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…

We are taking a trip down memory lane this week looking at the infamous ‘On the Air’ series and the episodes that capture the wackiest and surreal moments of Dad’s adventure on the airwaves. Gerry’s Bad Day During Dad’s career, journalists and radio professionals would always ask him how he prepared for his show and…

Dad was never a big fan of fiddle-dee-dee music. But he thought Irish musicians, including Christy Moore were among the best in the world. Maybe it was due to all the time he spent in Shandrum Co. Donegal. He was surrounded by “traditional music” so it never became a special thing. It was just something…

Good Friday this year, 2023, marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a true turning point in the course of Northern Ireland’s history. In the recent words of Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris: “The signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement on 10 April 1998 brought an end to 30…

From his earliest days of going to the cinema as a boy, Dad was crazy about cowboys and indians. He watched endless western matinees in the 1950’s. And those films left a lasting impression on him. In fact he loved to do a Jack Palance routine with Sean Coyle on his radio show: “Pick it…

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I came across a speech that Oscar Wilde gave on 17 March 1882. He was aged twenty-seven and on a lecture tour of North America. He participated in the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations that were organised in the city of St. Paul, Minnesota. Like Gerry, Oscar rarely veered into patriotism or politics. He…

Hail Glorious St. Patrick! For many of us, St. Patrick’s Day is the day we wrap up in green and flock to local parades to watch blue-kneed, curly-wigged Irish dancers display their talents in front of the judges’ podium (the back of a container lorry). And marching bands bring colour and a sense of occasion…

Rich Pickings There are rich pickings indeed in the Belfast Telegraph column that Gerry wrote over the years – Life According to Gerry. I delight in browsing through the articles and losing myself in the reveries that they offer. In each one, he leads me down various meandering paths that somehow get tied together at…

Every year it was the same. The conversations would start at the Christmas table: I could do with a wee holiday, you know….. And our response would be to tell Dad to stop talking about it. That we hadn’t even gotten Christmas Day over. Or it was far too early in the year to start…

It’s important to know who you are… who your people are, and where you come from to give you context, grounding and identity. For Gerry, it was Derry. But for his mother’s people, the McLaughlins, that was deepest Donegal. A wee homestead called Shandrum – a two-bedroomed, whitewashed cottage with a series of sheds, a…

As Valentine’s Day approaches, some of us will wonder what to buy our beloved. And some of the less romantic among us won’t – complaining that it’s just another Hallmark Card celebration… Gerry was very much in the nostalgia camp. Every year he went out to buy twelve red roses. Very romantic! And being a…

According to The Dictionary of Irish Biography introduction: The Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) is a project of the Royal Irish Academy. It tells the island’s life story through the biographies, at home and overseas, of prominent men and women born in Ireland, north and south, and the noteworthy Irish careers of those born outside Ireland.…

On 24th September 2019, long time friend and former colleague of Dad’s Robin Elliott organised a special charity evening at the Grand Opera House ‘Remembering Gerry Anderson‘. Robin put together a brilliant array of Ireland’s top entertainers that included Brian Kennedy, The Adventures, The Miami Showband, Bronagh Gallagher, Rose-Marie, Malachi Cush, Mirenda Rosenberg, Jim Brown,…