Gerald Michael Anderson

Many of us have ventured across the water to earn our crust. Or as Christy Moore sings: …..you can’t live on love, on love aloneSo you sail cross the ocean, away cross the foam Missing You, Christy Moore And Gerry certainly did his stint away cross the foam. You might be aware of the recent…

We are just past the old Irish festival of Lughnasa or Lughnasadh. Not that I’d ever say Dad was a man of the land, but I think something always stirred in him around this time. This ancient pagan festival marks the start of the harvest season and potentially (hopefully) a time of plenty. According to…

It was a real joy to come across an interview from Omagh Today on Gerry’s dude days in Omagh. Brian DaMuff Murphy posted the interview on The radio ulster Gerry Anderson fan group on Facebook. The group is a wonderful resource and a fabulously friendly community of Gerry’s fans (ourselves included, of course! ;)). As…

Dad reminisced about his rock ‘n’ roll days, but he never talked it up. He spoofed every now and then, but it never took him long to return to the grim reality. He enjoyed peeking behind the curtain a little more than being on stage. He worked out early on that one needed to be…

The same name came up when Dad was telling stories: “Wait until ye hear what Johnny did” was the start of many a story – and sure, why wouldn’t it be? Johnny Anderson, the eldest of the clan, is Dad’s older brother by eight years.  Always ahead of the crowd, he was a musician before…

Gerry wasn’t a man for camping, or indeed for a tent at all. Neither did he love getting wet, and he certainly did his best at all times to avoid peril. He did not readily welcome discomfort. How ironic was it then, that tents played quite a major part in his early career at events…

Matters of hair, or its scarcity, placed high on Gerry’s list of priorities. He was particularly follicularly sensitive himself, given what he referred to as his “skylight”, and was always curious to find out how people prevented or treated baldness. So, he took that growing curiosity and put it to work, resulting in the 2012…

In case you have been under a rock, Patrick Kielty is the new host of RTÉ’s The Late Late Show. He is the fourth permanent presenter of the programme – one of the world’s longest running late-night talk shows – since 1962. According to the BBC, Kielty said he was “absolutely thrilled”. And that it…

As you might expect, Gerry’s introduction to life as a musician on the road was neither wholly planned, nor strategically timed. Mind you, it wasn’t entirely accidental either as it was bound to happen one way or the other. As a casual musician, he, along with his fellow similarly employed musos, and, of course, the…

When we write articles for this blog, we draw on memory, the writing, photos and music Gerry left behind, plus the accounts of his friends and those he worked with. So, we get quite a well-rounded picture of Gerry as an adult. I was curious to know a little more about his childhood. So I…