'He never forgot his roots': Another Roy Keane shout-out boosts Shandon Sweets' summer sales
Tony Linehan of Shandon Sweets on John Redmond St, Shandon, Cork with his famous handmade cut clove rocks which was one of the packets of sweets Roy Keane purchased to hand out on the Overlap show. Picture Dan Linehan
The owner of Shandon Sweets has hailed Roy Keane for never forgetting his roots after the former football star raved about the popular Cork city sweetshop on his podcast.
The Mayfield man and former Manchester United captain has been kept busy with his punditry duties with ITV and a special run of the series on podcast during the 2026 World Cup, but that didn’t stop him from taking the time to shout out one of his favourite Cork institutions.
During a recent podcast with Gary Neville and Ian Wright, during which the trio discussed England, who have since been knocked out of the tournament, securing a place in the World Cup quarter-finals, Keane took the time to go back to his Cork roots by offering the boys some traditional sweets.
While waiting in the studio for Keane and Wright to arrive, Neville commented on the impressive, English-themed Nabisco platter on the table, going on to list things he thinks England does better than anyone else in the world – breakfast, sweets, chocolate, and desserts.
Keane walks in, oblivious to the conversation that had been had on camera, and puts two tubs of Shandon Sweets on the table.
“Sweets from Ireland… Shandon Sweets,” he said proudly.
Joining the conversation, both Keane and Wright chimed in when asked what England does better than anybody.
“Annoy people,” Keane responded, before picking up a tub of the sweets and saying: “You don’t do these though, do you? You don’t make sweets like that.”
Owner of Shandon Sweets north of the Lee in Cork city, Tony Linehan, found out about the shout-out from Keano this week, upon his return home from a two-week holiday abroad.
Last November, Keane spurred the busiest season in the shop’s history after giving the Linehan family an initial shout-out on and this one seems to have done the trick yet again, with Linehan, who returned home on Tuesday, getting stuck into making batches of sweets the following day.
Speaking to the on Thursday, Linehan said: “I was hoping when I came back from holidays that I would ease back into it. I thought to myself: ‘It’ll be really hot at home when I come back’ because normally, when it’s really hot, sweets are the last thing people want. I couldn’t have been more wrong. You open the door and there's a queue behind you. It’s unbelievable stuff.”
Linehan has been involved in the shop for more than 40 years. It was founded by his grandfather, Jimmy, and was run by his father, Danny, from whom Linehan took the reins back in 2020.
In that time, Linehan said he has witnessed every kind of season and slow period and that the warm weather would normally affect business – but not this year.
Owing how busy the shop has become to the virality of the shout-outs they’ve been receiving, both by Keane on and Frédéric Sirieix on he said that while people can buy sweets anywhere in the country, that people have an interest in the family-run business on John Redmond Street because of the history, story and nostalgia attached to it – particularly the Italians.
“I think the biggest fans of family-run businesses are the Italians. I get a lot of Italian tourists coming in here and they absolutely get the full appreciation of handmade stuff. A lot of other places are fascinated by it, but Italians – anything handmade that's passed down through generations – they seem to get it more than anybody else. They absolutely adore places like that, that can make original stuff from start to finish with a family tradition behind it,” Linehan said.
Linehan touched on how Roy Keane has never lost his roots in Cork city and always remembers the place he came from and the people his family would have grown up with.
“He never forgets his roots… never forgets them and I mean that. When he comes in, he's the most ordinary guy ever. He used to call frequently when he would bring sweets to his mother because she was a friend of my father's. And any time he came home, she said: “Drop into Danny's for a few tubs and sweets”... Maybe we will see him again.”
This time around, Linehan said that when they saw the video of Keane holding the tubs of sweets up during the podcast, one of his staff members remembered a guy calling into the shop two weeks ago, saying he wanted to bring sweets out to Keane in Boston, and that she had taken it as a bit of a joke.
“That's how he ended up with my products out there at the World Cup. He obviously really does like them,” Linehan said.
After what has been a tough few years for Linehan since taking over the business, closing for more than a year and a half due to the pandemic and then suffering a major fire which forced the shop to close for an additional year and a half, he said that the recent success they have been experiencing is “the silver lining”.
Acknowledging the “pro bono” shout-outs that Shandon Sweets has received, Linehan said that he now understands the world of influencer marketing and advised any business that can afford to hire a public figure to promote their service or product to do so.
“I always thought it was just a myth that people get influencers to do their products and pay them large sums of money. Now, I see the attraction in it and why they do it. They have so many followers, sometimes millions of followers. That's how many people are looking at your product every time someone pops onto his podcast, for example, or whatever it is,” he said.
Linehan said he is also extremely grateful to his returning customers and said he would often have women in their 70s and 80s visit the shop with their great-grandkids.
“They came in here, then their daughters came in here, and their daughters after that, and now they're coming in here with their great-grandkids. So that's four generations,” he said.
- Those who want to get their hands on the now viral sweet range from Shandon Sweets, from clove rocks to manuka honey lozenges, can visit Shandon Sweets.
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