The unreliable AI-generated interview transcript on my phone thinks Matt Cooper’s new book Dynasty is about Dull Stories, which is exactly what the Dunnes Stores saga is not. Power battles, political fallout, a globally historic strike, a notorious cocaine blowout – the Dunnes drama has everything, including a cameo role for the IRA.

“Success, scandal and schisms, tragedy, disaster and disgrace” is how the Today FM broadcaster and Path to Power podcaster puts it on page one.

His slogan-invoking contention is that Dunnes is “simply better” than any other business story in the history of the State, and the Dunne family its most successful corporate dynasty.

So, I ask him, has anyone been in touch about a Netflix-style House of Dunne?

“Not yet,” he says. He has been lured into some fantasy-casting conversations, typically involving mention of Brendan Gleeson, but thinks it’s “such an Irish story” it might not translate.

Cooper remembers not believing the Sunday Tribune’s 1992 scoop on Ben Dunne’s humiliating arrest for drug offences in a hotel in Orlando, Florida, when he saw it. Then a young journalist with the Sunday Business Post, he had heard industry talk that the Tribune was preparing a redesign.

“I was out with friends at home in Cork the night before, and when I staggered downstairs the next morning and looked at my parents’ papers there before me, I thought: ‘Jesus Christ, they’re after publishing the dummy [mock-up] edition.’ This can’t be real.”

Not only was it real, there were more “what the hell” headlines about Dunne’s golfing holiday to come. This set in train events that began with his ousting from Dunnes, culminating in years of tribunals in