Kellie Harrington revealed on this week's Late Late Show that she was determined to get Roddy Doyle to work with her on her autobiography, admitting: "I’m a little bit of a stalker when I need to be".
The Dublin boxer's collaboration with Roddy Doyle has resulted in the book Kellie, which tells the story of an inner city kid who overcame her troubled youth to become one of Ireland’s most treasured sporting heroes.
She told Ryan Tubridy: "First of all, when the opportunity came to do a book, it was only going to be with Roddy. And Roddy said that he was very busy, that he couldn’t do it. So I got his number - I’m a little bit of a stalker when I need to be - I texted him and asked if I could meet him for a coffee.
"And when I met him I said: 'Listen, the opportunity’s come, I can do a book, I don’t mind if I don’t do the book - but if I am doing it, it has to be with you. I’m not doing it with anybody else. So I’ll leave it with you Roddy. Think about it.’
"He rang me then, I think the next day, and he said he spoke to his wife and the two of them thought it was a great idea. Well, I did tell him a bit about my life when I met him . . . and he thought there was a good book in it."
Ryan then asked the obvious next question: "Why him?"
"I just think he’s absolutely fantastic," she replied. "When I actually met him in person, and the more I got to know him - as well as him getting to know me - I just think he’s really, really incredible. So funny. Absolutely hilarious!"
Ryan then asked Kellie about the book’s alternate title. Kellie smiled and told him: "I wanted to call it The Scrapper," which got a big round of applause from the Late Late Show audience.
"Roddy said: ‘That’s too me, and it’s your book.’ He also made a point: ‘You’re not really a scrapper.’
"He didn't know about boxing before he met me, but at the end of it he was very clued-in. ‘But you’re not a scrapper Kellie. You’re a very technical fighter.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, hold on a minute!’ He learned so much.
"I didn’t learn anything," she added, tongue clearly in cheek. "But he learned loads."
Fresh from her gold medal win at the European Championships, Kellie Harrington also spoke to Ryan about her journey to boxing success and the many setbacks and obstacles she overcame along the way.
"I was 13, I was heading down the wrong road. I was drinking, I was taking pills, getting into trouble in school, I was doing a bit of free-fingered discount here and there. Everything I was doing was wrong. I knew everything I was doing was wrong and I just needed to change.
"I’d so many people who believed in me. Not as an athlete, but as a person . . . that there was a good person there."
She spoke about how school wasn’t for her, and about her shoplifting - and getting caught. Then Ryan mentioned "the fork in the road," adding that Kellie’s parents "come out of this book really well". Then boxing came along.
"Ryan, I always say that boxing saved my life. And the more I think of it, it’s not that boxing saved my life, it’s more the [boxing] club. The people there, and volunteers there. When you step through the doors you become a part of a family."
She also noted that boxing gave her "a different type of adrenaline to what I was getting outside." Once she got a taste for it, she never looked back.
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