TV series put him in spotlight
WATCHED
Ian Bailey in Sky’s Murder At The Cottage
IAN Bailey’s notoriety grew later in his life after he became the subject of two documentaries investigating the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
Six-time Oscar nominated director Jim Sheridan worked with Bailey on his smash-hit Sky series Murder At The Cottage.
Then he was subject of a second Netflix documentary, Sophie: A Murder in West Cork — which Bailey did not take part in, but was furious with their depiction of him after it was claimed he washed a black coat in a bucket at his home the day after the French filmmaker’s murder.
Speaking about the documentary, he told The Mirror at the time: “I haven’t watched it. I don’t intend to watch it. Although somebody has drawn to my attention a particular scene in it, which features what appears to be a coat in a bucket.
“This is an absolute load of b ****** s. You have somebody making up a fictitious story…
“That is before the Christmas Day swim. And yet on the Christmas Day swim in the Jim Sheridan project, I can be quite clearly seen to be wearing a long dark coat.
“Also, you have I believe a retired superintendent Dermot Dwyer saying in the Netflix documentary — and I think in Jim’s documentary — that I had burned the coat and yet in the list of items that were seized from me, the first it on the list is a long black coat.”
Opening up about his new notoriety in West Cork around the time the documentaries aired, Bailey joined social media, where he began to receive attention from women.
“Having been so vilified, demonised and subjected to nastiness, it was great to be on the receiving end of admiration, love and affection,” he said.
He even garnered attention from the late Sinead O’connor who met with him in West Cork in 2021.
He told us at the time that O’connor had contacted him because “she was interested in my poetry with a view to turning one or two of them into songs”.
But Sinead later clarified to us that she was questioning him for an article for a Sunday newspaper over the murder of Sophie. She told us: “I’ve no intention of using his poems for anything.”