When I first attempted to join the staff of the Irish Times, I hadn’t even heard of Douglas Gageby. I had an introduction to Seamus Kelly and worked that line for a time until, after dozens of phone calls to the ‘Irishman’s Diary’ office which—to my innocent surprise and eventual disillusionment—were never answered and never returned, I knocked on the door of Conor O’Brien at the Evening Press and got a job.