The Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind people love the bones of Roy Keane because he's been their greatest champion since Methuselah's pooch was a puppy. And for many a year us hacks would gather at a hotel in Stillorgan for the launch of their annual fundraising appeal and there'd be Roy, snuggling a baby Lab or being slurped by a Labradoodle.
"Jesus, my ovaries," would oft go up the cry from a quarter of the press pack, another half abstaining, the remaining quarter Roy-opposers and most probably cat people who'd never forgive him for Saipan. In that sense, Roy knows what Mary Lou is going through. You can't please everyone.
Ryan Tubridy, though, was beside himself. Tingling, even. Because Roy was one of his guests on The Late Late Show.
The absolutely brilliant moment when Man United fan Darragh Curley met Roy Keane on the #LateLate.
— The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) February 21, 2020
Text WOOF to 50300 to donate €4 to Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. pic.twitter.com/BXvoaYGxAK
“There’ve been grown men – and women – swooning in the office all day,” he told us, while doing that tappy-tap-dancing thing that he often does when his excitement over a name on his guestlist renders him giddy.
"How many Roy Keanes does it take to change a lightbulb?" he asked the audience.
He answered for them.
“One!”
The audience, no more than ourselves, didn't quite get the punchline, although you can kind of imagine that Roy wouldn't ever want help changing anything, not least a lightbulb, unless it was, say, Paul Scholes or Nicky Butt offering assistance. Otherwise, he'd shun all human intervention, not trusting them to track back and cover him while he burst forth and tried to wiggle the bulb into position.
Ryan, though, would let Roy change his bulb anytime. It might have been 11 years since Roy appeared on The Late Late, that being the year of Thierry's Hand of Dieu, but it's not like he's been a stranger to our telly screens of late, it being only Monday since he threw Jamie Carragher one of those death stares after Carragher had omitted Ryan Giggs from his combined Liverpool 2020/Manchester United 1999 XI.
Rest in peace, Jamie.
It was well after 11 when Roy finally appeared, the Late Late crew possibly worn out from scooping the poop deposited in the green room by Roy’s canine company.
“KEANO! KEANO!” the audience bellowed as he arrived wielding a puppy called Feile/Fayla, while the band played ‘REBEL! REBEL!’
And then 10-year-old Manchester United fan Daragh Curley, who wrote to Jürgen Klopp to ask him, not unreasonably, to stop Liverpool winning, arrived to take Feile/Fayla away, lest she widdle all over Roy’s shirt.
“What’s your dream,” Roy asked Daragh.
“To be a professional rugby player,” he replied.
It was a sure sign that Roy has mellowed, rather than pinning Daragh to the ceiling, with the veins popping out of his head, he just said “good boy”, like he was talking to one of his puppies.
Beyond that, we didn’t learn a tremendous amount.
“When I say Saipan what do you think?”
“It was a nice place.”
The FAI?
“It’s tough going, but maybe it had to get so bad that there was a new start, there had to be. I don’t think it’s all gloom and doom, I think things can change quickly, we know what sport is like, if Ireland qualify, the feel good factor . . . when I worked with the FAI, from a coaching point of view, I loved it, some brilliant people, fantastic.”
“Are you happy?”
“Fairly content.”
The main thing we learnt was that if you TEXT WOOF TO 50300 YOU CAN DONATE €4 TO GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND.
Beyond that? All we picked up was that it takes only one Roy Keane to change a lightbulb. It wasn’t, to be honest, worth the 11-year wait.
