JUST the other week, David MacLennan saw Woody Allen being interviewed on television by Andrew Marr, who asked if he was happy. Summoning that cranky ruefulness which in Allen is as close as it gets to charisma, the movie auteur replied: "Well, as far as it is possible to be happy in the human condition."

That qualification resonated with MacLennan because it chimed with his experience of fortune's vagaries over the past eight years; a time in which he has travelled from being branded publicly as past his sell-by date to being now the applauded proof that his detractors were wrong.

On February 6, MacLennan will resume his impresario role as the man who makes a drama out of lunchtime when the fourth season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint opens at Oran Mor in Glasgow, with The Matinee Idle by young, Scottish newcomer Daniel Jackson. These days MacLennan, on the crest of accumulated good reviews, is confident that the latest tranche of works will further tease and engage an audience hungry for bite-size theatre. "For Daniel this will be the first professional performance of one of his plays, " he says. "And with Liz Lochhead directing, it'll be an interesting combination of youth and experience."

Can we again expect the looming presence of Robbie Coltrane this season? "Well, I haven't got Robbie this time, but I am talking to two biggish names for later productions, although I can't reveal their identities just yet. I'm not being coy, it's simply that we cast close to deadline and things aren't quite confirmed."

The repertoire now consists of 30 plays a year, each no longer than 45 minutes; a form of speed drama devised for pressured lives. "I first saw lunchtime theatre in Edinburgh at a venue called The Pool in the early 1970s and I thought it was terrific. So, when Colin Beattie was establishing Oran Mor as a gathering place for the arts, I put the idea to him and he thought the location was perfect for it." Technically the production demands are simple: no pyrotechnics, a minimum of props and if three actors are together on stage that's pretty much a crowd scene.

"For us, it's the words which matter and what the audience also likes is that - apart from a pie and a pint - they don't really know what they're getting. Will the play be tragic, comic or drawn from history? It's partly this element of chance which is bringing people back." MacLennan could be forgiven for musing on all this with a certain sense of smug revenge. Instead, his impeccable manners prevail and his tone is one of quiet delight.

Yet in 1997, when the Scottish Arts Council pulled the plug on the GBP200,000 touring grant previously allocated to Wildcat - the groundbreaking theatre company he founded 20 years earlier with actor Dave Anderson - it was a bleak winter indeed. No sooner had the bad news broken than some of Scotland's most distinguished actors, writers and committed theatre-goers rallied to Wildcat's support, many ferocious in their criticism of what MacLennan described then as "this narrow-minded, elitist, little clique which deliberates behind closed doors".

But the protests reversed nothing. With the speed of the guillotine's whistling blade the end came for Wildcat. Now, with the announcement that the Scottish Executive- in line with the Cultural Commission's proposals - will reduce the Scottish Arts Council's sphere of control, MacLennan must surely feel a tremor of schadenfreude. "Well, as our national arts institutions will now deal directly with the executive, my sympathy is with those smaller outfits still stuck with the SAC under its different name."

IN THE NEW ARRANGEMENT, THE arts council will now become Creative Scotland and technically remain a quango. "But, in my view, bodies like the arts council have been a police force against the arts not an agent for their encouragement."

Working solo, he set about reviving The Celtic Story, wrote a couple of one-man shows forAnderson and a few scripts for Balamory, the children's TV series which stars his wife, the actress, Juliet Cadzow. Now, of course, with the success of the Oran Mor project, MacLennan is back in the driving seat and the phone never stops ringing.

"That's understandable. This is a small country and folkwant to know you when things are on the up. But life's downs-and-ups make you keep taking a reality check. What I've learned over the past eight years is that I was never as bad as the bad publicity made out. Yet nor am I as good as my good publicity today."

Such reflections will be construed by MacLennan's enemies as nothing other than long-festering sour grapes, but the fact is they present a sharp parable on the world of arts funding in general. "I would never refuse public funding but now I would be very nervous of becoming entirely dependent on it. From the beginning of A Play etc; I was lucky enough to get Orange on board as sponsors and they've been great. It was they, for instance, who suggested creating the Orange Playwriting Prize.

"I have a couple of meetings a yearwith them and that's it. But with the arts council I was never out of meetings and latterly I spent 90-per cent of my time writing reports on performance indicators, equal opportunities policy and so on, to the point of suffocation."

With his three siblings, including Elizabeth MacLennan, the actress, MacLennan grew up in a Glasgow household where drama was a rumbustuous element of daily life. Their parents were eminent doctors, Sir Hector MacLennan, an obstetrician at Rottenrow, and their mother prominent in public health. "She was Labour and he was what we now call an old-fashioned Tory, and they argued all the time. They argued about India gaining independence. They argued about Suez. They argued about National Service. You name it, they argued about it."

At Dowanhill Street, the address of the family home, Jimmy Logan was a neighbour along with William Robieson, a former editor of The Herald, and the curator, Tom Honeyman, who brought the Dali to Kelvingrove Art Gallery.

"So there were a lot of people in and out who were interested in the arts and politics." But it was childhood holidays at the village of Rogart in Sutherland which sparked MacLennan's interest in story-telling.

"Up there my father had three best friends - a gamekeeper, a garage owner and a crofter. In the evening they would arrive at our cottage and he would get out a bottle of whisky, throwing the cork on the fire, with the immortal line: 'We won't be needing that again, tonight.'And, of course, the stories would start. They all knew them inside out but it was the telling and embellishing that was the attraction. That, I suppose, is the origin of theatre: the audience allows you to tell even whopping porkies if they're true to the spirit of the story."

But why do we need the arts? "Well, I know why I need them. It's because they hugely enrich my understanding of fellow human beings." And, to nurture this end, David MacLennan would like to see the arts further upgraded to stand alongside health and education in the nation's priorities. It's a holisitic approach, he says, for one very simple reason: the way a people's culture is allowed to breathe affects their sensitivity, their learning, their very wellbeing.

HIT PARADE OF A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT

First season (autumn 2004):

The Genesis Rock by Peter Arnott, now translated into Swedish for performance at The Soup Theatre, Stockholm. The Head of Red O'Brien, by Mark O'Halloran, from Bewleys Cafe Theatre, Dublin.

Second season (spring 2005):

The Brother's Suit by Peter McDougall, starring Robbie Coltrane (pictured). A Walk In The Park by Dave Anderson, now in Spanish translation for performance in Pamplona. The Price of A Fish Supper by Catherine Lucy Czerkawska, due for transmission on Radio 4.

Third season (autumn, 2005):

The Importance of Being Alfred, the first play by awardwinning novelist, Louise Welsh. Triumvirate by long-distinguished novelist, Allan Massie who, as a school master 34 years ago, directed pupil MacLennan in the lead in Charley's Aunt.

Fourth season (spring 2006): The Matinee Idle by Daniel Jackson and directed by Liz Lochhead. (From February 6).

Conversations in Havana by Mike Gonzales, professor of Latin American Studies, Glasgow University, revolving around exchanges between Castro and Che Guevara, and Che and his wife. (From February 13). Burns On The Solway by Catherine Lucy Czerkawska; her second play for MacLennan, this one exploring the love between Robert Burns and Jean Armour. (From February 20).