Young, gifted and back!
In the vintage years at 2fm, Simon Young was a ubiquitous presence on Irish radio and TV, before mysteriously disappearing from public view, sparking speculation around the what and the why. In his first major interview for 20 years, Young talks frankly, and sometimes painfully, to Jackie Hayden about his mental health problems, the death of Gerry Ryan, being barred from Gerry’s funeral, receiving the last rites, his suicidal thoughts, his marriage break-up and his fight back to an acceptable form of reality.
Jackie Hayden, 22 Aug 2011
One of the funniest interviews Hot Press ever ran was back in the ’80s with Simon Young, in which he hilariously lampooned the world of the radio jock, claiming, for example, that he chose the music for his programmes by using the leftovers he found lying around the studio after the last guy. His comment on the then newly-opened Century Radio was that it had its uses in that it would take your mind off entertainment.
While he also presented conventional music-driven programmes, Finglas-born Young was best known for his wit, as channelled into his ‘auld Dub’ alter ego Jimmy, an unmissable feature of Ian Dempsey’s breakfast programme on 2fm with his call-sign ‘Get outta that garden’. He also had an input into Zig and Zag routines, wrote for the stage and published successful books. His work took him around the world, most memorably to Dachau POW camp, the White House and several Caribbean islands. He once stayed in the Beverley Hills Hotel where he sat in Van The Man’s “seat”, a huge leather cosy chair Mr. Morrison ‘ponders in’ while staying there.
In person, he was enormously funny, his fast and sharp humour enlivening many a gathering. But over a relatively short period of time, Young’s career and his private life fell apart and he disappeared from public view. Now back to relative normality with a children’s book to be published next year, from his Castleknock base Young tells the story of his trials, tribulations and recovery with remarkable candour.
Jackie Hayden: How good were things for you at the peak of your career in RTÉ?
Simon Young: When things were good for me they could hardly have been better. I’d always loved radio as a medium, and here I was working with the best in the business at 2fm, Ian Dempsey, Gerry Ryan, John Clarke, Tony Fenton, Larry Gogan and so on. I had several radio programmes that I’d loved doing and I’d done some TV as well, presenting The Beat Box, The Den with Zig and Zag and Pay The Price. My character Jimmy was a huge hit on Ian’s breakfast show. I could hardly go anywhere without people shouting “get outta that garden!” at me. I also had an input into all sorts of things, like station promos, records and so on. I was really fortunate in that I loved getting up in the morning and going to work. That’s how good it was. I’d also got to travel all over the world to do shows. And I’d published two books that each sold 20,000 copies. I did some acting with Brendan O’Carroll and others. I was busy, busy, busy.
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