A funny book about banking? Well yes, actually. On Monday, Senator Maurice Manning will launch Bob Ryan's With a Tap on the Knee - Memoirs of a Reluctant Banker. Ryan is now a well-regarded artist but from 1949 to 1986, he was with the Munster and Leinster Bank and then AIB.
The title refers to the medical examination for applicants; if there was a reaction the candidate was deemed alive and their career in banking could commence.
Ryan's book covers many dramas - the merger of the banks, the rise of the IBOA, the seven-month bank strike of 1970 (worthy of an academic thesis, he says) and the ICI insurance debacle.
Although head of PR at the time, to this day, he does not know the origins of the February 1982 statement on AIB stationery denying Charlie Haughey owed the bank £1 million. It called Des Crowley's story in the Evening Press "outlandlishly inaccurate".
It was the first time Ryan had ever heard of an AIB press release emanating from anywhere other than the press and public relations office and they were always dated, which this wasn't. There were Fianna Fβil heaves in progress at the time and Crowley's articles could have scuppered Haughey. Ryan says the bank's denial probably killed off further questions and helped to secure Haughey's position.
But, he says, intriguing questions remain. Did Haughey (or someone acting on his behalf) make contact with the chairman or chief executive of AIB to request that the bank issue a statement, and who issued it? Ryan doesn't think there will ever be an answer, at least in his lifetime.