The veteran radio DJ has gathered archive footage of his interviews with The Cranberries singer and made a documentary called ‘Dolores’ which airs on Monday at 10:35pm on RTÉ One.

Dave Fanning will host a special tribute to the late Dolores O’Riordan which will include rare footage from their interviews down through the years. According to Dave the interviews cover heavy topics like love, fame and fortune and go back to when they first met in the early ‘90’s.

“The first time I actually met her, I think, would have been 1991. It was at 'Cork Rocks' on the weekend of the June Bank Holiday in 1991. We put on four days and The Cranberries were the middle band on the Saturday night,” he said.

“To be honest, I remember them as just another band. If they had broken up the next week I wouldn’t have been surprised. Dolores sang all six songs they did that night with her back to the audience. That’s how I remember her first.”

 

“That sounds like she was the shiest person in the world, she wasn’t, but she was in front of an audience. When you talked to her she was no shrinking violet. She was well able to have a conversation, well able to have opinions and was just really nice. So, that would have been the first time. And pretty soon after that thing in Cork, a year, or maybe a year and four months, they were playing to 10,000 people in America.”

What can fans expect from the documentary?

“The first thing is, this is not the definitive Cranberries documentary. This is a personal, kind of, Dave Fanning and Dolores thing,” he said.

Dave said he had to make several difficult decisions in the making of the documentary including leaving out three radio interviews in favour of showing more videos.

“I think it’s nice to bring people back to those days. They probably haven’t seen these videos for 25 years and they’ll go ‘Jesus I remember that on MTV’ or ‘I remember watching that on a Sunday morning on RTÉ’, that kind of thing.”

Will fans see a side to Dolores they haven’t seen before?

“Yes and no. What comes through more than anything is her. The pressure of the fame they had between ’92 and ’95 was absolutely huge, especially in America. That comes through. It’s generally a picture of the decade in which they were huge.”

“At one stage she called off a $6 million-dollar tour for her own sanity. No-one was listening to her. She had to stop. The band just wanted to get off the road, all four of them,” he said.

‘Dolores’ is on Monday at 10:35pm on RTÉ One.