Billed as the book that made Terry Keane spill the beans, Sweetie is finally arriving on a bookshelf near you.
The invitation to the launch of Sweetie has a real sweet, a Dolly Mixture, stuck to it and a warning that admission to the bash is by invitation only.
Speaking from his home in Co Wicklow yesterday the author and publisher of Sweetie, Kevin O'Connor, described the controversial book as being a Clint Eastwoodlike spin on the life and times of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey.
"It's the good, the bad and the ugly," he said of Sweetie, which goes on sale tomorrow.
And despite his protestations that only part of the book is about the now very public adulterous relationship between gossip columnist Terry Keane and Mr Haughey, most people will be buying it for the chandelier-swaying details of the champagne-swigging couple's torrid affair.
Until recently it seemed as though Sweetie would be the most talked about book never published. There was speculation that publishers were unwilling to take the risk for legal reasons, and Mr O'Connor is now publishing it himself under the company name of K.O. Publication Ltd.
Just a few weeks ago the book was the subject of a legal action in the High Court. A woman employed by Mr Haughey as a groom around the time of the famous Haughey-fell-off-a-horse incident in 1970 took action against Mr O'Connor, whose book presented a far sleazier version of how Mr Haughey received his injuries.
Mr O'Connor was forced to delay publication and had to undertake not to publish anything about the woman other than text agreed by both parties.
What with all the last-minute hitches to be ironed out and curious colleagues endeavouring to elicit some of the book's more salacious details, Mr O'Connor wasn't really in the mood to talk yesterday. He didn't want to talk about the content of the book, the fall off the horse, his employers at the Sunday Independent or even the design of the cover.
He did admit the publicity and the court case had been "stressful", but he felt good now that it was all over. "It's been a long, tough, tenacious search for the truth," he said.
He had spoken in recent months about being threatened as a result of what he planned to reveal about Haughey in the book. The threats had now abated, he said, but one incident still rankled.
"There was somebody hiding behind the ash bin in our garden holding what was either a gun or a camera," he said. The man ran away after Mr O'Connor released his Rottweiler, but the intruder's identity is still a mystery.
The author expects the book to be in the shops this evening, in time for the official launch at the Writers' Museum in Parnell Square in Dublin tomorrow.
Mr O'Connor said he had received "fantastic interest" from booksellers throughout the State at the prospect of the book, which is a paperback priced at £12.95. The initial 10,000 print run is being distributed by Easons, and yesterday its book's marketing manager, Mr Tom Owens, said he expected it "to do quite well."
At Waterstone's in Dublin a spokeswoman said that 100 copies had been ordered for the store, 75 more than they ordered of the Monica Lewinsky autobiography last March. "I suppose it is the titillation element, and we expect to sell a lot of it," she said.