The Gerry Ryan Interview Part I
Brenda as Roadie. Nappy People. Three Old Men In A Pub. Lawnmower Conversations. Prayer On Trial…
Liam Mackey, 17 May 1990
It may sound like the line-up for a Battle of the Bands competition – in fact these are all items taken from the running order for the Gerry Ryan Show of Thursday April 19, 1990.
The schedule, typed on a single piece of paper and blocked into three hour-long sections, had been drawn up at the regular production/editorial meeting the evening before, but here we are now, with the programme not sixty minutes on air, and the 10 o'clock news still to come, and already the running order has gone out the window. (Or its nearest metaphorical equivalent – The Gerry Ryan show is beamed live to the nation from one of 2FM's brace of modest and decidedly unglamorous, back-to-back studios, bunkered deep underground in RTE's Radio Centre in Montrose).
The reason? Somebody in Wexford has rung in with an urgent account of a U.F.O. sighting they've made over Gorey – and Mr. Ryan, grinning madly into the microphone, is, of course, encouraging the caller to deliver of himself ever more fanciful and elaborate word pictures.
Producer Paul Russel, late of Independent Newspapers, isn't the least bit fazed by the sudden change in plan. As Siobhan Hough – herself a sometime contributor to the show – and Anita Byrne (wo)man the constantly flashing telephones in the production room, Russell casually explains that "the schedule is there to give us the confidence that we have a show – but basically it's constructed as we go along."
Today, however, there is some solid scaffolding in place, with roving reporters Brenda Donoghue filing a piece on her experiences as a roadie with Hothouse Flowers and Barbra Jordan phoning through an on-the-spot and just-this-side-of-tearful description of a canine being put to sleep in The Dogs And Cats Home – one of 50 such abandoned beasts, apparently, that have to be despatched in this way every week in Dublin. Barbara is an animal lover and there's some concern in the team that she may not be able to see the assignment through, but she succeeds, and Ryan himself is particularly impressed with her composed report, telling Paul Russell immediately afterwards to send words down the line to her to that effect.
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