What We Owe Gerry Anderson

I can’t claim any unique privilege in regards to the late broadcaster Gerry Anderson other than being a listener. But – in common with so many others – I considered being a listener privilege enough.

Sometimes the term ‘Northern
Irish sense of humour’ crops up. The joke, of course, being that Northern Ireland doesn’t have a sense of humour. As anyone who has spent even a little time here will know, the ability to take a joke in good grace isn’t a quality much evident
amongst natives.
For years, however, Gerry Anderson’s morning show on Radio Foyle was a source of guaranteed laughs.
Describing this two hour programme is difficult. It was comparable with nothing. But then, how could it be? Depending entirely on who happened to be on the other end of the phone, chances were it couldn’t even be compared to the previous day’s episode.
All at once cruel, charming, urbane and parochial...  if Flann O’Brien had played in boozy ’60s garage bands before somehow winding up spending two hours a day – on the licence fee – ruminating with North Antrim farmers about the Large Hadron Collider, the results may have had something of the flavour of the broadcast. Gerry even played Tindersticks a couple of times, if my memory serves me well.
David Dunseith’s Talkback and (latterly) the Stephen Nolan show have long been trumpeted as providing unique insights into the psyche of the North – and yes, I suppose that’s true: there’s no point trying to deny that their mining of sorrowful politics and swivel-eyed ‘you-looking-at-my-pint?’ aggression rang true to the place.
But they never seemed to be the last word on the subject.
When I listened to Gerry – to the meandering piss-takes, the impersonations of Pat Jennings, the weekly film reviews based entirely on listings from local papers, the vinegary, Mapp and Lucia-like
badinage between him and Sean Coyle – I knew I was listening to something with a distinct north of the border tinge.
 There have been some lovely tributes since his death. However, I think the most moving will arrive with the broadcast of A City Dreaming, the documentary about Derry that he worked on last year.
It's a portrait of his home town, that, by way of short-hand, is being compared to Terence Davies' beautiful, dream-like, film about Liverpool, Of Time And The City. Derry isn’t Liverpool, of course, and Gerry certainly isn’t Terence Davies. And A City Dreaming, like his radio show, like most things he turned his hand to, is its own brilliantly strange and subversive thing.   
Which, appropriately, should be enough to put a smile on all our faces.