Kerry-born Mammy Barrett wanted to bring her wee lad into the world on the home turf, so herself and Daddy Barrett came home temporarily from London in 1944, and young Matthew became a citizen of Tralee shortly after.

The Barretts moved home for good when Matthew was seven, settling in Kells, Co Meath, where father Jack Barrett originated.

Evidence of a romantic streak emerged early on: at the age of 12, Matthew, who has just landed the chief executive slot at Barclays Bank at a salary of £6 million a year, could recite by heart The Rubaiy at of Omar Khayam. Mastery of this party piece with its future potential female-pleasing advantages aside, the rest of his education at Kells Christian Brothers seems to have been unremarkable. Jim Brunnock, his former maths teacher, was quoted this week as saying: "He didn't really stand out in the class and he didn't do that great in his Leaving Cert exams."

On his 18th birthday, following an introduction from his father, Barrett went to England to work in the London branch of the Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest bank. Perhaps inspired by Omar Khayam, his plan at the time was to become a scribe himself, while not giving up the necessary day-job in the bank.

However, despite not impressing his former maths teacher, Barrett became a teller at 20, and was offered a two-year training stint in Canada three years later. Ambitions to become a writer were henceforth, ahem, shelved.

On his first day at work in Montreal, Barrett met Irene Korsak, a Polish immigrant who was exceptionally easy on the eye. Aptly - given that she was working in foreign exchange at the time - Korsak soon became his wife. The couple had four children. Barrett thrived in the Bank of Montreal. In an 1990 interview, he's quoted as saying of his arrival in Canada: "I went from being a fellow who drew a pay-cheque to someone who said, well, you know, I really could carve out a career for myself. The more I wanted to do that, the more the bank gave me the rope I needed."

Crucially, he identified the future importance of technology in banking early on in his career. While Ireland was still counting on its fingers computer-literate Barrett was cantering up the career ladder across the Atlantic in Bank of Montreal.

In 1978, he was appointed vice-president, management services. In 1981, the year he went to Harvard Business School, he was given the job of senior vice-president and deputy general manager of the Bank of Montreal's International Banking Group. The big bucks arrived with the big jobs in the late 1980s: in 1987, he was appointed president and chief operating officer; in 1989, he became chief executive.

His most recent salary there clocked in at £2.2 million every 365 days, making him one of Canada's highest-paid executives.

Once he had landed the top job, Barrett really rolled up the sleeves of his Aran gansai and set to work. Bank of Montreal did not have a shining record for the manner with which it treated its employees. It was not exactly sleeping in the gutter, but it had not been displaying the flotilla of big fat zeros which banking organisations like to bill and coo over at the end of each fiscal year.

Under Barrett's leadership, the bank returned record profits every year. It also became an enlightened place in which to work. He actively encouraged women to apply for senior positions and would not tolerate discrimination against people with disabilities or from minority ethnic groups.

The result was that he appeared to be genuinely admired by both the company headwigs and the people who worked for him; a rare distinction in the slash-and-burn environment of banking.

Plaudits followed. In 1994, he was given the country's highest civilian honour, when he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1995, he was named "Outstanding CEO of the Year". The same year, he was reported as being tipped for a future role as Canadian prime minister.

Tony O'Reilly was a high-profile buddy; Barrett was a director of the Ireland Fund in Canada, as well as being involved in Co-operation North.

Something had to give. Perhaps predictably, it was marriage. After 28 years together, Korsak and Barrett divorced in 1996. At that point, the gossip columns became very interested indeed in the man they dubbed "Canada's most eligible man". For the tabloid press, there was only a vowel's distance between banking and bonking.

In 1997, after a six-week romance worthy of his old hero Omar Khayam, Barrett married 42-year-old Anne-Marie Sten, a former page three pin-up and one-time girlfriend of playboy arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi. Old pictures were published of Mrs Barrett mark two avec fur bikinis and sans any bikinis at all.

"Looks more like a showgirl than a banker's frau," crowed the Toronto Star's gossip columnist last autumn.

The tabloids loved them. The adoration was not mutual.

In 1998, the year after his second marriage, Barrett looked at the amount of rope the Bank of Montreal had given him so far and proceeded to try a new project with it. The rope-trick this time was the hugely ambitious proposed merger of Bank of Montreal with the Royal Bank of Canada.

The intended nuptials of the two banks were announced to the public in January 1998. They didn't bite. Whether it was a bungled PR campaign, or loss of nerves somewhere along the line, public opinion didn't back the plan. In December, Canada's finance minister, Paul Martin, blocked the merger. Barrett had reached the end of his rope-tether with Bank of Montreal.

He resigned from his position there in March, saying that he was now going to "reflect and read and chase the world a bit to find out what life after banking is like".

Barely four months after life without banking, Barrett has parted company from both Anne-Marie Sten and Canada. But while it's adieu to his second wife and adopted country, it's 'allo 'allo to Barclays Bank, London, where Barrett will take up the job of chief executive in October, for a salary of £6 million a year.

VIP is probably on the phone to him right now.