Back in 2004 myself and Colin Murphy came up with a series of 4 humorous Irish cultural books. We'd a hard job selling it in to Irish Publishers. They felt that it wasn't really the done thing. "Irish cultural books were for the tourist market and that was a serious business."
Michael O'Brien from the O'Brien Press felt different. He thought they were hilarious and thought they'd sell well in the home market. He published the first four books. Slang, Recipies, Songs and Sayings to see if his hunch was right.
They were an instant hit. At one stage all 4 books featured in the Irish Best sellers list,The Feckin' book of Irish Slang hanging around on the best sellers list for a week short of a year.
So we did a few more and a few more after that. Barnes & Noble in the America asked us to produce work for the Irish American Market. The Feckin' book of everything Irish won a Benjamin Franklin Award over there
Meanwhile back in Ireland these little books were going from strength to strength. 'Stuff Irish People Love' sold out in nine days after it was published. For the second book we created a moving statue on the front cover.
From having only a rudimentary knowledge of Irish culture we were fast becoming the go to people when an interview was required. RTE, TV3, Radio 1, Newstalk, The Irish Independent, The daily Mail, everyone wanted to talk about our ways in a way that had never been done before. When the Queen came to visit The BBC asked us to do a light hearted film about our fractious relationship with Great Britain based on the Feckin' Book of Irish History and boy did we let 'em have it!
