Date Published: 05-Apr-2011

It’s a year at the end of this month since Gerry Ryan died and despite all of the acres of newsprint and hours of discussion on his death and his drinking and his drugs, there is still something that makes it hard to believe that he’s gone.

His immortality – if that’s what it is – owes much of course to the realms of footage that exist of a man at the top of his profession if not in the prime of his life. But because he went out like a light, there was no build-up to his death. And 53 is no age to die anyway.

TV3 dipped the first toe into the anniversary water last week with its Gerry Ryan: The Last Interview as though this was going to be jam-packed with astonishing revelations from beyond the grave.

In fact it was an indifferent interview, fleshed out with clips from some of this television highlights and lowlights, and after an hour of the same old story, it was hard to remember a single sentence that wasn’t already known to the world and his wife.

What it did show however – and not for the first time – was just what a natural phenomenon Ryan was; he was an effortless communicator who knew his audience and played them like the sweetest of tunes.

He saw everything on the box as entertainment; the news has to entertain because information is entertainment too. He didn’t like the sleight that the phrase ‘light entertainment’ seemed to suggest – and he didn’t like those who looked down on his work as something lower down the cerebral chain.

He spoke in that gossipy way of turning down the Rose of Tralee, of newspaper criticism of his television efforts, of his regrets at interviewing a very disturbed Paul McGrath and ironically of doing the final interview with Ronnie Drew.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.