Barry Egan has been writing for Ireland's top selling newspaper, The Sunday Independent, for almost twenty years now. His interviews in that paper are famous. He has interviewed Pamela Anderson at her home in Los Angeles (Egan turned up in a police car at her house when his driver got arrested for parking in the wrong space and Egan asked one of the arresting officers for a lift to the Baywatch star's house); and Yoko Ono at the apartment she shared with John Lennon in Manhattan (Gabriel Bynre turned up with holes in his socks to assist Egan in the interview.). There was also a four day bender in Rome in 2001 with the late Frank McCourt and a long lunch in Claridges in London with Elizabeth Hurley for the Sunday Independent where she talked about the rumours of her and spanking. Egan went on the lash with Paul McCartney in Munich in 2002 and in San Francisco with Bono in 1993. (Egan's subsequent interview with Bono was published over twelve pages in America's influential Creem magazine.) There are also vivid encounters over the years with Van Morrison, Paul Newman (on a racetrack), Dolly Parton, Paris Hilton (Los Angeles), Carla Bruni (London), Andrea Corr (Miami, Stockholm and Suffolk), Jane Birkin (Paris) and Diana Ross.
Barry, who was born in Churchtown in September 1967, has also covered the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the aftermath of the war in the Kosova in 1999 for the Sunday Independent. Following U2 on tour around America and Europe in 1993 was probably almost as truamatic. U2 were not enamoured of what he wrote. Asked in the Whoseday charity book in 1999 what he would do in the new Millennium, U2 guitarist The Edge wrote: "Forgive Barry Egan." The line was used for the TV ad to launch the book.
Egan did his first interview when he was 18: he interviewed The Smiths for In Dublin magazine in 1987. He had just finished his Leaving Cert at De La Salle College. The following summer he was in New York with Sinead O'Connor interviewing her for the cover of New Musical Express. Egan's work as music writer has been published all over the world (Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Australia.) He writes a hugely popular social column every week in the Sunday Independent. Red-haired Egan wrote a coffee table book on redheads that came out in Europe in 1999. He also wrote the Corrs' American and European tour programme foreword in 2002. He is the proid godfather to Zack.
He is currently working on a novel. "Isn't everyone?" he says.
