The Most Gifted and Instinctive Broadcaster
Stuart Clark was a regular on the Gerry Ryan show for over four years. He recalls what it was like to work with one of Ireland’s radio greats – and remembers the night out when his mother encountered Gerry...
Stuart Clark, 19 May 2010
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.
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