He invented Breakfast Roll Man, Miss Pencil Skirt and the Decklanders. Now he has coined a nickname for RTE’s best-known female broadcaster: Hannah Montana’s Ma.

In a new book, Follow the Money, David McWilliams, the broadcaster and economist, has likened being interviewed by Miriam O’Callaghan, the Prime Time presenter, to being “seduced”. He suggests she could be the blonde Disney character’s mother.

McWilliams, a regular guest on RTE’s current affairs show, describes O’Callaghan as “voluptuous yet potentially venomous”, and claims she “flirts” with guests before going on air.

Recounting an appearance on Prime Time in late 2003, during which he described the property market as a “scam”, he compares O’Callaghan’s interviewing technique to a seduction.

“Miriam winks, with a faint pout and the casual lick of those hyper-glossed lips. You’re mine now, boy, she signals. This is my web you’ve just walked into. Clothes on or off?” he writes.

McWilliams later describes how O’Callaghan “had him by the balls” during the interview, asking him in her “High School Musical twang” if he thought that “real workin’ people were dumb” for buying houses. During the debate, McWilliams attacked “the unholy alliance of bankers, developers and a compliant state”. He emerged from his interview with O’Callaghan “with [my] clothes on, so to speak”.

O’Callaghan declined to comment this weekend on her depiction in Follow the Money. A female RTE colleague said it was “sexist”.

The Prime Time anchor is not the only RTE personality to be lampooned in McWilliams’ book. He claims that Breakfast Roll Man, a character he created in The Pope’s Children, his first book, sold up his property portfolio and moved to Alicante in Spain after seeing Pat Kenny trying to “grab” his neighbour’s land. The author depicts Breakfast Roll Man imagining Kenny “spying out the window like a mad aul’ wan and then interviewing politicians about morality”.

The former Late Late Show presenter has had a highprofile dispute with a neighbour over Gorse Hill, a tract of land between their Dalkey homes. McWilliams has satirised Kenny’s legal claim of squatter’s rights.

“Imagine that,” McWilliams writes in the character of Breakfast Roll Man, “squatter’s rights — only ‘head the balls’ and fellas from weird sects what has taken over a house go for squatter’s rights, for Jaysus’ sake”.

The most damaging allegation in the book may be McWilliams’ claim that Sean FitzPatrick, the former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, told him at an event in University College Dublin in November last year that “no f****** Protestant is going to take my bank”. At the time there were rumours that Bank of Ireland was about to launch a takeover of Anglo.

McWilliams claims FitzPatrick, “who had probably had a few too many”, hissed between clenched teeth: “No f****** Protestant is coming near us ... those f****** are not going to bring me down. None of them are ever going to look down on us again.”

The exchange is said to have taken place while McWilliams was drinking with FitzPatrick after the event, as the hall was emptying. “I know this because his [FitzPatrick’s] wife was worried about his diabetes and came over to the table a few times. It was getting late, she said and, mothering him, whispered to me that he had to be up in the morning,” the economist writes.

Last week FitzPatrick denied making the comments. A source close to the former banker said it “stretched credibility” that McWilliams was able to recount word-for-word a conversation from several months ago. “He must have a great memory. It’s simply not the truth,” the source said.

Other claims in McWilliams’s book have irked the finance minister. Detailed accounts of meetings and phone conversations with Brian Lenihan were described this weekend as “indiscreet” by a spokesman for the minister.

McWilliams claims that a “nervous and fidgety” Lenihan visited his house, wearing a suit that “looked as if he’d slept in it”. During their late-night discussion, Lenihan ate raw garlic to keep himself “healthy and alert”. He told McWilliams that he was “breaking himself into the job [of finance minister] and economics by reading Alan Greenspan’s biography”.

“Sweet Jesus,” McWilliams recalled thinking. “That was the worst place to start”. After explaining to Lenihan how “Greenspan’s nonsense caused this mess”, the broadcaster took out a pencil and paper and began teaching the minister the basics of economics.

While Lenihan “was a man who could pick things up quickly, we were starting pretty much from scratch”. Lenihan also supposedly told McWilliams he was “isolated from his officials” and that he was “at best sceptical about the advice he was getting”.

Lenihan is said to have told him “it was AIB, not Anglo Irish, that had the most severe funding problems”, and that Department of Finance officials would “explode” if they knew he had visited McWilliams at home.

Following the introduction of the banking guarantee, Lenihan is quoted as saying “the Brits are furious, so we must be doing something right”.

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