Keeping the Ryan Line open and feeling the full power of radio

RADIO REVIEW:THE TRIBUTES on all radio stations to Gerry Ryan were a testament to his 20-plus years presenting the morning show on RTÉ 2FM and the powerful presence this most unassuming of mediums has in the lives of ordinary people. Whether or not you knew him personally or were a regular listener, it was difficult not be moved by the thousands of messages.

It was an unenviable task, but it fell to Evelyn O'Rourke, a reporter on The Gerry Ryan Show, to present A Special Programme: Remembering Gerry Ryan(RTÉ 2FM, Saturday). She managed it with a steely determination. One listener e-mailed, "I walked every morning with Gerry for the last 10 years . . . Gerry was like the third person in my marriage. I was always saying, 'Gerry said this, Gerry said that . . .'"

O’Rourke did her best to steer listeners away from raw emotion and toward their memories of the man. In a medium that can frequently be too emotive, she and Brenda Donohue, another former Ryan reporter, were genuinely affecting because they held back their tears.

They played Ryan’s interview with Lavinia Kerwick from July 16th, 1992. Kerwick was the first rape victim in Ireland to go public after the defendant received a suspended sentence. Donohoe said of Kerwick’s call, “The community rallied around her and supported her. It gave her a lot of courage to continue with the rest of her life.”

In an affectionate piece, Philip Boucher-Hayes, another Ryan alumnus, called him “brilliant, provocative, frequently incendiary, but always engaging”. He played a recent clip from one woman who told Ryan: “You try things until you’re blue in the face and it just doesn’t work . . .” Boucher-Hayes said “good broadcasting sounds effortless”. He said Ryan could talk on everything from Nama to bubblegum on pavements.

Bono too recalled Ryan’s radio days: “You have breakfast with him, don’t you? It doesn’t get more intimate. You wake up in the morning and he’s there, filling your head full of the silly and profound . . . He was a very serious intellect and a ‘great analyst of the country’s affairs, and then he had a potty mouth. He was a very irreverent man when dealing with serious topics.”

The time had come to close the tribute. “It’s getting harder now,” O’Rourke said. “It was easier earlier in the programme when we had more time left.”

But . . . Ryan’s listeners wanted more, so on Monday they did it all over again, and for the second time O’Rourke and Donohue were superb. O’Rourke said the programme always broke the rules: “For one last time the Ryan Line is open.”

In one light moment, Ryan’s former producer Willie O’Reilly, now CEO of Today FM, read out a long missive he had kept from one listener who didn’t find Ryan’s bombastic style of broadcasting his cup of tea – to put it mildly. The letter was full of outrage, and O’Reilly read it with relish. They all agreed Ryan would have proudly stuck it on the office noticeboard. “Gerry pushed out the barriers, he pushed out the lightness of tone, he pushed out what we can talk about,” O’Reilly said. “Anyone in radio today owes him a debt of gratitude.” Carmel, a listener, called in to say, “There’s nobody who can replace him, there really isn’t. Thank you. Thank you.”

On Saturday, Marian Finucane(RTÉ Radio One, weekends) opened the papers and, this time, Ryan was on the front pages. "He was absolutely brilliant at doing the papers," she said. "He was a person of substance." Writer John Banville said, "He was very much alive to the comic possibilities of language."

The funeral mass on Thursday was broadcast on RTÉ 2FM. Fr Brian D’Arcy spoke from the altar, his voice only occasionally faltering: “He had attitude. He had brains in abundance. He had courage without measure.” He added: “He used those gifts to speak for the poor, the downtrodden and the voiceless.”

The broadcaster’s wife Morah Ryan rose to the altar: “When the little light went on in studio, he lit up, and he was yours.” As the broadcaster’s coffin was carried out, Mark Little told the radio nation, “Gerry has left the building.”

If anything can inform and entertain us, rally us to a cause, motivate us to get out of bed, pick ourselves up and try again, help us face the day, forget our troubles, keep us company, make us cry, then laugh, it is that funny little box between the bread bin and the kettle: the radio and, most especially, those who inhabit it.