John Kelly

So that was a great honor as well.

So yeah, in association with Nespresso and stuff, so.

That's when all the wedding tastings were on.

Yeah, yeah.

I always knew when the wedding tastings were on in the Merion.

What do you want this week, Gard?

Two duck breast lads.

you know hungry yeah nice brilliant yeah so it's a great it's a great grounding for any chef just stick with it you know and how many years are you in Mount Juliet then John what day is today 15 years last Tuesday believe it or not someone had to tell I said you get less for a life sentence

when did you get the start how many years were you cooking before you got the start 2013 2013 and I arrived in 2011 or 12 yeah 11 yeah 11 yeah so yeah the big thing when we got there there was the A rosettes and they had two and they said we never got three we said we'll work towards that and then we worked towards the star and that was it I remember the guy came in and he came and spoke to us and he said look you're doing something outside of Dublin that nobody's doing just keep doing what you're doing remember we started we started a thing called Taste of Thursday and it was like 45 euros for a seven quart taste and we had black Prosecco

wow and we built it up from there and people said oh where did you come out we've been doing this for 18 months you know so but uh no it was great we never take for granted you know so it was amazing yeah and you just had a big refurb yeah yeah manor house done redone yeah so it's amazing did a great job kept it in with great style and just just where it needs to be it's brilliant like to have that isn't it yeah yeah an irish owner as well it's great yeah an irish owner and pushing on and

No, definitely not, David.

The last 10 to 15 years, I would say, would have seen a slight decrease in sales.

But the Irish and the GAA match going public in particular retains a strong affinity to the printed programme.

And it's still an integral part of the match day experience, particularly in the GAA, I would say.

Certainly it did.

The seasons 2020 and 2021, obviously, sometimes with no attendances, sometimes with very much reduced attendances, meant that the programmes weren't printed, certainly in the numbers that they would have been before that.

DBA, the company that prints the programmes on behalf of the GA, introduced the online or the digital version of the programme at that stage, which has continued.

I wouldn't understand how the sales of that have increased, but I think that it's still very much the physical programme that is looked for.

Yeah, absolutely, David.

It's certainly a generational thing for people of my generation.