`The Bestest Daddy'

Writing the excellently-titled Our Father, their tribute to Dermot Morgan, was a chance for his sons to "put right some misinformation" there was about Dermot around the time of his death, says his middle son, Bobby. His birthday for a start - apparently due to a news agency giving his date of birth as March 3rd 1952 rather than 31st, the mistake was repeated regularly - in fact Dermot Morgan didn't die just two days before his birthday. Also, says Bobby, his mother Susanne was described as Dermot's "estranged wife". This was "not the case at all - they were the best of friends. It made our mother sound like a bit of a crackpot". The truth is, he says, they just grew apart slowly. The book was an attempt at "setting the record straight between them".

When Dermot Morgan (aged 45) died suddenly in March this year at a high point in his career, the country seemed to go into shock; the airwaves and newspapers went into a week of mourning and recollection of one of Ireland's great comic and satiric minds. His career had had many ups and downs, and his untimely death, when the future finally seemed to be looking great, was particularly cruel.

Obviously for his family - his partner Fiona Clarke and their child Ben, his ex-wife Susanne Morgan and their two boys Don and Bobby - it was much more personally tragic. Less than nine months after Dermot's death, his three sons Don (19), Bobby (18) and Ben (5), have written this tribute to their Dad. The cover describes it as in the best traditions of an Irish wake, which is a good description of the tone and content: it's a mixture of chronological biography, short tributes from family and friends and lots of scripts - from Father Trendy to Scrap Saturday to a variety of songs and skits.

"It was a chance to see other sides of him we hadn't known about. Like, I was never sure what he had done in college or about the projects he worked on back then," says Bobby Morgan. They wrote it from the perspective of remembering the events as children and teenagers, and from talking to friends and colleagues. Their mother reminded them of deadlines, kept them "sane and real about things", and "she and Fiona were always on our side".

Piecing together the different aspects of their father's short life must have been both difficult and rewarding. "It was cathartic, yeah, but not therapeutic in terms of coming to terms with his death - you get by in other ways. The biggest role has always been of friends, and talking about it." Don and Bobby worked on it together from early June, but Don did most of the actual legwork and narrative; Bobby had a new summer job and was busy organising a charity football tournament - his father's son, clearly. Bobby has been handling a lot of the media interest - "my brother calls me a media whore," he laughs. The book is celebratory - and entertaining - and paints a portrait of a warm, creative man, endlessly enthusiastic, totally committed to his family, who suffered a number of professional setbacks, but did some terrific, enduring work. His many run-ins with RTE figure, of course. After the Dermot Morgan Show was reduced from a series to a single programme in 1983, Don writes: "I remember it nearly killed him. He was extremely glum about everything and had little if any confidence anymore about anything he did." There was the "seeming lack of understanding on RTE's part of what the Scrap team was doing" and then its mysterious scrappage. Later, in 1993 or '94, when the proposed Newshounds was ditched at the last moment, "Dermot was totally shattered, actually broken by what RTE had decided to do. I can remember him being possessed with anger, frustration and despair". At times of disappointment he drove, walked, watched The Godfather "and thought up elaborate schemes about how to get even: that usually cheered him up". And he always bounced back with a new plan. His partner Fiona Clarke writes: "Nothing came to him the easy way - he never gave in and he never gave up and he never became bitter - angry but not bitter".

Fiona's contribution starts: "To be loved by Dermot was incredible and so, losing him is totally devastating. There are no words to describe it and there is nothing anyone can do to take away the pain. I just loved him so much and now he is gone." She writes about how he would play for hours with Ben and was totally involved in his life. His brother Donagh, who worked (sometimes uncomfortably!) in the Department of the Taoiseach during the Scrap years - talks about Dermot's passion for his family, his work, and football. His sister Denise writes about the "active volanco" of life at home, the verbal fencing at mealtimes and Dermot's quiet kindnesses. His ex-wife Susanne recalls the magic of meeting him in Dublin in 1977, his bringing champagne to the hospital after the boys' births, how "he loved being a dad. He could play rough and tumble with them . . . but also be very, very calm and show a crying child the moon in the middle of the night."

And little Ben's poignant piece: ". . . he was my Dad and I loved him so much. He was the funniest man in the whole world and everybody loved him. He was the bestest Daddy in the whole world." Although young Ben couldn't contribute much on a practical level, "there's no way we wouldn't include Ben in it," says Bobby protectively. "We look out for Ben, we know he needs help. He wasn't old enough to do something like that and when he is old enough we don't know if the interest will still be there." The book came about through Edwin Higel, publisher of New Island Books and a family friend - his son is Bobby's best friend and the boys had done bits of work at launches and in the office for him. "I'd be lying if I said we ever thought of the idea - we wouldn't have had the confidence to do it without Edwin Higel. We knew him, we knew it was a genuine approach, that he really cared, that it was not just a quick buck. The money is not our primary concern."

Bobby describes the book as closer to biography than anthology and says that while there is scope for further collections of his father's work, "I don't think that much more can be said about his life, except perhaps the late 1980s and early 1990s. Any other biography would be flogging a dead horse. We're happy we did it."

Our Father is published by New Island Books (£9.99)