“I'd never had ambitions to write a book,” says Ryan Tubridy. “I was approached by Harper Collins, who said, ‘I think you’ll make history interesting for people’. And when they said they could make a really good product out of it, I knew it would be good. I care a lot about the presentation of the material. I’m all about quality — I don’t like shoddy.” His first tome promises to be anything but. It’s about John F Kennedy’s visits to Ireland —yes, visits, plural. Many people don’t know that, long before his historic state visit in 1963, JFK visited the land of his ancestors several times.

It’s genuinely fascinating stuff, and Tubridy’s enthusiasm is infectious. “It’s a goldmine!” he says of his quest for Kennedy artifacts. “I’m hoping that people who read this article will be able to rummage in their own cupboards, because I want to publish photographs and letters that no-one has seen before. Things such as this telegram are officialdom, and even then most people have never seen it before, so that’s really interesting. “But I know he must have written private letters and thank-you cards and notes.” The book will reproduce as many artifacts as possible.

Saturday 20th June, Irish Independent.