KEANO - THE GHOST, NOT THE SPIRIT IS TO BLAME

‘Penguin books is rumoured to have paid about £1.4 m up front to Keane and his ghostwriter Eamon Dunphy, money it could not realistically have hoped to recover in sales. So before a word was commissioned it would have been demanding to see examples of the sort of juicy titbit that has now cost Keane the last vestige of a reputation but has doubtless brought in a tidy sum in newspaper serial rights, which is how publishers offset those large advances.

Anyone who has worked in this trade would understand the pressures to produce money-spinning copy. Dunphy, who always painted himself as a misunderstood footballer and has since turned himself into a respected, if maverick writer, might have seemed an ideal soulmate and father confessor for Keane. But ghostwriting requires complete trust between star and author. And it is an open question whether Dunphy, an intelligent man who would have calculated the impact of the Haaland revelations, has earned that by allowing what amounts to an admission of premeditated GBH to enter this sad tome.

Of course such books are not worth the paper they are written on if the reader does not believe that the sportsman is being completely straightforward about his or her life. But there are times when the writer has to act as a filter between brutal honesty and damaging, gratuitous admissions.’