"I was always driven, and I was always competitive. The harder you work, the luckier you get. You make your own breaks."Michael O'Leary is a business giant. He transformed Ryanair from a loss-making joke of an Irish carrier into one of the most valuable airlines in the world and has never been far from the headlines. But for all the publicity, little is known about Michael O'Leary beyond the carefully constructed image of the plucky little Paddy in jeans who is sticking it to the big boys. In this, the first biography of O'Leary, Alan Ruddock portrays the man in three-dimensions, from his unsettled middle-class childhood to his meteoric rise to the top of Ryanair when still in his early thirties. And he examines the business miracle - often talked about but poorly understood - whereby Ryanair's passenger numbers and profits have continued to grow while the rest of the airline industry has been forced to retrench. "There's no point in having some long-term plan because a long-term plan gets knocked on its ass."

Author Biography

Alan Ruddock, a contemporary of Michael O'Leary's at Trinity College,Dublin, is a former business journalist with the Sunday Times and former editor of the Scotsman. He is currently a commentator with the Sunday Independent, Ireland's largest-selling newspaper.