Jimmy Magee's book, Memory Man, to be published by Gill Books this August
Full of the great storytelling he is renowned for, Memory Man reflects Jimmy’s cheery persona but also goes behind that public image to explore difficult times in the broadcaster’s life: his father’s sudden death which saw him drop out of school to take over as head of the household, the unexpected death of his wife Marie in 1989, the tragic loss of his son Paul to motor neurone disease in 2008.
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Gill Books
Fresh from covering his 11th Olympic Games, Irish broadcasting institution Jimmy Magee reflects on his life and times in his new book, Memory Man, published on 7 September. At 77 Jimmy has the distinction of being the longest-serving sports commentator in the English-speaking world.

Born in New York in 1935, at the age of three, Jimmy moved to Ireland and settled in the Cooley Peninsula in Co. Louth with his family. Jimmy’s early working experiences were in a pharmacy in Carlingford and as a railway clerk in Greenore. But his dream was always to work in radio, and by 1957 he managed to fulfil that dream.

Full of the great storytelling he is renowned for, Memory Man reflects Jimmy’s cheery persona but also goes behind that public image to explore difficult times in the broadcaster’s life: his father’s sudden death which saw him drop out of school to take over as head of the household, the unexpected death of his wife Marie in 1989, the tragic loss of his son Paul to motor neurone disease in 2008.

His varied and much-travelled life, as it evolved, is told in this memoir, including his 11 Olympic Games, 12 FIFA World Cups, 29 European Cup finals, 11 athletics world championships, 30 world title fights and 10 Tours de France. Jimmy has witnessed first-hand some of the most important moments in sporting history and has met icons on the world sporting stage, among them Pele, Maradona, George Best and Lance Armstrong.