The Hot Press Chatroom was packed on Saturday afternoon as, in his first public appearance since the High Court refused to order his extradition to France in relation to the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, Ian Bailey was publicly interviewed by HP’s Olaf Tyaransen.

The man in question was, for reasons which remain obscure, the key suspect in one of the most high-profile murder cases in Irish history when, in 1996, the French film director, Sophie Toscan du Plantier, was murdered just outside the small town of Schull, in West Cork. Twenty years on, no one has any idea what happened on that fateful night. What we do know is that someone in the Gardaí decided that Ian Bailey – a journalist from Manchester who had moved to West Cork six years previously – was the prime suspect. What followed was a tale of incompetence, corruption, abuse of due process, and perversion of the course of justice – plunging Ian Bailey into a never-ending, Kafka-esque nightmare.

Appearing relaxed and chatty in the Hot Press chatroom, the 60-year-old Englishman spoke about the 21-year battle to clear his name.