John Kavanagh interview: One night in Dublin

Your name? Margaret, she says. And that got him, the same name as his own mother. With the same motherly concern Margaret Kavanagh had when scumbags beat her son senseless, hit him with a brick, tried to throw him in front of a bus. That was the start. Ever since, John Kavanagh’s been winning and learning.

TWO ROOMS AND EIGHT CORNERS

Dublin, 1995, and curled up in a ball in his bedroom is a young man still in his teens, wanting to hide away from the world and the hurt and the humiliation it can bring.