Larry Gogan, Ireland's longest-standing pop music DJ, looks back on his glittering career with Tony Clayton-Leaahead of his Meteor award and a move to a new weekend radio slot.
He says he always wanted to be a DJ, from the very first time he started listening to Radio Luxembourg in the early 1960s, when he would listen to the likes of Alan Freeman, the pop picker's pop picker. The family owned a newsagent shop in Fairview, and he would be helping out. A woman called Maura Fox, who worked in advertising, would buy a newspaper every day, and when he discovered that she had something to do with producing sponsored radio programmes on RTÉ, he plucked up the courage and asked for an audition. The family thought he was mad. The brothers were off being accountants and priests and marketing executives and here was yer man, the boyo, wanting to go into the entertainment industry. Heads were shaken and sighs were heard.
His mother was heard to ask, "Will you not get a proper job?" The entertainment industry? Wasn't that somewhere in New York or London? He passed the audition. There were lots of sponsored radio programmes back then, and he was given a part in a soap called The District Nurse - he played a young lover, or something like that. But he didn't want to be an actor, he really wanted to be a DJ, and so eventually he went to see RTÉ radio producer Bill O'Donovan, who was the one who sent him off to get a tape recorder - which he bought on hire purchase - to practise and practise over and over again.
"The first thing I did was a commercial, on a Craven A programme - imagine they had cigarette companies sponsoring programmes! And then in RTÉ the spot advertising thing was starting to happen, and they put me up for a programme called Morning Melody. I auditioned and got it. They phoned to tell me, but I thought it was some of my pals setting me up. That was the first live music programme I ever did. God, even the commercials were live.
"Does it seem a long time ago? It does all right. In another way, though, it just flashes past."
LARRY GOGAN SITS back in one of the high chairs in the RTÉ Radio Centre staff canteen, sipping from his cardboard mug of Starbucks. Colleagues come over and congratulate him on his birthday (it isn't - it's a running joke that never fails to elicit a few head turns), but most of the time the most popular and longest-standing pop music DJ in Ireland, possibly in Europe, takes it all in with the kind of serene calm that we have come to expect from him.
He looks well for a man in his late 60s (or is it early 70s? No one knows for sure - Larry fudges the age issue with a smile and a shrug), still hale and hearty. He will be on the receiving end of a Meteor Award in less than two weeks' time, and then from March his 2FM show will be shifting from weekdays to the weekend. The Meteor Industry Award is for his significant contribution to Irish music and also for his unwavering support to up-and-coming acts. It is, he says, "lovely to get it". He received an Irma award in 2005 (again for his contribution to Irish music) and thought that would be the end of the gongs. But no, he smiles, when he heard that another one was in the offing, he "was amazed and delighted".
If the reasons behind his move from weekdays to weekends seem obvious, Gogan neither confirms nor denies the whispers on the industry grapevine: that 2FM is once again tardily playing catch-up with other stations, that marketing strategists and statisticians are now taking control over the type of music 2FM will deliver across the airwaves, that the target market of 15- to 34-year-olds don't want to hear someone of Gogan's vintage, standing and professionalism.
"A good song is a good song," he says about the tyranny of the playlist. And, you might add, a good DJ is a good DJ, so what's the problem? He's saying nothing on the topic, and is neither bullish nor contrite about what may or may not be the logic behind the shift.
PHYSICALLY, HE SAYS, daily shows "weren't getting to be too much at all, not at all. Not in the least". He fumbles for words, allowing a situation whereby anyone can read between the lines if they so want.
"It doesn't take a feather out of me, whatever I do," he says. "I'm looking forward to the weekend shows - they're two three-hour shows, long shows, and they'll still have Just A Minute, the Golden Hour, and all that kind of stuff."
And yet it does seem that 2FM have finally signed off on the end of an era. Gogan's comment on this is so non- committal it's hardly worth mentioning, but it highlights a facet of his personality that has endeared him to many generations of radio listeners - the man is wholly affable, non-confrontational.
"I've had a very happy life," he says. "I had a happy childhood, a very happy marriage for 39 years, and am having a happy time on the radio, so I can't complain."
Does it upset some people that he is clearly not dysfunctional?
"It does, I think." A chuckle. "But I never had anything like that in my life. People say to me that I must have had terrible rows in RTÉ, but I never had any rows at all. I never fight with people at all. Couldn't be bothered."
He also couldn't be bothered with leading a high-profile life. Living in the same house in Templeogue, Dublin, for the past 40-odd years, Gogan is an extremely modest and down-to-earth figure in an industry renowned for its high quotient of ego and bullshit. Whatever showbiz pals or stories he has he keeps to himself. It was different in the 1960s, he says, when his star status meant that he was besieged by fans wherever he went.
"It was incredible - you couldn't go anywhere. Television was new - Ireland was effectively one-channel land then - and the places would always be packed. We really would be the stars. Outside Dublin in particular was amazing. You'd go down the country to open a supermarket and there'd be hundreds of people pulling out of you. It was a novelty, and something completely new to me. That kind of attention is not to be taken seriously, though. I was never driven by ego - I just thought it was great crack."
He was, he implies, never one of those people who'd be clubbing it around town, aching to get their face and name into the gossip columns.
"Ah, no, you wouldn't be reading about me having been in Lillie's or Renards," he says. "I was never really into them, to be honest. Myself and Florrie [ his wife, who died several years ago] just liked to spend time with the family and maybe going out for a meal or on holidays. We had five kids, remember, and that grounds you."
Apart from music, he has no other passions. He says he never had any other hobbies, was never into sport, and hates gardening.
"It really is music," he says. "I mean, there's the family as well, I'm very much a family man, but mostly it's music and being a DJ."
Larry Gogan will be presented with the Industry Award at the 2007 Meteor Ireland Music Awards, Point Theatre, Dublin, on Feb 1