An air-raising adventure

THE FIRST SHOW, 1988

Siobhan Hough: My main memory is of panic! Gerry had been on at night where they tried to stop him talking so much, so this was the reverse.

Pat Dunne: It was a very radical departure, putting him on instead of a basic mid-morning music show in which there was hardly any talk. But there was no format really, and Gerry could be so entertaining just talking about anything, often turning a screw-up into part of the show. That was unheard of in Irish radio. We even asked Orla Guerin in the news room if she could do a more zany news than normal for us.

GERRY RYAN HIMSELF

SH: He has the ability to get totally involved in whatever the programme is, and he can switch from talking about SARS to the war in Iraq to a young girl upset about her Easter egg, and then he can go to a very funny and spontaneous piece with Fiona Looney, all within the same show.

PD: He’s got great empathy with people of all persuasions and a very deep knowledge about most things happening in the world. He also knows how silence works, so that he can talk to someone with a personal dilemma or someone who’s suffered abuse.

He’s a great listener. He’s a dream for a producer in that he’s extremely co-operative, helpful and generous. He’s very vocal and very dynamic, but you have to be on his wavelength too.

THE TEAM

SH: The programme works with a very small but close-knit team who put in very long hours because they love it. It can be very stressful, working against tight deadlines, filling 15 hours every week, and most of that is speech radio. They all have very strong personalities but it’s the role of producer-in-chief Pat Dunne to keep that team working together.

PD: Gerry needs to know that all members of the team understand what the programme is about. The programme has flourished because we relate to each other, and to Gerry, almost like a commando-like family unit. There are no officers and no privates, and that philosophy has become a template for other shows on radio.

RESEARCH

SH: Everybody working on the show has a hand in finding really good material and angles for us to work on. Eileen Heron has been with us a long time, formerly as a researcher, as I was myself, but she’s now a producer. Tom Normanly and Fiona Murray are making invaluable contributions on that front too, as does Evelyn Ni Ruairc, our out-and-about reporter.

PD: We also have people like Deirdre Magee, Paul Russell, Joan Torsney and others who have worked on the show in the past and come back from time to time to make fresh contributions. It gives a permanent sense of unpredictability to the programme so that whenever you switch on you really have no idea what’s coming up next.

LISTENERS

SH: The listeners are the most important factor for obvious reasons but also because they contribute so much. We can go into the studio with a fully planned running order but often the listeners take over and out goes that plan. The programme goes where the listeners want it to go.

PD: Even if every single item we’d planned for the show fell apart through some bizarre series of accidents, I’d guarantee we could still rely on Gerry’s interaction with the listeners to make something interesting happen out of nothing.

MUSIC

PD: The programme has always featured some music, including live music, to bring an extra texture from time to time, and we’ve been adventurous in doing things like The Cranberries broadcast last year.

SH: The unplugged sessions evolved early on when we asked bands to come and do one of their own songs and then do a cover.

But one of the sessions that most sticks in my memory is Bryan Adams. When we suggested it first it was at the height of his career, and we thought it was a long shot, that at best he might come up with an acoustic guitar for one number. Then he said “yes” and we discussed having him with a small band and then it grew into a fully fledged hour-long gig with equipment all over the place even blocking up the hall! We did something similar with Meat Loaf.

ATTRACTING LOONIES

PD: They come in various forms. Mairead Sweeney and Lorraine Dunne take the calls as the programme goes out. They have a short few seconds sometimes to assess if each call is related to the topic under discussion, might it be better suited to a later slot, are the people interesting to listen to, are they genuine or spoofers or loonies. But some looney people have been among our best contributors. They may not all be certifiable but they can be eccentric. There’s one chap from Galway who’s very concerned about his elderly farmer brother who seems to be spending their nest egg on lap-dancing clubs. He’s basically asking our listeners what he should do about this dilemma.

AND THEN THERE’S FIONA LOONEY

SH: She’s probably our only current regular contributor. We used to be more reliant on them. Her contribution is very important and she can really make the most normal thing seem ridiculously funny.

PD: Yes, and there’s also this “frisson” of something indefinable between Gerry and herself. It’s not so much an affair as a kind of virtual relationship! They can be talking about something as mundane as spring-cleaning and it quickly becomes a contest to see how many double-entendres they can come up with without getting the show taken off the air!

STAND-INS

SH: Barry Lang sat in for Gerry a few times, as does Dave Fanning regularly. But Gareth O’Callaghan did it for the first time recently.

PD: And Avril Hoare has been in the hot seat too. We know that there are certain subjects that suit each of them and some that are really only Gerry’s territory.
SH: There are certain things Dave doesn’t like talking about. But sometimes we do two hour shows with the stand-ins and that makes the pressure a little less.

GERRY’S RUDE BITS

PD: This is where Gerry’s boyishness takes over and he takes great delight in mentioning the unmentionable. It’s like his second childhood. But Gerry came in with a generation which could talk easily, and even flippantly, about sexual matters. He’s proud of that fact, and every so often he presses the “rude” button. People now know they might have to avoid having their breakfasts at certain times when the programme is on!

SH: It’s also a comparatively small element of the programme and yet people seem to notice it the most.

CAMPAIGNS AND CRUSADES

SH: Some issues just take off in a way you couldn’t really have planned. Many can be serious, but some can have a lighter tone to them. One of the earliest I remember was the issue of nude bathing for men only out at the Forty Foot in Sandycove. We sent Brenda O’Donoghue out among them and that caused quite a stir! More recently Gerry went absolutely ballistic about the new road signs in Dublin. Calls came in from all over the place and they’re now gone!

THE BALANCING ACT

PD: Every producer on the programme has to learn how to balance the lighter with the darker, heavier material. If Gerry has been dealing with a serious topic like, say, child abuse, he can’t shift gears too suddenly into something bright and breezy. There has to be a smooth transition from a sensitive topic to a different type of topic. We make those judgements every day, and sometimes we’ll sound each other out about it if there’s a potential clash.

COMPETITIONS

SH: We have a policy that our competitions should not just be a chance to win something attractive but the format should be entertaining even for the listener who has no intention of entering or has no real interest in the prize. For the millennium we organised a Riverdance competition with the prize to see Riverdance in New York. Entrants could use different instruments from the house to recreate Riverdance. It was outrageously funny even if you didn’t even like Riverdance.

CONFLICT

SH: Conflict is great because it gets other listeners involved. And sometimes Gerry just sits back and more or less let’s them at it. There was a great set-to recently between two women talking about working women versus non-working women. The working woman was trying to argue that she did twice the work, because not only has she an outside job but she did the housework as well. The other woman argued about how hard it was to be at home with the children all day. All we needed was a boxing ring for them.

PD: But it’s equally important for the listener that they’re not shouting at each other so much that you can’t hear either of them! So Gerry has to come in like a referee sometimes. But it’s a great radio moment when people feel that they can at last get something off their chests and let it all out!

THEY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY

PD: It’s hard now to think there was a time when we wrote out a running order on lined paper and handed it to a broadcasting assistant to type it up on a typewriter! Letters arrived in the post, with stamps and all on them! We also pioneered the use of the mobile phone which was then such a cumbersome item compared to today’s models. But they were so unreliable at one stage we nearly decided to stop using them!

Today, the vast majority of calls to the programme are on mobiles, and we also have the Internet. Whereas in the early years it might take days to get the background info on a particular topic, now we can practically access it while the item’s being discussed on air.

SH: Yes, the technology has changed, but the Gerry Ryan show has adapted and will continue to adapt to whatever new technology comes along in the future. That’s what makes it such an exciting programme to work on for all of us, and for the listener.

Boss talk

2FM boss John Clark puts the Gerry Ryan Show in the context of the station’s overall schedule.

“Every programme in a radio schedule is important, but the significance of the Gerry Ryan Show to 2FM is major. It’s become a daily national focus for debate about the concerns and issues that influence the lives of our audience.

Gerry’s unique style has been instrumental in generating the huge listenership figures that sees the show constantly topping the talk show ratings. His honest curiosity can rattle a cage or two, but his ability to engage with topics in a manner that reflects the listeners’ lives has seen the show build its daily listenership.

Gerry can push boundaries and he has a very creative imagination, and these two elements always make great radio.

Bill O’Donovan, my predecessor as head of 2FM, saw that raw talent and gave the then youthful Ryan the opportunity to blossom, with the instruction, ‘go and make a name for yourself, and if you’re not upsetting someone within two weeks you’re off the schedule!’

And Gerry did, and he’s still doing it. So, long may he find his radio home on 2FM and as long as that’s the case, I won’t even mind taking out the bins!”