‘My memories of dad Gerry feel like a lifetime ago’

ACTOR Rex Ryan, the son of late radio DJ Gerry Ryan, has said that memories of his father now seem like from a different lifetime.

He spoke about his father’s death as the eighth year of his passing approaches on Monday.

The 28-year-old, pictured, told Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday that his father’s death ‘seems quite distant now’. ‘It seems a long time ago, and that gives it a sort of melancholy, I suppose when I look back on it,’ he said. ‘But it truly does feel like a different life, in a strange way.’ Following his father’s shock death in 2010, Rex said he is aware of how fleeting life can be.

‘Life is good, I think I am just profoundly aware of our mortality... maybe it’s with Dad dying but I know I could leave today and get smashed by a bus,’ he pondered.

Rex, who is currently starring in Pilgrim at Smock Alley Theatre, added that he was ‘very close’ with his father, pictured right with children Rex, Bonnie and Elliott, and is ‘profoundly influenced’ by him, although he is now a ‘different’ man than he was when Gerry died.

‘It’s a very strange thing, me talking about my dad, because I talk about a father, really from my last memories from when I was 21. I’m an extremely different person now. So it’s almost like a different me, a different Rex, knew a Gerard at that time, so it is strange.’