The Most Gifted and Instinctive Broadcaster

I wasn’t one of Gerry’s inner circle, but I did spend four years contributing on an almost weekly basis to his radio show, and once went on an away trip with him to Rome, which was full of laughter, good food and – connoisseur of the grape that he was – even better wine!

There was a bit of solidarity in the fact that we’d both come from a pirate background – him at the legendary Big D, where he’d learned his DJ-ing chops alongside a hairy fellow called Dave Fanning, and me at Radio Caroline which, big anorak he was, Gerry was always quizzing me about.

It’s not being nice to the recently deceased to say that Gerry Ryan was the most gifted and instinctive broadcaster I’ve ever shared a studio with. An item may have been scheduled to last for five minutes, but if there was a bigger story there, he immediately sniffed it out, and turned it into something way beyond what his researchers had imagined.
He also had that special talent – God, it’s breaking my heart writing about him in the past tense – which allowed him to be uproariously funny one moment, and then listen with genuine empathy the next, as someone spilt their hearts out to him on the ‘phone.
Gerry demanded and got total autonomy from the RTÉ management for his show, which followed in the great Gay Byrne tradition of breaking taboos, exposing hypocrisy and championing the underdog. He had one of the most finally tuned bullshit detectors of anyone I’ve known, able to rumble people who were being economic with the truth in seconds, and not afraid to indulge in a shouting match if that’s what it took.

He may have played the opinionated panto villain on his show – many a time I remember him saying, “Right, I’m going to wind them up with this!” – but Gerry was a generous broadcaster, who encouraged his guests and contributors to take centre-stage and never tried to nick their best lines. That generosity extended to the way he was always bigging up his production crew, many of who had been with Gerry for years and loved him to bits.
Nothing was ever good enough for his team, as I found out when he got on the phone to a sponsor and demanded that I was flown to an assignment in Borneo first-class rather than economy. He was also the first to ring up and inquire how I was when I returned from the jungle with a spectacularly disabling parasitical bug!

A loving family man, he was persistantly talking about his kids who during the school holidays could often be found in the control-room learning the family trade.
Gerry was still a big kid himself, ever-eager to share the latest salacious gossip with you when the mic was off and recalling youthful glories like the time he helped bring The Clash to the student bar at Trinity.
One of my favourite Gerry memories was when, on his 49th birthday, his team duped him into thinking I was coming on to talk about something pretty mundane when in fact I was armed with the new 4CD box-set from his beloved Led Zeppelin, which we proceeded to play on-air for an hour whilst waxing lyrical about the glory days of prog rock. “That’s the most fun I’ve had on radio in years!” he told me afterwards, which thinking about it now, gives me a warm tingly glow.

There was also a competitive streak in him a mile long, which surfaced when the RTÉ radio quiz I was a team captain on during the naughties, The Vinyl Curtain, had Gerry and Dave Fanning on as part of a Number One reunion special. Thank God he was on my side because Gerry got every question right, and celebrated like Jose Mourinho at the Nou Camp when, in a moment’s mental aberration, the normally encyclopedic Dave fudged a question about The Beatles and we won.
My 81-year-old mum was also devastated when she heard Gerry had died. She met him one night when we both happened to be dining in the same Indian restaurant. Spying us, he sauntered over and said, “Who’s this gorgeous woman? Your sister?” He then sat down for ten minutes and lied to her about what a good guy her son was.

“He was a lovely man, dear,” Mrs. C told me down the telephone last Friday, and she was right. Gerry, rest in peace.