Roy Keane was in stellar form at the Olympia on Thursday. He was being interviewed by Matt Cooper at a night in aid of Barretstown.
In terms of his playing career, his humour was at 1999 Champions League semi-final levels. Though Keane did eschew suggestions from Matt Cooper that he dragged Manchester United over the line on that night against Juventus.
Questions were fielded from the audience during the 140 minute interview with one member asking about the origins of the 'Keane and Vieira: Best of Enemies' documentary which aired in December of 2013.
As with many great ideas, it started in the pub.
I did a couple games for ITV and one of the producers his name was Tony Pastor. He was the producer, nice fella, decent guy. He's in the background in it.
He got me into ITV a little bit and he said to me one night, and I think he was drunk, I wasn't. He said that he was thinking of setting up his own production company. He said 'If I ever set it up, would you do something with Patrick [Vieira]?'
I said 'yeah' thinking it'll never happen, he's drunk [very loud laughter].
Three years later, he starts his own production company, gets in touch, he says you remember that [conversation]. I say 'yeah'.
We did it with Patrick and it was fine.
I don't like putting myself out there too much, believe it or not. Says he who's done two books [laughter].
I always thought the programme was a bit cheesy but I always do. Punters and fans they are interested but people want to know what you had for you breakfast, what's the name of you daughter. People are intrigued by that.
He went on to say that making the documentary had nothing to do with ego, it was simply about 'doing someone a favour'.
I knew Tony would do a half decent job. I knew he was a switched on guy.
So when he set up his production company and said 'would you do it?', I said 'well I did say I would', again thinking it would never happen.
There was a good response to the programme but it wasn't an ego trip. I just thought I'd do a favour for somebody.
You can listen to the full interview here.
