Especially when you consider who took over the show. Talk about one extreme to another. Will say one thing about Gerry…he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.

I was never a fan, couldn’t stand the show. Just a personal observation.

Spoke his mind on most things but strangely mute when cocaine addiction was the subject on his show.

Loved his newspaper review in the morning

Like or loathe gerry ryan his replacement is awful. Who gave that clown a slot on a national radio station?

At the end of the day he was HUMAN.

Totally.

This article has nothing to do with his personal life. It’s about his radio career and he did radio better than most.

Has everything to do with it. Of your going to influance people and talk on a subject yes it bloody well does.

So if your kids teacher had second job as hooker and or snorted coke would you mind???

Personally I feel justice was cheated. He helped fund drugs gangs and never faced a court.

BS, just trying trying to create controversy out of a harmless nostalgia story.
I knew before I clicked the article there would be one comment like yours.

@ ydkm – I’ll bite. Would I mind if my daughter’s teacher had a second job as a hooker and/or snorted coke? Not at all, I would be fine with it as long as her non-teacher activities never spilled over into her teaching activities.

In fact, for all I know any of my daughter’s teachers could have been either or both. If they successfully kept that side of their lives private, then how would any of us know?

As an aside, and probably setting myself up for a wallop of outrage, but I’ve had quite a bit of contact with female teachers in my professional life, and many of those under 45 tended to be fairly wild in their private lives; big fans of drinking, clubbing and I’d guess recreational drugs might have made a regular appearance.

The above didn’t lessen their abilities to be wonderful teachers ( if they were to begin with ) and it didn’t, in my opinion, make them any worse people. It could be argued that going crazy outside school-hours was a case of balancing out their responsible work personas..

I believe everyone has a right to do what they want in their private lives, as long as it is consensual and does not hurt others. I’m not a fan of curtain-twitchers.

PS: there was one lady teacher, now she was special. It was a long time ago, but some people never leave your head, and I often wonder how her life panned out…. Hopefully she caught a better fish than me.

And why wouldn’t there be comments as such!?! Ryan made his living as being a straight talker and people, supposedly, respected him for it! He was since found out to be a hypocrite drug addict as voiced in similar comments to this article! I will concede that I too thought he was great radio entertainment while in work but the fact remains, he shovelled piles of Columbian pure up his snout on a regular basis and in doing so financed Organised Crime and the murders that come associated with same!

@ Nikolaus. Can you please PM me with contact details for your daughters teachers.

So man of the street we gloss over it and take about his radio days. Ok fair enough. Gerry was a legend.

In same blind ignorance we have to say So was jimmy Saville. Raised slot of money for charities. Man of the people. Jim ill fix for you and you and you bum bum ba bum.

@ Nikolas
Well at what point is it unacceptable behaviour for the profession .v. After-hour antics!? What if the teacher main-lined heroin, but under completely sanitary conditions!?! What if it was a paramedic or nurse who did so, likewise under sanitary conditions!?! Would you have a problem with your children being taught or medically treated by same!?! I realise I’ve depicted an extreme and possibly unrealistic scenario here but my point remains the same!

You would be suprised who was doing coke during the boom it wasnt just a working class drug

And my point was, how do you know the people providing these services aren’t mainlining drugs? You don’t, if they are fully functional and discreet, and a professional should be judged only on their professional behavior, not on their private lives.

Pharmaceutical opiates were being used recreationally by the upper and professional classes long before heroin introduced as a working-class drug.

I’m not condoning drug-use, but equally I refuse to demonize all drug-users. Go down that road and you get stick at the “anyone who drinks alcohol is a degenerate” post.

Gerry Ryan was a drug user. So he’s a degenerate. But what about the mass of artists, musicians and writers who were drug users. Do you write off their professional output because of their drug use? The Beatles? Rolling Stones? Thin Lizzy? Freddie Mercury?

Where do YOU draw the line?

The hypocrisy of Gerry Ryan regarding drugs is hard to ignore, but, in a partial defense, do you really think the chief bottle washers at Montrose would have let any presenter at the time be anything other than anti-drugs? He pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, but he was canny enough not to ignore those boundaries completely.

To go for full transparency, I met the man quite a few times, and, as a private individual, I didn’t find him a pleasant or wholesome man by any means. But, when on the radio and doing his job, he was extremely good and we needed someone exactly like that on the airwaves at that time.

@ Simon – my daughter’s in her thirties now, so I don’t know if her old teachers are still on the go, and, if they are, I’m not manly enough not to be too terrified to chase them up…

Simply Everyone’s, taking Cocaine..
http://youtu.be/-EZJUS72CWQ

Sorry, I couldn’t resist..

@ Nik. That’s a risk I am willing for you to take. :o)

Here here. Well said

@ Simon – Your belief in me makes he ashamed… :-)

There is a huge difference in a person who abuses kids and one who takes drugs .. They just dont compare at all !!

I so wanted to denounce your point youdontknowme, I sincerely did. But it is impossible to do so. As you said, further down, there is very little difference between Jimmy Savile and Gerry Ryan. Yes, Savile abused children directly with his perverted predilections. But Ryan and his addictions abused just as many. For every line he snorted, he paid for the weapons that the gangs used to control their trade. For every innocent victim gunned down, it was his money, along with many others, that caused their deaths.
And considering how quick he was a offer cocaine to anyone who looked his way, as many recounted, how many others became addicted to cocaine, or other drugs, because of him?

There should have been a 7th point in this list…and that was the complete shock, and anger, surrounding the cause of his death. Why he was so reluctant to take a pay cut when many of his colleagues willingly did so became quite clear.
I’m sorry, but for many, Gerry Ryan’s so-called legacy is tainted. Tainted forever.

Lucky you! The taxpayer had to fork out €600,000 per year to hear those opinions!

Would ya?

I remember hearing how his daughter, Lotty, I think her name is, was studying in the US. As part of her degree, she had to intern on the set of certain shows. But in order to pay her expenses, she had to waitress part time, as well as working somewhere else part time. But after hearing her say that, I started wondering…why couldn’t Gerry have sent any cash her way? This was during the Celtic Tiger days. The guy was rolling in cash.
I mean, yes, you could say that she might have wanted it that way, but I am more inclined to believe it was due to Gerry’s other spending.

Hey Joe, Gerry invested heavily in several property deals that all went tits up following the financial meltdown. I imagine he did spend a good bit on nose candy but the fact is he was a great broadcaster but a lousy investor. That’s where his money went.

Thanks for that insight Leslie, however the article marks 25 years since his radio show debuted on 2FM. It’s not related to his death.

Thanks, Emer.

Ha ha!
Les got Emered.

Ouch…only trying to be humorous

Fail…..

Wow there’s a heart