman] and he doesn't agree with me."

Retail rent rows have hit home. The Quinn family are investors in Carluccio's, the cafe on Dublin's South Anne Street that recently closed for a few days over a rent hike. It's a tricky issue, he says, as landlords are so heavily borrowed.

Generally, Quinn favours a free market, opposing, for example, a ban on below-cost selling. His solution? "Allow below-cost selling but also allow the local grocer to come in and buy all the stock."

Back in the 1960s in Dundalk, Quinn had a cornflake war with rival retailer John McCourt. Prices dropped so low that Quinn eventually put a sign in his window offering to buy cornflakes. McCourt promptly stamped his brand on his cornflakes so that his rival wouldn't be able to resell them.

"We agreed afterwards that was a great few weeks. The local parish priest came in to see if he could resolve the war."

He doesn't believe in a minimum wage, saying the market should handle it. "There was a time when you went to get petrol and someone put it in your car for you, when you went to the supermarket and someone wheeled your trolley for you."

There will always be too many shops and it is about getting it right, he says. "There were too many shops when we opened. Lipton's had 60 shops in 1960. We opened beside them. By 1970, they were gone."

Quinn has aired many of his views in the Seanad, where he has sat for 17 years.

He is proud of his record. "When I started, I thought, 'I don't know how to make this work', but then I started looking for the customer in every piece of legislation."

He is still pleased to have come up with age as a reason for unfair dismissal in a bill presented to the Seanad within weeks of his start. "The trade unionists came to me to say they had the bill for six months and sent it around and nobody came up with age - and who did? A boss."

He doesn't have time for those he feels don't share his can-do approach. Stand up George Lee, the RTE economist who quit the Dail. "If you go into any organisation, you have to find a way to make it work."

When Quinn began his new career(s), he was sitting pretty. His family got more than E440m from the Superquinn sale. "It wasn't nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be," he said. "The investors [Bernard McNamara, David Courtney, Jerry O'Reilly, Bernard Doyle and Terry Sweeney] could see much more value in the sites than we did. In Finglas, they told us they could put eight or 10 floors on top of the supermarket."

His family didn't fancy property development as they didn't know it, he explains. He is close to his five children, but there were business rules. "We had a policy that anyone who wanted to join had to bring something of value." Eamonn went into merchant banking, Stephen to Ballymaloe and other kitchens. Gillian was a management consultant before joining the board. His children also have input into investment decisions. "We have done some wise and some very unwise things," he said. "We invested in Barry O'Callaghan's involvement in education."

Well, that has not proved so wise. But more successful investments included backing the E4.5 billion buyout of the Hertz car rental firm. "That worked out well."

The Quinns were clients of the Claret Capital, Domhnall Slattery's investment boutique. Eamonn is now chairman and they own 25%. "The advice we got was, 'Don't give it to some whizz kid in an investment bank taking flyers. Put it with someone whose brain you respect and who is putting his money in'. Some of them worked, some of them didn't."

As far as future investment goes, he fancies sustainable energy, though he believes in nuclear. Another surprising view is his new openness to genetically modified food.

Quinn grows his own vegetables. "Last year, I had very good sprouts, tomatoes, cauliflower and a good crop of peas."

In what time is left, he works on a new book. "It originally started as six lessons in humility, now it is at 14." Examples: "My customers know more than I do. My employees know more than I do. I will know more tomorrow than I do today."

Meanwhile, it's time for his lunch."

The life of Feargal Quinn

VITAL STATISTICS

Age: 73 Home: Baily, Howth Family: wife Denise, three sons, two daughters, 12 grandchildren. Favourite books: Boccaccio's The Decameron, Bronowski's The Ascent of Man Favourite Film: Catch Me If You Can, pictured Interests: Brent geese and growing vegetables.

WORKING DAY

The Seanad meets on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It takes a lot of preparation because you don't know what's coming in until the previous Friday. I am still on the board of the Food Marketing Institute in the US, which meets three times a year. I was asked to become an adjunct professor of marketing in NUI Galway and have been doing that for three years.

DOWNTIME

Denise has a disease called golf. We play at 8.15am on Sunday in Portmarnock, go to noon mass, and have religion and sport behind us by 1pm. Then it's lunch and family.

Copyright The Sunday Times 2010.