Clearly the world wasn't ready for a nude Brian Cowen but is it ready for a bare Bono? RTé DJ Dave Fanning says he has a picture of a naked U2 that he might just publish in his forthcoming autobiography.

The band were in the 2FM studios a decade ago, promoting their The Joshua Tree album, when Dave captured them on film in all their glory.

"Bono suggested everybody taking their clothes off. Why? Well for the previous six years U2 had been coming on the show to promote each album they released. It was getting kind of stale so when Bono arrived in that night he said: 'Let's take our clothes off. It will change the dynamic.' He was right, it did," Dave says. "I'm seriously considering putting it in the book. What do you think? I'll have to check with Bono."

The 54-year-old DJ has been signed by publishing house Harper Collins to pen his memoirs, and the book is due out in October.

Whether it will be like his friend Gerry Ryan's tell-all, Dave can't say. "I don't know because I haven't read Gerry's book and they're not giving me a hundred grand for it, nothing like it.

"I'd describe it as a snapshot of someone growing up on the southside of Dublin to the soundtrack of the Beatles and Pink Floyd.

"That's what I would like to conjure up anyway. Writing it has made me realise how quickly stuff happened back then. I went from teaching to being a magazine editor to being a DJ."

The book will no doubt be on U2 fans' Christmas lists as it will reveal a lot about Dave's close relationship with the band.

He's frank, however, about his initial impression of the fledgling northside group. "I remember listening to it and, to be honest, it didn't really grab me," he says. "What I liked about U2 was them as people."

It was a fondness that Dave continued to indulge when he moved to RTé's new pop station 2FM in 1979. "I don't know how we got away with it. Around that time, U2 were considering which song they should pick for their first single so we had the band on the show every night for a week so they could play songs and get listeners to vote which song should be the single," he remembers.

After 30 years in the business and having been voted Best DJ in Ireland for 21 years in a row, the DJ says he has no regrets about the big bucks other DJs made and on which he missed out. "I tried doing discos around the country. It never worked because half the people who turned up wanted me to play Joy Division. I remember, around the time Joy Division's singer Ian Curtis died, these kids arrived at a country disco I was doing and wanted a 30-minute set of Joy Division songs in tribute. That emptied the dance floor pretty quick," he says.

And would he ever consider moving onto pastures new after three decades with the national broadcaster?

"They'd have to offer me 10 times the money to leave RTE. The only change I wouldn't mind is a daytime show because all those years I've been on nights. Still I got to play some great music. On my gravestone it will say 'Dave Fanning – Rock Guru or Rock Wanker'. Definitely one or the other."