Low-key farewell for giant of a man

GERRY RYAN’S funeral broke all the rules.

There was a small church for a giant personality, reverential tones for the king of irreverence, mild jokes for a raucous sense of humour and minimal embellishment for the most flamboyant of characters.

Maybe it was an appropriate way to honour a man who broke all the rules and conventions of broadcasting to create his own inimitable on-air style.

Or maybe it was his family’s way of reclaiming for themselves, for a few last precious moments, the man they’d had to share with an entire nation for over 20 years.

Morah Ryan hinted as much when she stood to address the mourners at the end of the two-hour long service at St John the Baptist Church in Clontarf where she and Gerry – or Gerard as she and the children called him – celebrated many happy family occasions in the past.

When she thanked the Ryan Show girls – the researchers, producers and tea-makers – she referred to them as “his other family”. As she thanked the listeners for their loyalty she told them: “You were the reason he got up every morning. When the little red light went on in studio, he lit up, and he was yours.”

Now, she seemed to suggest, she needed him back, even though it was only to say goodbye.

So the crowds were kept at a distance, peering behind locked gates and high railings; no floral tributes from well-meaning strangers crammed the hearse, and even Bono was made hold his loquacious tongue and stick to singing one song by audio link-up to New York – without his customary commentary.

There were no big screens erected, no recordings of Gerry’s voice played, no microphones, Frank Zappa records, Disneyworld T-shirts, Cuban cigars or other personal paraphernalia from a life lived large to carry to the altar.

Instead, what caught the eye and plucked the heartstrings was a small girl, Gerry’s youngest, Babette, aged 10, clutching a teddy bear dressed in a dark tuxedo.

There was his oldest, 23-year-old Charlotte, hugging a framed photograph of a beloved father. There were his sons, 20-year-old Rex and 14-year-old Elliot, with their shoulders to their dad’s coffin. There was Bonnie, 17, holding tight to her mother’s hand.

They walked the half-mile from the family home, dressed all in black, their faces pale and eyes rimmed red. A subdued applause greeted their arrival at the gates of the church from the 1,000 or so members of the public gathered outside.

It was a gathering of the ordinary – women with push chairs, men with dogs on leads, umbrellas sticking out of shopping bags and newspapers rolled up under arms – the kind of people who listened to and were listened to on Gerry’s show. The great and good of show business, broadcasting and politics who had came to mourn mingled mutedly among them until the cortege had entered the church grounds and security filtered them through the gates.

Only the members of Westlife were allowed drive into the grounds, their blacked out Mercedes people carrier shielding them from any potential overly ardent fans until they slipped in a side door.

They would later sing the spiritual You Raise Me Up, taking their place in front of the microphones without ceremony and delivering a flawless, if understated, performance.

For if it is possible to have the world’s biggest boy band sing at your send-off, to have the President of the country shake your grieving family’s hands, to have your wife and lover share a small space, and for the whole proceedings to be broadcast live on radio and internet, and still call the ceremony understated, that’s what Gerry Ryan’s funeral was.

It was a low-key farewell for a high-profile star, a quiet goodbye for a man who lived life out loud. Contradictory, rule-breaking or, as Gerry himself might have said, bizarre. He would have loved it.