Michael Nugent

That's Ireland – A Miscellany, co-written with Damien Corless, was a hardback best-seller that included such trivia as that three in every ten TDs since 1922 have been called some variation of Paddy, Mick, Sean or Seamus, and that when the Pope held his youth Mass in Galway in 1979, each diocese was asked to send a baker in white overalls and a lame person with a stick or crutches.

In Absurdly Yours, Nugent pitched a new series of prank letters, ranging from planes without seats (for Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary) to scaffolding on Mount Everest (the Nepalese Government responded it would be "inappropriate").

The FAI offered to help with his invention of a left-footed football, but the GAA replied that they could detect a wind-up from 1,000 yards.

In Towards Mutual Ground - Pluralism, Religious Education and Diversity in Irish Schools, Nugent and Jane Donnelly contributed a chapter titled 'Only secular schools respect every person's human rights equally.'

In ''Who Owns Marriage?

- A Conversation about Religion, Government, Marriage and a Civil Society'', edited by Nick Park of the Irish Evangelical Alliance, Nugent critiqued evangelical arguments about same sex marriage from a secular perspective.

Michael Nugent (born 1 June 1961) is an Irish writer and activist.

He has written, co-written or contributed to seven books and the comedy musical play I, Keano.

He has campaigned on many political issues, often with his late wife Anne Holliday, and he is chairperson of the advocacy group Atheist Ireland.

Nugent was completing a project on the Gospels in primary school when he started to question the "comic book" nature of the Bible.

He attended St. Aidan's C.B.S. secondary school in Whitehall in Dublin.

In the late 1980s, Nugent was spokesperson for a campaign against the conviction of two Tallaght youths for robbery and assault.

He graduated in visual communications in 1983 at the College of Marketing and Design, now part of the Dublin Institute of Technology.

In 1983, he was elected president of the college students' union and students' representative on the Dublin City Council Vocational Education Committee.

In 1984, he was defeated when he ran for the post of education officer in the Union of Students in Ireland, in opposition to Joe Duffy, then USI president, who is now a broadcaster with RTÉ.

He then took a course in product development, and set up as a freelance designer.

In 1986, Nugent joined the newly founded Progressive Democrats, working with Michael Keating TD, a friend since his VEC days.

He soon left the PDs, saying that he was disillusioned with the clientilist system and that he believed in the need to tackle the Northern Ireland problem on a cross-party basis.

Holliday and Nugent were founder members in 1988 of New Consensus, the group which called for the revision of the Republic's territorial claim on the North and devolved government for the people of Northern Ireland based on "mutual respect, civil liberty and freely given allegiance", and they helped to organise the Peace Train campaign to end disruption of the north–south rail link by the IRA.

Holliday was also a Simon Community volunteer, a founder member of the Limerick chapter of the Irish Georgian Society, campaigned to save Wood Quay, and was active in residents rights issues.

She worked as a secretary at the law firm Matheson Ormsby Prentice, a Dáil secretary for TDs Michael Keating and Roger Garland, personal assistant to National Museum Director Pat Wallace, in media relations and special projects at the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, and in the Tánaiste's office at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

In 1988, Nugent co-founded the New Consensus peace group with his partner Anne Holliday and Michael Fitzpatrick.

He also chaired the group.

Its launch meeting in April 1989 announced its aims as challenging ambivalence about murder in Northern Ireland, and promoting a democratic, pluralist and non-sectarian society with integrated education, a bill of rights and revision of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution.

In 1990, Taoiseach Charles Haughey assured the youths' families and Nugent that new evidence would be considered.

In 1992, after an IRA bomb killed eight Protestant workmen in Teebane Cross, Nugent and six other men protested by chaining themselves across the entrance of the Sinn Féin office in Dublin.

In 1993, the government announced a new law to enable this to happen and, in 2001, the case was declared a miscarriage of justice.

The Irish Times included Ireland on the Internet among its top ten computer books of 1995.

Nugent, with Arthur Mathews and Paul Woodfull, co-wrote I, Keano, a comedy musical play about footballer Roy Keane leaving the Republic of Ireland national football team before the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

It was presented as a mock-epic melodrama about an ancient Roman legion preparing for war.

In its first two years, over half a million people watched it, generating €10m ($13m) in ticket sales.

In 2009 Nugent married his longtime partner Anne Holliday, after she was diagnosed with cancer.

She died on 9 April 2011, aged 57.

Holliday donated her body to medical research and, in 2014, her body was buried in the Dublin medical Schools plot in Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin.

After a request from Nugent, the Dublin Medical Schools agreed to change the religious wording on the headstone over the plot to a secular wording, so that it would be inclusive of people of all religious beliefs and none.

In 2015 Nugent wrote a tribute to his wife in the Irish Times in which he also wrote about coping with bereavement as an atheist.

Nugent has written, co-written or contributed to seven books and the comedy musical play I, Keano.

It was updated and revived in 2015 after Roy Keane became assistant coach of the Ireland football team.

Dear John was a number one best-seller in Ireland, co-written by Nugent and Sam Smyth.

By writing prank letters, Nugent and Smyth convinced then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to help the fictitious 'John' seek a grant from the Industrial Development Authority to produce dog bowls modelled on dinner plates; prompted Charles Haughey to meet 'John' to help fund a 'Bring Back Charlie' campaign, and provoked Pope John Paul II to pray for 'John's' children because his kids put condoms on the family chess-set bishops.