In addition to presenting his weekday ratings topper on RTÉ Radio 1, Duffy is spreading the word on his best-selling book Children of the Rising and the RTÉ One documentary based on the book, Children of the Revolution.
The idea for the book came from a children’s charity fundraising project that Joe was asked to do for the Jack and Jill Foundation where he had to decorate an Easter egg: "I was asked by Jack and Jill to paint an egg. I thought it was a small, little Easter Egg but then this big Easter egg arrived in the office. I remember it vividly; we had to remove Pat Kenny from his desk. I said: ‘Pat you’re outta here! I think he took umbrage. Where is he now?!"
Joking aside, he continued: "Anyway, we had to make space for this big egg. I brought it home over Christmas 2013 and looked at it and I tried a landscape, wouldn’t work. I tried Bono’s head, wouldn’t fit!
"Then I said to myself, this is so obvious: Jack and Jill’s a children charity for very sick children. Easter in Dublin, is the Easter Rising, on display all around the city. How many children were injured in the Easter Rising? I asked a few people and nobody knew. 500 books published [at the time] on the Easter Rising, barely a mention. Thousands of witness statements of the combatants, barely a mention.
"They represent such a significant part, numerically, the people who were killed and that’s where the project began. The egg went out there and some of the names were wrong and some of the ages were wrong, it was totally incomplete and that’s when I started to get a reaction. People were saying hang on, didn’t aunt Nelly mention that her father’s [older] brother was killed in the Rising before he [her father] was born?"
His decision to write the book was made: "I think their stories deserve to be told, I really do. I really believe they are part of our history.
"They were totally ignored in 1966 [the 50th anniversary of 1916] and the aim is just to try and start with the children to try and get them into the narrative".
It’s a great story, one that Duffy is very passionate about and it has since gone on to form the basis of a new documentary which will be broadcast on Easter Sunday night at 9.35pm on RTÉ One, namely Children of the Revolution. However the story almost didn’t get told or at least Joe’s book may have remained a dream, never to go on to become a best-seller. Two book publishers turned it down before Hachette decided to back it.
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On Easter Monday the broadcaster will present a special programme, Joe Duffy Live from O’Connell Street from 1.30pm to 3pm on RTÉ Radio 1. The show will go back in time to 1916 and will re-enact events of that fateful day in real time.
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