Plain speaking? Bertie Ahern puts his own unique spin on the issues that marked his years as Taoiseach

In a newspaper interview last weekend, Bertie Ahern claimed that by the time Lehman Brothers bank collapsed in September 2008, it had testicles all over the world. This could be the latest example of the former Taoiseach's difficulty with the English language, or it could be his not-so-subtle way of suggesting that the closure of Lehmans made a balls of the global economy. Certainly, he blames it for Ireland's current difficulties, using Lehman's in his autobiography as a comfort blanket against any suggestion that he and his governments bear any responsibility for what has happened.

And therein lies the problem with this book. Although it is highly readable, and genuinely interesting, in places – particularly where it deals with the Northern Ireland peace process and the cobbling together of a deal on the European Constitution in 2004 – it is sunk utterly by Ahern's failure to deal comprehensively with the controversies which dogged his last years in power.

The wretched economy he bequeathed to Brian Cowen is glossed over. Ahern has a very strong attachment to the budget surpluses his governments ran in almost every year of his leadership. A more reflective, self-critical author might wonder about how those surpluses became deficits so suddenly. But this book is not about reflection or self-knowledge. It is about placing a self-serving draft of history on the record, before Judge Alan Mahon gives us a more credible version some time next year.

There is a self-pitying tone to much of the book. Ahern's account of the 2007 general election campaign is marked by bad memories of being asked questions by journalists, the most "hostile bunch" he'd known in all his years in politics. Only the Sunday Independent was fair to him, he says, although in truth the relationship between the Sindo and Ahern was akin to that between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. It still is. In any event, he credits the hostile media for helping him win the election, because of the electorate's disgust at the unfair treatment being meted out to the Taoiseach. It's an interesting theory, backed up by no evidence, which plays into his sense of himself as a victim of the media and a hero of the people, which comes across so often in the book.

It's not all bad. When he's not in self-justification mode, Ahern – helped by his writing partner Professor Richard Aldous – is an amiable storyteller, albeit one with an apparent inability to say something good about somebody without lobbing in something negative as well. For this reader, the most interesting section – because of what it hints about Ahern's future – is his account of the 1990 presidential election.

Ahern was director of elections for Fianna Fáil candidate Brian Lenihan Snr, who was fired from the cabinet during the campaign after being caught in a lie about whether he made a phone call to Áras an Uachtarain on the night Garret FitzGerald's government collapsed in 1982.

That should have been the end of the road for Lenihan, but Ahern argues convincingly that the campaign managed to put its difficulties behind it, get out on the road and start to win back the support that had been lost. A typically boorish comment from Padraig Flynn ultimately cost Lenihan the presidency, but it is clear from Ahern's recollection of the campaign that he envisages a similar scenario whereby he can put his current credibility problems behind him and reclaim the support of the Irish people. This book, and the apparent never-ending round of interviews accompanying its publication, are the first, tentative, baby steps of that campaign.

The Autobiography By Bertie Ahern, Hutchinson, €16.99