I never met Larry when we didn’t giggle, and we used to belly laugh at his disdain for RTÉ bosses
I CAN’T remember ever meeting Larry Gogan when we didn’t giggle – and I could never suppress a belly laugh when he let rip at the latest missive from RTÉ management.
We are talking about the 1970s when we both wrote for New Spotlight, a weekly magazine covering the Irish entertainment industry.
As the most agreeable of my colleagues, he could also be very ‘bolshie’ about RTÉ management – but then his bosses worked very hard at frustrating him and provoking his incredulity.
He loved being a disc jockey on RTÉ – but he was just as appalled by his killjoy managers’ regular missives curtailing rock’n’roll and paralysing popular culture.
As the son of a newsagent in Dublin he was not particularly attracted to radicalism in anything. But Larry adored the pop music that revolutionised the second half of the 20th century.
And he steadfastly defended the music and pop fans against the dead-hand instincts of RTÉ managers hoping to please powerful civil servants and politicians.
I used to meet him on Monday evenings for the New Spotlight Night Out in the TV Club in Dublin’s Harcourt Street where he would appear with Florrie, the love of his life.
I never met anyone who knew him that didn’t like Larry Gogan – and many listeners who had never met him were convinced that they knew him and they liked him too.
Reading through the best answers from his Just A Minute radio quiz was the most entertaining item published anywhere last week (Larry: What star do travellers follow? Answer: Joe Dolan.)
His consolation to losing contestants that the questions ‘didn’t suit you today’ was the sort of quiet kindness that separates a decent man from a glib opportunist.
Larry allowed no one to look down on, or belittle, his listeners – and he would never, ever tolerate any musician or critic patronising his audience.
Many of us thought that RTÉ launched 2FM to find him a sort of stately musical home – and he was master of all he surveyed there for 40 years before they found him a digital boutique villa in RTÉ Gold.
His taste in music was unashamedly popular (he always adored Abba) in common with folk whose record purchases were reflected in the bestseller charts.
He really did like the Boomtown Rats. And Bob Geldof, who chose his friends nearly as carefully as he selected his enemies, championed Larry Gogan.
But then he also really liked U2 – and, of course, drummer Larry Mullen was a big fan of Mr Gogan. And Larry also went out of his way to boost unknown Irish bands.
He was also trusted to produce his own programmes and chose the records he played on air – a privilege not shared by many of his contemporaries.
When I reported on showbusiness there were regular stories about producers and disc jockeys being ‘on the take’ – in pay-for-play scandals. Suspicions ricocheted around pirate radio where pay-forplay payments were regularised with invoices and even receipts.
But Larry was above reproach – his reputation through 60something years as a disc jockey was never tainted by accusation or even rumour.
I knew Larry’s heart was broken when Florrie his childhood sweetheart and mother of his children died in 2002 – and he suffered ill-health since then.
I have always thought that his unquenchable enthusiasm and indefatigable good humour reflected a clear conscience and an ethic of hard work.
I regularly work with his son at the new state-of-the-art Beacon studios in Dublin and recently Gerard Gogan told me his dad had told him about some adventure we had in Belfast.
He was the most unassuming of men but very much the role model for the sort of Dublin men I came to admire: he was very funny, generous and extremely kind.
I cannot forget Roddy Doyle’s inspired casting of the dog ‘Larrygogan’ in his novel The Snapper.
It is a tribute to Larry’s street smarts as a Dub that he understood the status that Doyle had bestowed on him by naming a dog for him in that best-selling book about Dubliners.
As an outsider (born in Co. Antrim) I have lived in Dublin by choice since the 1970s when I met him – and Larry Gogan and his family represent the very best of the people in the city that I love.