After 23 years of trying to clear his name, Ian Bailey is bracing for the appellation he has always dreaded: convicted murderer.

A court in Paris is due to try the English former journalist this week for the 1996 murder of the French film-maker Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork, a bucolic Atlantic region known as the Irish riviera.

“They’re going to bonfire me,” said Bailey. “The tectonic plates of my life … are likely to shift horribly and hugely and cataclysmically because I’ll almost certainly be convicted.”

The trial – which he will not attend – is the latest twist in a cold case that has bewitched Ireland and a global audience of podcast listeners.

Soon after Toscan du Plantier’s battered body was found outside her holiday cottage on 23 December 1996, Irish police identified Bailey, who lived nearby, as the prime suspect.

Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s family believe a conviction for her death is long overdue. Photograph: Rex Features

The protracted, bungled investigation turned into a soap opera that remains unresolved: Irish prosecutors decided there was insufficient evidence to charge Bailey but many people – including French authorities – remain convinced he did it.

“It feels like medieval torture. I didn’t do it. I had nothing to do with it,” Bailey, 62, told the Guardian in an interview this week at his cottage in Lissacaha. “In Paris all they’ll do is convict an innocent man.”

Under French law a person suspected of murdering a French citizen in another jurisdiction can be tried in France. Three judges will rule on the case.

For the family of Toscan du Plantier, who was 39 when she was bludgeoned to death, a conviction will be long overdue and pave the way to potential extradition.

Her son, Pierre-Louis Baudey Vignaud, visited west Cork last week to urge witnesses to testify at the trial. “My mother, Sophie, is not a ghost, she is the victim of human cruelty and violence which has no place here,” he said in a public appeal. “Sophie fought like a lioness against the most atrocious violence there is … I can’t bear the thought of her blood seeping into your soil.”

Bailey’s lawyer, Frank Buttimer, said French authorities were transplanting a discredited Garda investigation to Paris with no new evidence. “It’s a show trial. A rubber-stamping exercise in determining his guilt. They can read into the record statements that were taken many years ago, including many that are discredited or downright bullshit.”

French authorities issued a European arrest warrant for Bailey in 2010. Irish courts twice rejected his extradition, citing flaws in French requests. A conviction in Paris could let French authorities try again and possibly succeed, said Buttimer.

Bailey is protected in Ireland, for now, but faces arrest and possible extradition if he leaves the jurisdiction. This deterred him attending his mother’s funeral in England. “He’s a prisoner here,” said Buttimer.

Ian Bailey at home in Lissacaha. Photograph: Johnny Savage/The Guardian

Bailey is a polarising figure. Considered by some to be a brute, pitied by others as a victim of persecution, it is an OJ Simpson style of celebrity. He ekes out a living by selling self-published poems and making pizzas that he sells at a weekly market.

“I’ve just got to stay calm,” he said. “If I do go down I’ll go like Nelson at Trafalgar, with both barrels smoking.” A risky metaphor, given the circumstances, but Bailey is outspoken.

In the 1980s, he ran a small news agency in Cheltenham that supplied stories to the Sunday Times, among others, before he drifted out of journalism. He wound up in west Cork, a haven for bohemian expatriates, in the early 1990s.

He dabbled as a poet and labourer and moved into the home of Jules Thomas, a Welsh woman, who remains his partner.

When Toscan du Plantier was killed, Bailey filed scoops about the case to Irish newspapers only to become the main suspect. Police said he had opportunity, scratch marks and a record of alcohol-fuelled violence against Thomas. Twice they arrested and freed him.

Daniel Toscan du Plantier attends the funeral of Sophie, his wife, with her son Pierre-Louis in Mauvezin, near Toulouse in December 1996. Photograph: Anais Nichole Brunel/Reuters

No forensic evidence linked Bailey to the scene. A witness who said she saw him out that night recanted her testimony. A British soldier-turned drifter said police plied him with cannabis to get him to spy on Bailey. Prosecutors excoriated the investigation and refused to prosecute.

Bailey said he thought the killer was an assassin sent by the victim’s late husband, Daniel Toscan du Plantier, or an Irish policeman, also dead, allegedly spotted speeding near the scene in a blue Ford Fiesta on the night of the murder. Neither theory has gained traction.

The case has left Bailey in limbo – notorious yet never charged.

A 13-part podcast titled West Cork by two UK producers has shone fresh light on the case, with Bailey an enigmatic central character who appears at times to enjoy the attention.

The director Jim Sheridan is making a documentary. “I’ve been filming for four years. We’ve enough footage to do six hours but I think our best route is a feature documentary,” he said.

The trial in Paris will provide further material for a saga with no apparent end.

“My number one priority is protecting my sanity,” said Bailey. “I’m actually quite relaxed at the moment. I do the lord’s prayer. I meditate. I find creative outlets.”

He sings, recites poetry, makes video diaries and has become a carpenter. Woodwork requires zen-like focus, he said, citing as inspiration Antonio Stradivari, who reputedly made a violin amid warfare in medieval Cremona.

Despite everything, Bailey said he was happy in Ireland and in no rush to leave. “Hopefully I’ll be leaving in a coffin rather than on a plane in handcuffs.”