Eamonn McCann

But I eventually pieced together the story so that when McGill was being thought up, a new magazine was being planned, and Brown, as I said to you earlier, he didn't get the editorship of the Sunday Independent, he couldn't launch his own Sunday newspaper, so McGill became the substitute.

But when those discussions were underway and there were meetings with people like Eamon McCann, the civil rights campaigner and journalist, Gay Byrne, the Hand brothers, one who was a concert promoter and the other was senior journalist in Dublin, and Noel Pearson, concert promoter as well, and laterally became famous with My Left Foot, the film.

They would meet and others and Brown would be testing the idea of what type of magazine and, you know, he was influenced by American magazines.

The Time magazine was usually important and the red border on the cover.

It had to be there, this red border.

So Brown had a view for the magazine, but he didn't have a title.

And at one stage, Eamon McCann suggested, well, why don't you call it Vincent Brown's Periodical? But they hit on the title after a long evening of drinks in the Shelburne Hotel.

And those collection of individuals came out of the hotel afterwards and there were an exchange of words between two of them, one of them Vincent Brown.

Like all good comedy, it's close to the truth, you know, in a lot of...

It's as Eamon McCann was at...

He was given evidence in a trial and he was asked by defense counsel.

He was appearing for the defense.

Yeah

... actually, Eamonn McCann, I used to babysit for Eamonn McCann, and he'd come in-

It's a small world [laughs]

Hasn't it? Ah, God.