A prophet in his own Royland

THE CAME, they saw, he conquered. Welcome to Royland. The Keano Republic of Cork where King Roy rocks and loyal subjects queue for hours just to see how he signs his name.

And write his name he did yesterday, 'til the cows came home and not a child in the house washed.

From 2.15pm and not the scheduled 3pm, he signed and he smiled, the most submissive of sovereigns, eager only to please. Into Eason's bookstore in Cork they poured, King Keano's face tucked under their arms, chanting their hero's name.

"Who's in the house?" they roared. "Keano's in the house," was the rapturous reply.

In he strode, handshakes and kind word's all round, before taking a seat at his lowly yellow foam throne. Pen in hand, smiling shyly, as his adoring subjects approached.

"He's a vision, isn't he," simpered one young female. "Divine," came the reply.

They bowed and scraped, the first 350 lucky enough to head the charge to the throne, the most loyal of all, those who arrived with the dawn.

With their yellow post-it stickers, handed out by Eason's staff, they scribbled out the messages they wanted to hear from the King and attached them to the inside flap of his autobiography.

He duly obliged, wrote what they wished him to write, consigning the more colourful to newspaper columns of the past.

He played a blinder, as good a game as ever he played and without the watchful First Knight. Nothing was too much trouble. Not the three-plus autobiographies that some devotees plonked before him to sign. Nor the t-shirts and postcards.

Not the endless smiling for hundreds of snapshots as he posed with all those who asked. He even took calls.

Young knaves whose mates hadn't made it to the coronation asked his highness to have a quick word on the phone, so he did.

And when it should all have long been over and King Keano gone further afield, he hung back, flesh wound from writing, lockjaw from smiling, and made time for the Eason's staff.

A true hero. A prophet in his own Royland.