Behan saw that it paid to be drunk; the public wanted the witty, iconoclastic, genial "broth of a boy", and he gave that to them in abundance, once exclaiming: "There's no bad publicity except an obituary." His health suffered terribly, with diabetic comas and seizures occurring regularly. The public who once extended their arms now closed ranks against him; publicans flung him from their premises. His books, "Brendan Behan's Island", "Brendan Behan's New York" and "Confessions of an Irish Rebel", published in 1962 and 1964, were dictated into a tape recorder because he was no longer able to write or type for long enough to be able to finish them.