Sunday May 2 2010

THE last time I met Gerry Ryan was two weeks ago on Stephen's Green. He was walking along seemingly without a care in the world when we stopped for a chat outside the Shelbourne hotel.

He was, as always, full of good humour and badinage. And that day was no exception. "What's happened to exquisitely dignified?" he demanded to know.

He was referring to "the exquisitely dignified Gerry Ryan" of my social diary. It was a joke between us. But, like all good jokes, it had a deadly earnest core.

Two years ago, after I had written that his estranged wife Morah was "exquisitely dignified", Gerry came up to me at a Gate Theatre opening night and, with Edna O'Brien beside him, asked when I was going to start calling him "exquisitely dignified". I laughed, until I realised he meant it. So, the following week he became "exquisitely dignified".

It was typical of the contradiction at the core of Ryan: the joker who carried his intelligence very lightly, the crass scatologist who wanted to be seen as dignified, especially in the pain of his marriage break-up. The truth is, I, like most of those who knew him in earlier days, would never have expected it.

Twelve years ago, we spent a day in Harry Crosbie's house on Hanover Quay (ironically he passed away in Harry's place in Leeson Street), and although dignity, it's fair to say, was probably the last thing on his mind, much of what he said was shockingly prophetic. Here is an edited version of what I wrote.

THERE is a bottle of Powers whiskey on the drawing table. In two hours, it will be three-quarters empty -- we will have killed it. In another six hours, a slightly slaughtered Gerry Ryan will be driven by his wife, Morah, to the Aras, where, as a dinner guest of Mary McAleese, the RTE uber-mouth will get even more slaughtered on the President's vintage whiskey.

"It's time to go,'' his wife, Morah, will tell him a little after midnight. "Bill Whelan says he's gone funny.''

The following morning, he will wake up feeling "3,000 years old'', having already been ill in the en suite bathroom in the middle of the night.

He will take tablets to stop the icky stuff dripping down the back of his throat because his famous sinuses are so bunged up from all that malted hooch. He also takes Motilium to stop getting sick again

and Solpadeine to relieve his blitzkrieg headache.

Before he leaves for work, Gerry Ryan will then turn to his wife and ask her: "Tell me I didn't say anything mad to the President last night.'' Gerry Ryan commits marriage guidance's No 1 crime. He reflects himself in his wife.

He needs Morah to tell him that he's fantastic and he's not looking fat. And that he hasn't made an idiot of himself, and that he's sexy and desirable. And that the public still loves him.

And that, even if RTE kicks him out one day, all his rich friends desert him and he ends up in the gutter, she'll still love him.

Morah has recently told her 42-year-old husband that he'd only started growing up three years ago, and that she's looking forward to him being a teenager when he's 63.

"I wasn't always like that,'' he says. "I was very independent for a large portion of my

married life and I didn't need that kind of reflection. I changed when I decided that I was in for the long haul -- that, if I wanted to die married to my wife, I had to give up some of my pomposity, my arrogance.''

The point in his life when he started to rely on Morah, he says, was not a mid-life crisis, but "a watershed of maturity''. Their marriage in 1982 began the process, he says, of discovering the feet of clay.

"It really has taken me that 16 years to get anywhere close to understanding how much hurt and misunderstanding you can create by just not thinking about what your actions may precipitate.''

She sees through you. What does she see?

"I think what she sees is a very flawed guy who a lot of people give too much credibility to. Morah is my emotional mirror. I throw a lot of stuff at her and it depends what way it comes back. Morah is the most honest -- the most honourable -- person I know, so, when you f**k up with Morah, you really f**k up with her and you are really in trouble. She makes sure the boy in me is responsible. I am a football hooligan, at the end of the day.''

What is the worst thing she has said to you?

"That I was a disingenuous, lying bastard.''

The enfant terrible has heard worse. Depending on whom you talk to, Gerry Ryan is either a saint or a s**thead -- the saviour of RTE and all those in it, or the last bastion of dumbed-down cretin broadcasting. Certain people think he says some very serious and worthwhile things, slightly tainted by his juvenile delinquency. Others think the juvenile delinquency is the very essence of GR.

Looking back, he says he regrets that he turned his back on people who needed help. Gerry's brother lent him money when he was in difficulties with the taxman some years ago. But when his brother came looking for money, Gerry didn't give it to him.

"And I am ashamed of that. I was just mean. I had the gall to look him in the face and say: 'I can't help you,' and got the plane to Ibiza and had a good time. That was appalling -- I should have robbed the money for him. I should have been nicer to people. I felt that I have been useless on occasions with people. I think you can only develop by experience, and these experiences all lead you to where you are.''

Further indications of the mind at work behind the media image can be gleaned from the effect the deaths of two close friends had on him. Here, no longer spieling on autopilot, he exhibits a weird diffidence: the relentless badinage disappears.

James Dolan, his best friend growing up, died of cancer. To this day, he still can't believe nor understand his passing. Equally humbling was the bizarre murder of his friend Roderick Pearse in Mexico some years ago. From a very wealthy Anglo-Irish family, Roderick built up a huge ranch and was developing a fantastic business. Not long after he became involved with a local woman, Roderick was macheted to death by a gang of men.

Having watched friend Dave Fanning bury both of his parents, Ryan is full of admiration for his colleague's ability to understand and put death into context.

The thought that, one day, his own parents will be dead terrifies him. He has no mechanism to deal with it, he says. "These are things that shock and stop me,'' he says. "You know, there are serious markers for respecting life and cut out all that shit [like], 'I wish that I was dead. Why do people not like me? Will I ever be successful?' When you get those coming along in your life, you begin to realise what's important.''

The halitosis of almost constant bad press over the years is a stink he has never quite got used to. Proof of his neurotic vanity is found perhaps in the only time he ever considered suicide. Just after the 'Lambo' scandal, Ryan had envisaged his dead body sprawled on the floor and all the people who were nasty to him over the years gathered around the corpse, saying how they wished they had been nicer to him.

There was, however, a grandiose finale to this wrist-cutter's wet dream. Just as Ryan's critics were bemoaning not being nicer to him when he was alive, suddenly, like a paranoid Lazarus from the crypt, the Nabob of Gob sprang up and announced in chat-show-host style: "Now is your opportunity!''

"So, yes, I thought about suicide, but only in the most incredibly disingenuous, cowardly sort of way,'' he laughs now.

Ryan holds the bottle of whiskey like the skull in Hamlet's Yorick soliloquy and says with a laugh: "My celebrity has always been a tainted one in a way. A lot of people think I'm an a***hole."

Did you ever have a problem with drink?

"I think I definitely drank too much. Someone said the worst thing about being an alcoholic is you can't drink. I really believe that still. I know when I was 20 or 30, I could drink half a bottle of whiskey and you wouldn't know the difference. Now, if I drink a half bottle of whiskey, I'm liable to drop my trousers and walk through the hotel lobby.''

Habitually profane and endearingly insecure in private, Ryan is a brilliant basket-case loose on our nation's airwaves. There is something very real about him -- something bizarrely compelling about his gnarled genius.

As the time draws closer for Ryan to get ready for dinner with the President, we decide to play devil's advocate. I will put to him some grossly unfair and hurtful accusations. I will tell him that, facing grey middle age and on a cosy, loadsamoney, five-year contract with RTE, it is time to oil the wheels on his Zimmerframe.

Isn't the real reason everyone hates him because he is, in fact, crap? Is it over for Gerry Ryan? Is he past his sell-by date?

"No,'' he will laugh. "The person who is portrayed as the bad boy of Irish radio is better than he ever was before. The signs become more specific and exact the older you get. I am smarter at taking care of myself physically and mentally and am able to manage people better than I was before. What you lose in gusto, you make up for in organisation and it's a very fine balance.''

Significantly, Ryan doesn't get abused in public as much these days. Six years ago, he would go into a pub and someone would inevitably tell him that he was f**king useless -- and why am I paying my licence fee for this?

Nowadays, it tends to be more along the lines of, "Fair play to you, Gerry.''

Predictably, Gerry butts into the conversation.

"Maybe when I go around the corner, they say: 'He is an a***hole.'''

Memo to Gerry: It's OK, really. We love you. Honest.

Originally published in

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