It's really unsettling to be cornered by some wild-eyed, spittle-spraying weirdo telling you his crazy theory about what supermarkets do with the data from customer loyalty cards. But, in fairness, Jim Corr listened very politely to my rant about store cards.

"It's more geopolitics that I have got interested in," Jim pointed out, helpfully.

Jim also came across as Mr Normal Dad in relation to Brandon, his two-year-old son with ex-girlfriend, Gayle Williamson. Brandon is going to be brought up Catholic.

Before the interview, I had visions of a goggle-eyed Jim engaging in all-night Googling sessions. "I love my sleep!" he chuckled, dispelling the image.

Jim insisted that he has to take a break from the stuff he's interested in. "You cannot allow it to totally overwhelm you," he said. "I try not to let it affect my life in a negative way."

He's not even bothered that negative publicity might damage his musical success.

Jim discounted the theory that conspiracies are ways for the human mind to make sense of traumatic events, such as Diana's death or the assassination of JFK.

"It's a very common psychology used to explain why people use their own ability to explain why they think critically about stuff. It's also common to say that many other truth-seekers on the planet — who have been found out to have been absolutely right about what they have been saying — that they're of unsound mind or that they've had a troubled background. I have not had a troubled background. I don't believe I'm of unsound mind," the Dundalk man said.

He's still passionate about music — his favourite bands are Coldplay and Keane — and is also a deeply humane guy, who's clearly still devastated about his beloved mother's death eight years ago.

"It's pretty bad. Anyone who goes through the loss of a parent knows what it's like. It's awful. You learn to accept it, you do over time. You get on with it."

He loves to talk about his dad, with whom he seems to have a very close relationship. "We can talk about anything. We may not always agree, but he's a very bright, intelligent man. I've learned an awful lot from him.”

A couple of months ago, he was Jim Corr of world-renowned group the Corrs, the bloke with three beautiful sisters. Now, he’s the poster boy for internet conspiracy theorists and a leading anti-Lisbon campaigner.

He doesn't like the term conspiracy theorist and prefers to be known as a truth-seeker.

Up until three years ago, Jim wasn't that bothered about current affairs. He was in London's Soho on the day of 9/11 and, at the time, he believed the official line that it was an al-Qaeda attack.

"I have been mostly sleepwalking around this planet for most of my life. I never really took an interest in politics, or global politics for that matter," he says.

It was only three years ago, when the band went off the road, that Jim first looked at clips on Google Videos about 9/11 and became interested — very interested. He avidly watched documentaries such as Loose Change and 9/11 Mysteries and devoured books, such as 9/11 Synthetic Terror. Now, he believes a war on democracy has been launched, and that there is a secret government behind many western democracies.

"I think that people should research for themselves and look at the reality that there's a whole secret government of the West, consisting of elements of the elite banking families and elements within European royalty and aristocracy, and it is widely believed now that the likes of Blair and Brown are both puppets way down the chain of command.

"The biggest concern to me is this push towards global governance. This push towards a one-world government. The agenda is basically to merge the European Union with the Asian Pacific Union and the African Union and the North American Union."

It's quite disconcerting to hear Jim come out with these theories because he's a balanced and chilled-out guy on most levels.

The first step in rationalising why Jim Corr believes these theories is to remember that he has lived a surreal existence for a long time — dinners with Nelson Mandela and, ironically, several visits to the White House to see both Presidents Clinton and Bush.

He also spoke of the madness of touring with three of his siblings for many years: "It is difficult. We were lucky, we generally had a good relationship. We all certainly had our moments. What kept us together doing this was the love of music and the love of performing."

Now, he dabbles in property development, and the other band members have been busy with their own lives. He needed something else to engage his attention once the band stopped playing.

Talking about religion and spirituality, Jim put forward his theory on Christianity. "I believe that we've been duped into worshipping the sun, if you look at the birth sequence and the death sequence in relation to Jesus Christ, you will discover that it totally relates to the sun.

"What I mean by that is that on the 25th of December, in the belt of Orion, you have three stars and they line up with the brightest star in the sky, which is Osiris, which lines up with exactly the point where the sun rises on December 25.

"Those three stars in the belt of Orion are known to this day as the three kings. Three wise kings that follow the brightest star in the sky, to meet where Jesus is born. It's the sun. I believe that we've been duped into worshipping the sun," he says.

On global-warming, he says: "I believe that the anthropological global warming is a scam; I believe that man-made warming is a scam. The earth is actually in a cooling phase. The reason I doubt this is because scientists were able to determine that, in fact, the entire solar system at one point was heating up. And, indeed, the ice caps on Mars were receding.

"And SUVs on planet earth couldn't possibly be doing that, so what is? It must be the sun. The sun is going through a cyclical period of intense luminosity and indeed scientists were able to prove that by taking ice-core samples from the South and North Pole, and they have been able to establish that, indeed, it's cyclical. It's periodic, it happens."

He believes that climate change is now being used as another method of control of the citizenry and is a revenue-raising ruse.

Jim is also suspicious of the current oil shortage. "Forgive me if I sound like I see scams everywhere — I don't — but certainly in those issues I do.

"I believe peak oil is a scam designed to create artificial scarcity. Go and watch Google Video, the documentary, The Energy Non Crisis," he said.

Jim explained just how driven he is. "I used to do this thing called creative visualisation, and this might be out there for some people, but for a lot, it won't.

"I got into meditation years ago. You basically get yourself into a deep state of relaxation and then you creatively visualise what it is you want. Now, you’ve got to do an awful lot of work with it at the same time. But I think it played its part in possibly helping me and us (The Corrs).

"You're trying to reinforce a goal in your subconscious that will feed thought into your conscious.”

Applying the same intensity to his truth-seeking, he found himself compelled to go public with what he had learned.

"I found myself studying that for three years, and what do I do with that knowledge? I've stuck my neck out and I've taken the flak for it and people can make up their own minds about the information that I'm presenting."