The Giant Gerry Ryan Mega Thread

I think Gerry genuinely had a huge impact on opening up Irish society, but more so in the early days of the show and I would say as far as the late 1990s.

He was discussing really controversial stuff and somehow got away with it and not only keeping the show on air, but making a hugely successful career out of it.

It's hard to underestimate how dramatically that show was opening up discussion in Ireland all those decades ago. He was bringing previously unspeakable topics into the kitchens of Irish households several hours a day, all presented with mixture of vulgarity, fun and genuine intelligence.

I've heard a few interviews of his on really sensitive subjects too and people seemed to be willing to talk to him about things on air on a much more human level they you would have heard then. He could be controversial but also was capable of being a listening ear and extremely sensitive to guests and callers and delicate with the topics and subjects he was dealing with.

I wouldn't rate him or the show based solely on the later days - he was on huge money, Ireland was far less conservative and I think to be honest the show was in decline and becoming far less and less relevant.

To me it's 80s and 90s Ryan shows that were absolutely powerful, entertaining and profoundly impactful radio.

Also from what I've heard of anyone who worked with him, he was a really nice and very personable bloke who gave his crew a lot of support and leeway. He was very much larger than life but, I've genuinely never heard anyone say anything other than he was a fun, hugely helpful and very good colleague. There was a big ego but definitely not an obnoxious one.

The show was definitely losing its cultural relevance though by the later days both because it was running so long and also just because Ireland was a different place by then and very few things were taboo.

I think many people will have very fond memories of that 80s and 90s era of the Ryan show and also Irish radio in general back then.

We're probably in a much better place today as a country but those days of Irish radio were really a golden age of broadcasting.

I don't know about that to be honest. I find present day Ireland a fairly honest and open kind of place compared to the US. There's far less pretence and fakery and people will still call you a fupping eegit if that's appropriate.

There's still a fairly robust ability to discuss stuff, take a joke, bounce off people who've different opinions and still get along that I think has been lost in the US and is being lost in England (and urgently needs to come back.). (If you compare the political satire in 2018 in England to the kind of stuff Thatcher faced back in the 80s, it's like a mild tickling compared to seriously robust stuff on Spitting Image etc etc)

It's not all about PC. It's more about people thinking they've a right to not only express an opinion but to have some kind of sacred right to have nobody critique them.

I find the US has allowed an element of po-facededness to takeover debate generally and this notion that every opinion, no matter how bloody ridiculous, should be respected is what's landed them with Trump and people taking things like Flat Earth theory and various people's whacky anti-science theories around things like turning climate change denial into a political movement, anti-vaccine movements, various Armageddon type theorists etc etc way, way too seriously. Various complete morons are running things moronically because nobody's capable of calling them out.

Ireland definitely hasn't gone down that route and I think we've cast off a lot of the deeply conservative dogma of the old days too. I never felt Ireland was fundamentally conservative. Rather it was firmly under someone's thumb for decades and very heavily manipulated into line.

I honestly think that Ireland's ability to handle those referenda (that would have been viciously divisive elsewhere) without actually turning into a complete mess, is very indicative of how this country functions these days.

There are increasingly no taboos and people can discuss stuff in a very frank and open way. It's actually pretty healthy.

I wouldn't mind the minor bit of internet-focused bubbles that you get and people attempting to adopt American social problems over here every so often. You'll always get a bit of that stuff, it doesn't necessarily follow through as something that's going to be a serious thing.

I think Gerry would have survived quite ok in 2018 Ireland. He would have just aged and become less relevant, exactly like the rest of us.

I definitely missed that late 80s / 1990s era of Irish broadcasting : Gerry Ryan, the peak of Zig and Zag and all of that stuff. There was a kind of belt-and-braces approach to an RTE that probably had limited resources and had these bursts of genuine creativity. It was very much an era when we were 'coming out' as a nation. It was the genuine Celtic Tiger too (not the huge borrowing boom that came later and lead to the 2008 bang) and I think the media of that time reflects that.

Interesting time and positive to be alive though and I have really fond memories of growing up through the tail end of it.

When you take a look at some of the stuff that RTE's The Fear did, you would be strung up if you did that on UK or US network television, particularly things like the nun and the sex toy sketch or the one where she headed to a Galway tattoo shop to get a picture of "the good lord" in a very intimate location.

I really don't think we're *quite* as sensitive as the US is and the UK has been slipping.