His mother was Sheila Marie Eady and his father was the poet and playwright Sigerson Clifford, both from County Cork.
[4] He later moved to Barcelona, Spain, for several years to teach English before returning to London in the mid-1980s where he remained until his death.
[5] Ó Clúbhán was a founding member of the London agitprop Brixton Faeries gay theatre group based in Railton Road.
[5][1] His first play, Friends of Rio Rita's took its title from the LGBT slang term Friend of Dorothy and the drag queen Rio Rita in Brendan Behan's play The Hostage who Ó Clúbhán described as “probably the only gay character I know of in Irish drama”.
In recent years, his work is being re-examined: Professor Ed Madden of the University of South Carolina has carried out detailed research on Ó Clúbhán's works and hosted a Boston College Ireland symposium on Ó Clúbhán in 2017.