One More Thing: Miriam O’Callaghan launches Citizen Quinn

For those of you (and there are plenty) who dislike business journalists, last Tuesday represents a missed opportunity.

A cruise missile fired at the Shelbourne hotel would have decimated the business departments of every media organisation in town.

Hacks swarmed there for the launch of Citizen Quinn, a new book about the rise and fall of the former billionaire Sean Quinn by Gavin Daly of the Sunday Times and the Sunday Business Post's Ian Kehoe.

Miriam O'Callaghan added a touch of glamour amidst the sea of grey suits, launching the book ahead of the Prime Time debate on the Seanad referendum. She said her bosses thought she was in the wardrobe department getting ready.

Invitation turned down
Kehoe mischievously revealed in his speech that Kieran Wallace, the ubiquitous KPMG insolvency partner, turned down an invitation to attend because he was "conflicted".

Is it because you are share receiver to the Quinn Group, Kehoe asked? No.

Because Wallace is receiver to the €500m international Quinn property portfolio? Nope.

Surely because the Quinns are suing him for €2.4 billion? Not that either.

Then it must be that he is also special liquidator to IBRC, the former Anglo Irish Bank where Quinn built a massive stake? Wrong again.

Wallace, who gets that many insolvency gigs, you’d need an accountant to keep track of them all, reckoned he’d keep his distance because he is receiver to a chunk of the Shelbourne hotel itself, Kehoe said.

Citizen Quinn – a great name for a movie, no? Comedian Oliver Callan is apparently helping producer James Mitchell with a script for a Quinn film, with Ciaran Hinds tipped to play the big man. In what was surely a coincidence, Callan was spotted at the book launch.

The protagonists themselves, the Quinn family, declined to attend.

Perhaps Penguin, the publishers, should have held the launch on the back of a trailer in Ballyconnell. I’m sure the Quinns would have provided the crowd.