At home with Jon Richards

Knocknacarra is only about five miles from the centre of the western capital, where Galway Bay FM’s plush studios are located. Jon Richards has lived here for about two years.
“I suppose I could be described as a last-generation Galwegian,” says Richards. “I had been living in the city centre but it got too rough, and that kind of drinking, hooligan culture made it very unattractive to continue to live there. Hence the move to this housing estate.”
The estate is heavily suburbanised. As Richards himself put it, “I’m surrounded by hundreds of houses and there are going to be hundreds more. Eventually, I’d like to design and build my own house – somewhere in the countryside but with easy access to the city. I’ll get round to that some day, but I’ve no desire to move far from my roots.”
Jon shares this two-storey house, with its converted attic, with his partner and her son. She’s a painter and her work can be seen around the house. But the converted attic? “I converted the space into a studio, where I do a lot of the recording for my own company Profoneplus, which handles the recording of telephone messages for companies.
But I often bring Galway Bay FM work home as well. Apart from my work as a DJ I’m the head of programming, so there are often times when maybe a bit of scripting has to be done to meet a deadline. If that means taking it home, that’s what I do."
The area is comparatively quiet, although Richards wonders how long that will last.
“There are no facilities for the young people, so some of them are beginning to congregate near our house. But sure what can you do?”
When he wants to sample the countryside, he only needs to take a short walk where he can see the Aran Islands and north Clare, or stroll into the Barna Woods.
“They're the last of the great woods left in Galway," he laments. "That’s the price we pay for turning everywhere into a concrete jungle.”
With three music lovers in the house you can hear music coming form three different sources, and Richards has a fine record collection. Among the items to be found are the new albums by Glen Hansard and BellX1, and the Ray Charles album Genius. Strange Kind of Love by the Scottish outfit Love And Money seems to be a big favourite, as is ‘Your Ghost’, the duet by Kristin Hersh and Michael Stipe. But perhaps we won’t mention the Brotherhood Of Man singles ‘Save All Your Kisses For Me’ and ‘Angelo’.
Richards, who has racked up around 20 years in radio has, perhaps not surprisingly, a love-hate relationship with the medium.
“I find myself more and more listening to digital radio via broadband. It’s like finding an old toy and reawakening the pleasure you used to get from it. To me, as a broadcaster, I see radio as one person talking to another in a room. So I don’t understand those DJs who seem to be shouting at me or talking at me instead of to me. So that sort of radio makes me mad."
He watches little or no television apart from the odd programme such as Lost, Frasier or the occasional documentary, and can go for whole weeks without watching and suffers no withdrawal symptoms. Much as he’d like to have a dog around the house, he reckons it’s impractical under current circumstances.
“I think it’d be unfair to have a dog with nobody around to look after it all day, but someday I’d like to have one,” he says.
Although he admits to being so bad at DIY that his thumbs are in danger if he as much as sees a hammer, Richards loves cooking, and you may be lucky enough to pick up the scent of some of the Asian dinners he prepares for the household.
“I actually find it therapeutic when I’m cooking. I can maybe write some script or work out a problem while I’m doing it and I love spicy dishes,” he tells me.
You will be hard pressed to find a dish unwashed in the house, ever, and the place is generally tidy with little sign of clutter.
He has, by his own reckoning, thousands of books and is an avid science fiction fan.
“I usually have three books on the go at any one time, one in the house, one in the car and one at the office! I’m a big fan of the novels of Harry Turtledove, especially one which is based on the idea of the Second World war being fought between the north and south of the USA, with Hitler in the south,” he explains.
He enjoys a game of scrabble now and then, but is otherwise not too pushed about either games or sports. Nor are you likely to find any famous names in his visitors’ book.
“I generally regard my home as a bit of a refuge. I have a very public job, working every day in the full glare of the public, so I need a place where I can find the privacy I need.” Looks like he’s found what he’s looking for.

Photos Ciaranog Arnold @ PH Photos