PAUL McAlinden doesn’t half clatter stereotypes about the head with a pair of cymbals.

When a Govan inhabitant opens up on his incredible journeys as a conductor it would be all too easy to drop in jokes about late-night hi-jinks on the No 17 bus.

But Paul McAlinden’s conducting work involves a far wider world. Part of his incredible adventure has seen him working out of Berlin for fifteen years as a freelance conductor, setting up the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq and more recently an orchestra to perform in his adopted town, Govan.

Indeed, such is Paul's standing, he’s off to Malaysia next week to pick up an award from the President for his work in Iraq which involved Blue Ocean Strategy, the business model by which uncontested market space is created.

Yet, how did he come to be in this position? Maestro isn’t a job on a career’s adviser’s list.

However, Dunfermline-born Paul smiles as he explains why he was never likely to end up in the local dockyard.

“When I was five years old, one day in the car with my dad he switched the radio on and I heard classical music for the first time. I said to my dad that was the music I wanted to learn to play.

“Luckily, my parents went out and bought me a piano.”

Meantime, his mother signed her son up for ballet dancing classes. “I loved it,” he remembers,” even though it signalled me out as different from the rest of the boys. I was one of only two male ballet dancers in the whole of Fyfe.”

Sadly, but not surprisingly, Dunfermline’s little Billy Elliott was bullied and beaten. “But when I got attacked I used my little arts world as a bubble. All the abuse and bullying and s*** was somehow filtered away.”

Not surprisingly, the teenage Paul chose to head south to study Theatre at the University of Surrey, “faced with the choice of becoming a professional musician or a ballet dancer.”

The idea of becoming a conductor however had never entered his head until he took off to Michigan on a student programme.

“The Americans ran classes on how to become a conductor. Now, suddenly, it all made sense, this physical expression of music through the body.”

On completing his studies, McAlinden chose to return to Scotland and worked with lots of amateur orchestras, from Paisley to Stirling.

Aged 32, he moved to Germany, “with its massive music culture.”

Paul began by coaching singers on piano and meantime became a freelance conductor, working around the world, from Finland to New Zealand.

In 2008 however, the recession hit and work evaporated. “I needed an astounding project to keep me motivated until work picked up again.”

Incredibly, he found his answer in the news pages of The Herald.

“I was back home in Edinburgh at the time, checking up on my dad who was ill, and there was a headline Iraqi Team Seeks Maestro for Youth Orchestra. I was taken aback. And as I read I said to myself ‘I know how to do this.’”

He adds, smiling; “So many friends told me I was quite mad to go into a war zone. And when I called Max (the relationship had since faded) he said, dramatically, ‘When you’re dead I’ll compose a piece for you’.”

Undaunted, McAlinden travelled to Iraq and managed to form the 33 young musicians into a unit, despite a pervasive heat that made it almost impossible for instruments to remain in tune. “These were young people who had learned to play their instruments by downloading lessons from YouTube.”

“The hard core interpretations of Shiria Law basically said there could be no singing with instrumental music. It was like the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Instruments were seen as the Devil’s handwork. And for so many Iraqis, going to a rehearsal meant you could be reported to authorities, that’s if you made it past the bombs.”

He had to learn to deal in suitcases of cash, in this “ultra-corrupt” country, to push against language barriers, sectarian issues or the gender gap (a third of the orchestra was female).

“But somehow, we all felt music was a mechanism with which to help re-build Iraqi culture.”

Paul toured the world with his orchestra. But just as he was set to travel to America in 2014, Isis invaded Mozul. Game over.

And the end of the orchestra coincided with a series of personal disasters. His father and mother passed away.

“Suddenly, I had no energy to do anything so I sat down to write a book (Upbeat) about the Iraq adventure, to help me put it all in place.”

Paul returned to Scotland in August of last year and found a flat in Govan. He moved in to the once salubrious Luath Street, built for the “bowler hats” who once worked at Fairfield shipyards.

Now energised, he came up with several ideas to help rejuvenate this ailing community.

Paul set up a successful street party (having negotiated with the local drug dealers) and came up with the idea of an orchestra ensemble, the Glasgow Barons, as a focal point.

“Jobs are paramount,” he maintains. But the right strategies can coax a new thinking.”

The positivity in McAlinden’s voice is humbling. Did growing up gay in a docklands worlds toughen him up?

“It’s risky to say my experience has been character forming, because it could also have lead to suicide,” he says with a wry smile. “Dunfermline High in the Eighties was not a place to be gay. If you were gay or an intellectual you were pretty much doomed.

“And it was so difficult to keep the gay thing under wraps because I was a ballet dancer, and in little theatre productions I was all too often cast in drag.

“But what really toughened me up was Mum, my poor mother was a paranoid schizophrenic and society didn’t know how to deal with her. What it meant was we had to manoeuvre our lives around her.” Paul McAlinden has no regular partner. “I’m still feeling the loss of the orchestra,” he says, the blue Iraqi ensemble sweatshirt he’s wearing confirming his headspace.

Yet, the maestro, who fronts a classical music show on Sunny Govan Radio, is far from lost in his new space.

“I’d like to think that what I’m doing in Govan is worthwhile,” he says in soft voice. “And I feel at home here.” He adds, grinning; “You could say I’m totally in tune with what’s going on.”