In 1996 Joe Jackson, a journalist from The Irish Times, sat down with Eamon Dunphy, at his request , and interviewed the Irish ex-footballer, sports commentator, and author of books such as The Unforgettable Fire: The Story of U2, for 11 hours over a two-day period. It was one of the longest interviews Jackson ever conducted and is still regarded by Dunphy as "definitive." At the time it created a media furore in Ireland, particularly in terms of dump his attacks on Irish broadcasting legends such as Gay Byrne, Gerry Ryan and Pat Kenny.However inexplicably removed from the magazine in which the two-part article appeared was, for example, Dunphy's sometimes scathing commentary on U2, in terms of his experience with the band, before and after he wrote their official biography. That section has been restored for this, the first full, uncensored version of the legendary interview, which the author has based on his original typescript.Also included is a follow-up interview in 2000, which address many of the claims made in the previous interview and the controversies it fired. The author has written a new backstory for all interviews, which tells of many nights he spent partying with Eamon Dunphy and the night clubs of Dublin, when the city was a cultural capital of the world, during the 1990s. "There are other versions of the 1996 interview available," says Jackson, "but, as with that U2 anecdote, they are heavily edited and not at all representative of the once-in-a-lifetime experience I had with Eamon Dunphy, or the tale I tell for the first time in detail in this book." The book accompanies Jackson's new podcast series, The Joe Jackson Interviews Podcast in which one edition focused on the 1996 Eamon Dunphy interview.
