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Hello and welcome to witness history from the BBC World Service with me, Ben Henderson.

We're the podcast that takes you back to the most significant moments in living memory by interviewing someone who was there.

Episodes are just nine minutes long and come out every weekday, so follow the show and you'll

never miss out. In this episode, we're going back to 1993 when the author Roddy Doyle won the

prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction. His novel titled Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha Ha was remarkable for

the way it conveyed a gritty drama

through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy. I spoke to him in Ireland's capital, Dublin.

I found out later it was huge excitement here as it was happening because when you live in a small

country, these things become quite significant. Like his fictional character Paddy Clark,

Roddy grew up on the outskirts of Dublin in the 1960s.

It was a time of rapid change with country fields replaced by housing estates.

Roddy and his friends would play in the building sites, and as in the novel, it wasn't always gentle.

The level of threat in the world of the boys came from, well, my childhood, the school yard could be a

vicious place and you could be well in with the gang leader at one point but then ostracized

for something that you missed. You didn't know what happened. You had to bring something into the

gang and luckily, and I knew it, I had a sense of humour.

If you were sitting beside me, it may not have been the coolest thing ever, but you get the odd laugh.

When he wasn't cracking jokes, young Roddy developed a passion for reading.

My father used to bring me to the library

and he'd parked me in the children's section

and he'd go off looking for books for himself.

...