Life can be a real bitch at times, John
This is because John seems to mark all the major points in his life by foolishly allowing someone to make a documentary about him.
You have to admire a man with such a sense of self. Some people would just chart major life events in a diary or a family photo album, John Ryan has someone make a documentary about them.
You may recall the last one. It was about the stillbirth of John's newspaper, Stars on Sunday, which had the Seinfeld-like concept of being a newspaper without news. In that documentary, John stropped around, showing complete disdain for the potential readers of his new organ, or at least for the people who would potentially look at the pictures. And then it flopped wildly, because John had apparently done the one thing that they say it is impossible to do. He had underestimated the taste of the public.
John Ryan had a thinly veiled contempt for the product but he figured it was going to be good enough for the ordinary schmucks. But they liked it even less than he did. They wouldn't invest even one euro in it. He had invested many euros.
After that, John went to America with what seemed like a chip on his shoulder about Ireland, disappointed perhaps and feeling hard done by because Irish people weren't as stupid as he had thought they were and didn't want to buy a dumb newspaper.
We know that John feels bitter towards Ireland because he made another documentary to mark the latest phase in his life. This latest documentary, about John's life as a publisher of a magazine for dogs and their owners, saw a new John Ryan and you had to love this latest creation. I don't know if the word camp even did justice to New York John. But basically we saw a lot of shots of him mincing around with a small, one-eyed rat of a dog and being vaguely Quentin Crisp-ish. The dog's name was Winky.
In between shots of John walking around New York looking slightly uncomfortable in his skin, there were various testimonials from New York people saying how great John is and how much they love John. Even Henry Kissinger dropped in, though he mainly talked about dogs and wasn't inveigled into saying what a great guy John was. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had, though. The greatness of John Ryan is such that Henry Kissinger might easily have endorsed him on this show.
And then there was the brilliant subplot that saw John getting increasingly bitter about how he was apparently some kind of prophet in exile because no one in Ireland liked him and how people wouldn't return his phone calls after Stars on Sunday failed. You wanted to reach into the television and tell him that it was OK, that we didn't not like him, that he had just had a business fail, that it happens to lots of people and that what did he expect, really, when he clearly thought that Stars on Sunday was a load of rubbish himself, and he told people that.
But in another way John seemed happy enough in his little documentary, ranting about how he wasn't appreciated here while having a good old sneer about his latest market, dog lovers, all the while looking very buff and, to be honest, as if he was wearing make-up.
Any sympathy one might have felt for him because his new job involves needing to convince people that he is a slightly camp man who loves the little toy dog he brings everywhere dissipated as they all said how great he was. He is clearly happy in New York. The documentary was like one of those round-robin letters Yanks send home at Christmas to tell us all about their year and how their kids are great and so on.
John was clearly so pleased with the documentary that he came home to be around when everyone saw it. He even came on the Late Late looking buff and a little unfeasibly textured in the face and carrying a little dog. It wasn't actually Winky because Winky couldn't come but he had another little dog that looked just the same and the other little dog was just as good a prop as Winky to establish John's doggy credentials.
Although some people did comment that John appeared to have got the smallest, least doglike dog he could get. He was willing to get a dog all right, to show he was a dog person, but nothing too inconvenient, just a little ratlike thing that he could carry around without any messing. He didn't go so far as to get a St Bernard or anything like that.
And again you felt happy for John to be on the Late Late getting to show everyone how well he was doing in New York. But there were a few disturbing signs. One could not but feel uncomfortable when John had a great old laugh about dog lovers and their folly. He even described them as mentally ill. It reminded us a little bit of the Stars on Sunday thing.
What if the dog lovers of New York saw John on the Late Late sneering away and saying they were mentally ill? Would that not damage his goodwill within the dog community? But then, John was home here and he had a point to prove, that he was doing really well and that if it had to be a dog magazine, it had to be, but that he was under no illusions about how ridiculous it all is, but that it had to be done.
And he must have been good on the Late Late because when Blogorrah, the website that John has invented to take the piss out of the Irish media, wrote a scathing review of the first Late Late Show back on our screens this autumn, it mentioned how bad all the content was, but it did not mention that John was on the show at all.
You can see why, underneath all his newfound success, John might be slightly ill-at-ease talking about New York Dog with the crowd back home. Here was a serious man, a man who
'John was clearly so pleased with the documentary that he came home to be around when everyone saw it'
used to be a war reporter, a serious political writer, a modeliser, a man's man, and now he publishes a magazine for people he thinks are mentally ill, and in order to have any credibility as the publisher of this magazine he has to go around like a big old queen with a little dog that he is required to dote on. It's a bizarre situation he has found himself in.
But somehow, you wouldn't be too worried, because John will be all right. Remember when he tried to publish a gay magazine in Ireland, he had to adopt another persona and that didn't do him any damage? Next time we see him he could be publishing a nautical magazine and maybe going around with a parrot on his shoulder.
And when he opens Jew York Dog, his nose will grow a little and he'll talk with sorrow about everything his people have been through.
But he'll be fine. Because you suspect from the documentaries and the Late Late that John Ryan is happy in himself underneath it all, that the adversity and the reinvention and the exile are all good things in terms of how he likes to see himself.
And at least no one is mentioning the whole Terry Keane thing and how John cocked up all that and ruined a few lives along the way but that's another story.
- Brendan O'Connor
