I initially fail to notice Roy Keane in the reception of the Marriott Four Seasons hotel in Hale, Manchester, where we have arranged to meet. When I ask where he is, the receptionist points over my shoulder to the most infamous footballer in the land, who is standing barely a few feet behind me, chatting amiably to a member of staff. In grey sports top, track suit bottoms and trainers, Keane possesses none of the imposing presence that he exudes on the pitch. In fact, he looks almost nondescript: smaller, wirier and a whole lot younger looking than his photographs suggest.
There is something callow, almost boyish about him, that same well-scrubbed, trim appearance that young Jesuits used to have, back when the priesthood, rather than professional football, was the career of choice for young Irish men of a vocational bent.
After introductions are made, he seems both eager to please and utterly relaxed, but almost immediately there is a hitch: he assumes that The Observer has booked a room for the interview - we are under the mistaken impression that his agent has done the honours. For a brief moment it crosses my mind that this is exactly the sort of thing that, as recent events have shown, could send football's reigning perfectionist charging off home in a strop, effing and blinding, and vowing never to be interviewed by amateurs again. Instead, he calmly takes charge, charming the receptionist into finding us a corner of an empty lounge. All the while, he is talkative and good humoured, evincing no ne of the intensity nor impatience that defines the tortured individual who emerges, seething and raging, from between then lines of his book, Keane, the Autobiography. Glimpses of that other Roy Keane, though, will emerge later.
Even by the unreal standards of modern footballing celebrity, he has had a turbulent few months. For more than a decade he has been acknowledged as one of the best players in British football, but for most of that time others have hogged the headlines while he has simply accumulated winners' medals and acclaim. Now, though, he is not just the best player in the league, but the most controversial, supplanting even his team-mate David Beckham as the centre of attention. This transformation began in May, on the eve of the World Cup finals, when Keane's long and simmering feud with the Irish footballing establishment in general, and the manager of its national team Mick McCarthy in particular, exploded amid spectacular acrimony and Keane, Ireland's captain and greatest player, was sent home without kicking a ball.
That drama merely whetted the public's appetite for Keane's autobiography which, given his reputation for frankness and recklessness, was already the most eagerly awaited football book for years. His choice of Eamon Dunphy as ghost writer, a man who has carved out a career in Ireland as professional begrudger, was always going to up the ante.
The book, of course, is the reason we are here. I had spent the previous afternoon in an inner sanctum of Penguin publishers, reading the manuscript. The last two chapters, which give his version of the World Cup walk-out, were handed to me fresh from the lawyers at the close of day. Given all that has happened in the four weeks since, not least the decision by Alf Inge Haaland and his club, Manchester City, to instigate possible legal proceedings against Keane and Manchester United over a vicious lunge on the Norwegian - described with brutal relish in the book - Penguin's guarded approach has proved well-founded. Since extracts were published a few weeks ago, Keane has found himself once again at the centre of a storm of negative publicity, which, from the outside at least, seems to swirl around his aloof head like so much hot air.
'Penguin gave a good offer,' he says, laughing. 'But I suppose I just wanted it to be rawer than the usual football book.' In that, he has undoubtedly succeeded. It is also more honest, often laying bare his own faults as mercilessly as those of his team-mates and his perceived enemies.
'Well, there's no point in doing a book where you're just patting yourself on the back. A lot's gone on in my career, ups and downs, and I think this is a chance to say, "Look, I am human. I have made mistakes". There's nobody more aware of that than myself. I have this image - the robot, the madman, the winner, and obviously I've brought a lot of it on myself over the years - the sending-offs, the off-the-field stuff. I'm getting older, and this was an opportunity to put my side of the story.'