Edenderry journalist to launch memoir

Well known Offaly journalist with The Irish Daily Star Kevin Farrell from Edenderry next week launches his personal memoir 'It's all news to me', which will lift the lid on details of both Mr Farrell's life as well as the stories he has been involved with since becoming a journalist. Mr Farrell is keeping things local, with editor of The Star Ger Colleran making the trip to Mr Farrell's home town on Saturday week, November 19, to launch the book as part of a live 'Dukebox Saturday' show with Midlands 103's Ricey Scully. In 2009, when Mr Farrell was being treated for liver sclerosis, doctors discovered a cancerous tumour that could not be removed. He's since had a liver transplant and though he's still unable to work and gets tired quite easily he's on the road to recovery. While he says he had been working on the book before his illness, after his liver transplant he got assistance from friends to finish it off. "It opens with my transplant and how it came about," he said this week. 'It's all news to me' includes "stomach churning" details on the brutal regime at Daingean's borstal school that Mr Farrell wrote a story on during his time as a Sunday World journalist. He also details how he became part of a story he was reporting on in November 2001, when he found kidnapped Moate schoolgirl Mary Joyce. The Midland journalist was in Lourdes when Monsignor Horan died and in Agadir in Morocco when two men were killed in a jetski accident, leading to him getting the nickname the 'Midland Reaper'. The book isn't just about Mr Farrell's successful career as a journalist however. It also includes many stories from his time in the entertainment business in Edenderry, where from the age of 15 he was "promoting dances across the midlands in dance rooms, ballrooms and marquees" before going on to music management. The book contains details of Mr Farrell's charge in 1971 - the youngest recording artist in the world, five year old Michael Landers. Details of this are all in the book, as well as stories of Johnny Logan winning £4 for coming second in a singing competition at the Copper Beech cabaret lounge in Edenderry where Mr Farrell was Entertainment Manager and Louis Walsh engraving the band title 'The Time Machine' in the paybox of Edenderry's town hall in a bid to engrave it on Mr Farrell's memory too. Few may know Kevin Farrell also gave boxer Barry McGuigan one of his first breaks, details of which are also featured in the book. Details too are included of the Edenderry Entertainers Commemorative Committee, which Mr Farrell co-founded, and of the monument the group erected in St Mary's cemetery last year to commemorate all of the local entertainers who had passed away. Saturday week's launch will bring together music and journalism, with Mr Farrell's colleague Ger Colleran performing the honours launching the book that is an Irish Daily Star publication and his many musician friends coming along for a cabaret in Larkin's, where the launch is taking place. The book, priced €11.99, will be available to buy from the launch date in local newsagents and most book shops.